Game 42: Rays (21-20) @ Orioles (23-18), 4:05

Desperate times bring about desperate poem parodies. You know how it goes.

Turning and turning is the spiraling Jair
The pitcher cannot see the catcher
Things fall apart; the rotation cannot hold
The cavalry is loosed upon the mound,
The walk-prone tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of victory is drowned;The best lack lineup protection, while the worst
Are the designated hitters every night.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image from the Norfolk Tides
Troubles my sight; a waste of a right hand;A shape with troll face and body of man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is throwing its slow fastball, while all about it
Wind shadows of the soaring home run balls.

The rain clouds pour again, but now I know
That fourteen years of awful losing
Vexed me to nightmare with every losing streak
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches toward Baltimore to pitch?