
In high school in Brooklyn
I was the baseball manager,
proud as I could be
I chased baseballs,
gathered thrown bats
handed out the towels			Eventually, I bought my own
It was very important work		but it was dark blue while
for a small spastic kid,		the official ones were green
but I was a team member			Nobody ever said anything
When the team got			to me about my blue jacket;
their warm-up jackets			the guys were my friends
I didn't get one			Yet it hurt me all year
Only the regular team			to wear that blue jacket
got these jackets, and			among all those green ones
surely not a manager			Even now, forty years after,
					I still recall that jacket
					and the memory goes on hurting.
		-- Bart Lanier Safford III, "An Obscured Radiance"
