The Feast of Willie Keeler, Patron of Not Nothing

With each day it becomes increasingly clear that our feast-day celebrations for notable baseballing figures aren’t going away.

Life: “Wee” Willie Keeler played 19 years in the major leagues, and his .3413 career batting average is the 14th highest of all time. The diminutive Keeler is famous for his simple batting advice — i.e. to “hit’em where they ain’t.” He’s also noted for having perfected, while playing with the Orioles of the mid-1890s, the “Baltimore Chop,” which is either (a) a technique wherein the batter hits the ball into the ground purposely so’s to induce a high bounce, or (b) a signature move in a mid-Atlantic variety of the martial arts.

Spiritual Exercise: In his poem “The Snow Man,” Wallace Stevens describes a character, out in a field during winter, who “beholds / Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.” How, do you think, is it possible that “nothing” can both be and not be — and how, if at all, does this relate to Keeler’s famous approach to hitting? Finally — and most importantly — with whom, between Keeler and Stevens, would you prefer to have a drink?

A Prayer for Willie Keeler

You won the award for best spiritual wisdom
when you declared that your preferred strategy
while batting was to “hit’em where they ain’t” —
and won it again shortly thereafter
by advising a young teammate not to bite
the hand that feeds him, but certainly
to find out whose arm it’s attached to.

When a New York paper reported that you’d
experimented with chloral hydrate, nitrous
oxide, and even peyote in your efforts
to apprehend the mystery of your art
you neither denied nor confirmed the claim
but responded that to characterize hitting
as an “effort” of any description would be
to badly misunderstand the practice, continuing:

“I neither try to hit the ball,
nor don’t try to hit the ball,
nor try not to hit the ball
nor don’t try to not hit it.

And though I’ve occasionally
not tried to try and hit it,
and, even once, didn’t not try
to try and not hit it, I’ve found
all these approaches unsatisfying.”