Baseball Primer is running a series previewing each team for the upcoming season, and they’ve started with the cellar-dwellars. Rather than face the music about how awful the Kansas City Royals could be in 2003, writer David Brazeal has turned to poetry. Or rather, Poe-try, for Brazeal has chosen to parody Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in assessing the Royals’ outlook under manager Tony Peña. The results are breathtaking, lacking only James Earl Jones to narrate:

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Peña, of the Pirates’ days of yore.

Not much of OPS knew he; loss of veteran pride did rue he;

Grounding to the right side knew he, was the perfect way to score.

Perched upon a bust of Dave Glass, just inside my office door,

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.



Then this manager beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By his bright and warm decorum made me want to scale a wall,

"Though thy attitude is sunny, we," I said, "don’t have no money,

Optimistic silly Peña, Michael Tucker can’t play ball.

Tell me what the lordly plan is ‘ere this team impact the wall."

Quoth the Peña, "Little ball."

Even Primer’s Poet Laureate, the Score Bard, was moved to give his props:

I once was our poet of lore,

But that I shall be nevermore.

I've been outmerited.

Now The Raven's been parroted,

So how to explore Baltimore?

Oh, and Primer’s Dan Szymborski, he of the Transaction Oracle, gives a partial explanation of his new ZiPS projection system; DIPS meets CHiPS, if you will.