Literature Network » Walt Whitman

Francis's Pitcher.(Robert Francis)

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From: The Explicator
Date: 20070101
Author:Rizzo, Steven

Since baseball's official birth in the 1840s, American poets have helped establish and maintain the sport's mythological stature. In 1846, for example, a month after the New York Knickerbockers played the first baseball game on record, Walt Whitman proclaimed in The Brooklyn Eagle, "I see great things in baseball. It's our game--the American game" (The Journalism 477). (1) The national pastime has returned the favor by occasionally lending its clout to poetry, a markedly less popular pursuit in American culture. Hence, while only half-jokingly identifying "Poetry as an Un-American ...

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