Thomas Erickson
Honorable Mention

is just of the things I have yelled at a baseball game.
Consider my needling of Detroit Tiger’s right fielder and
University of Michigan quarterback Rick Leach: “Hey Ricky,
how does it feel to live your whole life in Michigan?”

On my barking at Kirk Gibson who struck me as an extremely martial
athlete in attitude and bearing. I taunted him with ”Semper Fi,
Kirk” from the left field bleachers in Dodgers Stadium
for an entire game. Unfortunately, he didn’t see the irony.
He turned around and looked at me in the eighth inning,
gave me a thumbs-up, and then hit a game-winning double
in the bottom of the ninth.

The life of a heckler is more fraught then you realize.
My friend Beek and I were kicked out of County Stadium
when we serenaded Dave Winfield too loudly for killing
a seagull with an errant throw in Toronto the night before
he got to Milwaukee, We were kicked out
on Fan Appreciation Night. Are you kidding me?

I don’t heckle so much anymore. My wife thinks it’s mean
for one thing. Plus, I’ve reconsidered my targets and it makes
me feel bad to think Gibson has cancer and had to stop
coaching and that a corpulent, blind, and drunk Kirby died
young in Minneapolis, the same place John Berryman threw
himself off a bridge. John Berryman who wrote of the “horror
Of unlove.”

Then again, Dave Winfield was a Yankee so fuck that guy
wherever he is.