wrobleski of the dodgers delivered a pitch high

and quite near the bat-gripping hand

of blue jay gimenez. the pitch was not too far

from gimenez’s head, come to that. gimenez

reflexively dodge-danced, perhaps reacting

out of fear of being beaned.

(beaning is hitting the batter in the head with a pitch. last century bean was one of many slang words for head.)

then came trouble. wrobleski threw a pitch

near-identical to the previous one and this one

smacked gimenez on the hand, hard. soon the field

had outraged blue jays swarming onto it. wrobleski

acted the injured innocent whilst gimenez

was escorted down the first base line

by a peacekeeping umpire. the beef soon cooled.

(a beef is a dispute. the blue jays felt the opposing pitcher had twice attempted to dust off their teammate. dusting off is a deliberate attempt by a pitcher to intimidate a batter with a pitch dangerously near the batter’s body or head. cooling the beef is settling things down without a fight.)

ah, but then in a nicely karmic turn of events,

blue jay springer drilled a wrobleski pitch

right up the middle, hard, right into wrobleski’s legs.

a stadium filled with blue jay fans cheered wildly.

a leg-bean for a hand-bean

is not exactly an eye for an eye, but

roughish justice had been served.