Learning to Fall: John Updike's "Baseball"

So it's the fourth of July, so I guess the poem should have some sort of Patriotism.

What could be more American than baseball? Without further babble, I give you "Baseball," by John Updike, who (RIP) died just a few months ago.

I was finished with baseball in second grade, when I took one to the eye playing some warm-up-catch with the only girl on our team. I was on the Expos, and a week earlier I had caught a pop-fly with my nose, a "dark star," a "leaden meteor" on my head. Bloody bloody stuff. So I was done and through, not one of the "chosen"

This poem captures the sport beautifully though. Reading it, I thought I could feel what baseball, and America, is:

"...beneath

the good cheer and sly jazz the chance of failure is everybody's right,

beginning with baseball."

I know that sounds bad, that failure is everybody's right, but it is—we all fail. A ridiculous whiff in baseball youth will help us know now, that after the crushing failures, it's okay. The world has not yet ended.