When the Federal League filed their anti-trust suit in my court

because of my reputation as a trust-buster,

they failed to realize that I considered baseball

a national institution,

and that I would not brook radical action

against a national institution,

no matter what the law might say on the matter

(you saw what I did later to other radicals)

I sat on the case until the two parties

could settle the matter amongst themselves

(The suit that later reached the Supreme Court

was filed years later in a different court)

Baseball was grateful, and a few years later

offered me the position of single Commissioner,

a dream job:

many times my judge’s salary,

free admission to all baseball games,

and best of all, no annoying appellate judges

to overturn any of my decisions

I fought a losing battle against the growing farm systems,

but otherwise did what I was hired to do:

clean up the game’s image with the fans and writers,

and put in their place anyone who dared

to attach the game’s economic structure

“MICHAEL CERAOLO is a 62-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had two full-length books (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press; 500 Cleveland Haiku, from Writing Knights Press) published, and has two more (Euclid Creek Book Two, from unbound content press; Lawyers, Guns, and Money, from Writing Knights Press) in the publication pipeline.