Today’s poem at Bardball was inspired by some of Buck O’Neill’s stories about the Negro Leagues in The Soul of Baseball by Joe Posnanski.
Fun on the Bus with the Kansas City Monarchs
We rode the bus a lot back then
Murphy was our bus driver
No first name
“Murphy” might’ve been fake too
He was bad business
Gold teeth
Angry eye
A past we never asked about
.
But reliable
Murphy was reliable
You could always count on him
Hearing one of us on the team shout
(and we did it many times a night)
“Hey Murphy! I think I just saw a police car!”
And hitting the gas
And driving like the devil himself was after him