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Jul 19, 2026
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The Rookie
He swung the bat three times and got three hits.
I say that first for all those just the facts
Folks who couldn't care less about the tale
Behind the tape, which tale in fact distracts
From the essence of the game, the numbers
Which encompass all that really matters
About a game that's broken hearts in two,
And left the hopes of grown men in tatters . . .
But numbers wouldn't tell you he'd not played
The game before; some scout found him upstate
Throwing hay the same way mortals throw stones,
And from that view alone knew he'd be great
If he could learn to hit a ball with wood.
But first he had to be convinced to try.
Money didn't move him; neither did fame.
The scout was working hard to find a why
To motivate this giant of a man
To trade in bales of hay for balls and bat.
For reasons we may never know, it worked.
“I'd like,” he said, “to try my hand at that.”
And so he did, for one game (or a part).
Three times up, three pitches seen, three balls hit
Hard—you could hear them whistle through the wind.
But then, that fourth at-bat he up and quit,
Walked straight off the field without looking back.
He never said a word to anyone
Explaining what it was that changed his mind
And made him suddenly decide, “I’m done”
I found him in his field later that day,
In working pants and shirt he'd sweated through.
No words passed between us for a while
As in that field a crop of silence grew.
“I guess I like the game all right,” he said,
When finally he took a break from hay.
“And I could hit that ball, no problem there,
And I'd be glad to trade in work for play.
But that last ball went buzzing past my face
And scared me so I near forgot my name.
Maybe I'm a coward, I'll let you decide,
But I'll not lose my head for any game.”
That's all he said; we never spoke again
Of baseball games, or bats and balls, or fear.
We leave the past behind us once it's gone—
That's always been the way we do it here.
— David Denton, Jul 19, 2026
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About This Poem
Editing Stage: Rough draft
Critiques
neopoet
1 day 21 hours ago
Neopoet AI (premium) [2026-06]
The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:
The narrative arc of this poem is its clearest strength. The premise arrives efficiently, and the poem trusts the reader to follow a story delivered largely through implication and understatement. The choice to end not on the rookie's departure but on the speaker's flat closing philosophy gives the piece a quiet resonance that a more dramatic ending would have lost.
The strongest single image is "Throwing hay the same way mortals throw stones," which conveys the young man's physical gift economically and with real freshness. The later phrase "a crop of silence grew" is also doing well-integrated work: it extends the poem's agricultural setting into metaphor rather than reaching outside the world of the poem for its figurative language. That consistency of image-world is one of the poem's more disciplined features.
The rhythm is generally assured, but the opening stanza carries a burden the rest of the poem does not. Roughly the first eight lines argue a case about statistics versus story before the story itself begins. Since the poem that follows so plainly values the tale over the numbers, this framing tells the reader in advance what the narrative will demonstrate anyway, and it delays the entry into the actual scene. Consider whether the poem could open closer to "He swung the bat three times and got three hits" and then move directly toward the scout, letting the meaning about numbers versus story emerge from the events rather than being stated first.
The rookie's speech is the emotional center, and it mostly earns its place. One moment to reconsider is "Maybe I'm a coward, I'll let you decide." The line names the theme a little too directly, handing the reader the interpretation the surrounding details have already supplied. The image of the ball that "went buzzing past my face / And scared me so I near forgot my name" does the work on its own; the self-diagnosis that follows risks softening it. Trimming toward the concrete fear and away from the abstract label might let the character's dignity register more sharply.
On the level of meter, the poem is written in a loose iambic pentameter, and it holds this pattern well through most of the stanzas. A few lines run long against it. "Which encompass all that really matters" and "That scared me so I near forgot my name" sit differently in the mouth than their neighbors, and "Maybe I'm a coward, I'll let you decide" is a syllable or two over the established line. Since the poem otherwise keeps a steady measure, these variations read more as slips than as deliberate substitutions. A pass focused solely on scansion would tighten the whole.
The final stanza's plainness is a genuine achievement of tone, and the last line lands the theme of a place that does not dwell. The poem knows what it is about and largely resists over-explaining it in these closing lines; the suggestion above is simply to extend that same restraint backward into the opening and into the rookie's confession.
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