Bill Littlefield plays games even as he writes about them, or talks
about them on his nationally syndicated NPR radio program, Only a
Game. He unabashedly versifies not for profit, or a championship cup,
but for fun. He makes no bones about it: these verses are doggerel. From
mumblety-peg to the Olympics, from the bedrooms of aspiring
nine-year-olds to the boardrooms of sports executives, his imagination
and playfulness illuminate the rings, rinks, fields, and frustrations of
sports and games.
What Racers Do
Racers race. That's what they do,
And they are fast, and noisy, too.
(Of quiet they are quite bereft,
Driving fast and turning left.)
Through headphones, as they speed along,
They hear instructions like a song
Screeching in the treble clef:
Keep driving fast and turning left!
Precisely where it had begun,
The race will end. It will be won,
For someone opposite of last
Kept turning left and driving fast.
What is it about rhyme? Whatever it is, we fall in love with it (if
ever) early in life: as soon as we learn to talk, or probably sooner.
The same can be said about love for sports. By bringing together these
two forms of attachment, the clever Littlefield reminds us that poetry
and sports, at a level deeper than their different kinds of grandiosity,
both have roots in childhood pleasures.--Former Poet Laureate Robert
Pinsky
While we confidently expect children to delight in them, we offer them
for adults. Take Me Out takes us out to the ball game, to the chess
match, to the squash court, in rain and shine.
BILL LITTLEFIELD is the host of NPR and WBUR's sports show, Only a
Game, which is syndicated to some 200 public radio stations around the
country. The author of several books on sports, two novels and two
collections of his radio and magazine commentaries, he is
writer-in-residence at Currey College, where he teaches one course each
semester. A graduate of Yale University and the Harvard Graduate School
of Education, Littlefield began broadcasting sports commentary on WBUR
(Boston) in 1984.
STEPHEN COREN is a graphic designer, artist, web developer and video
producer who lives in the Boston area.
