Here Comes the Pizzer: The Found Poetry of Baseball Broadcasts

"Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things."

—Robert Frost

It’s been broadly acknowledged that baseball is the most lyrical of all sports—the one whose natural flow lends itself to poetic rhythm and meter more than any other. Here Comes The Pizzer: The Found Poetry of Baseball Broadcasts recognizes this natural marriage of baseball and rhythm and takes it to the next level. Dozens of poets, researchers, writers, and historians have joined together through the Society for American Baseball Research to create this anthology of the words of the greatest broadcasters in baseball history, fashioned into new and innovative found poems.

Editor Eric Poulin has curated a collection of poems that alternate from wildly humorous to deeply poignant, as the words of legends like Vin Scully, Harry Caray, Red Barber, and Mel Allen sit gracefully alongside those of Dallas Braden, Jerry Remy, and even Snoop Dogg. Collectively, this anthology spans the range of human emotion while being fully grounded in the ebbs and flows of our National Pastime.

Poulin is a Professor of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, and is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research.

Eric Poulin is a Professor of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, and is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research.

TIM WILES is a retired librarian who lives in Guilderland, NY. From 1995-2014, he directed the A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center, within the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown. He is the co-editor of Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems (Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), and the co-author of Baseball's Greatest Hit: The Story of Take Me Out to the Ball Game (Hal Leonard, 2008). His article on baseball poetry, "Who's On Verse" ran in the Sunday New York Times on Opening Day in 1996. He is widely known for his costumed performances of "Casey At the Bat."