Kansas City Blues (242 Choruses)

The following is an excerpt from the recently-discovered masterwork, written by hand on a single jumbo-sized two-ply toilet paper roll deep within the catacombs of Kaufmann Stadium. The exact origins of the piece are unknown, but it’s believed that the majority of the passages were transcribed from folklore by a drunken, unemployed Trey Hillman, who hid in the boiler room for weeks after his 2010 dismissal. As for the work itself, it is best read aloud, in a detached voice, deploying copious pauses and wielding a mindset that is ever mindful of the pointlessness of the human condition.

(56th Chorus, as told by Gil Meche)

At another hospital
I almost died
With bursitis
Craning backward at the Ruthian
Rooftops on the Bronx
And at my fellows

Bannister was dying of diabetes
Not enough strong blood
     I had too much.
Bass was dying of die-sadness,
Others had elbows
     Like my Uncle John.

Old Dominican Runelvys
Had Tommy’s Awful Disease,
     the bloating of the belly
     by untamed thyroid
     And the endless wait.
     When it did end
     everything he threw
     turned to glass.

(134th Chorus, as told by Allard Baird)

“The only cure for
     bad baseball
is more baseball.”

This is the real baseball.

Now it’s after supper
And the little kids
Are out in the grass
Yelling “No batter,
No batter, no batter”
And the sky is navy
In weary old Missouri
of Splittorff, of Quisenberry
and the Golden Mullet

*snaps*

(Apologies to the corpse of Jack Kerouac)