“Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.”
―Yogi Berra
Dear Reader,
I’ve always loved baseball. Not the stats or the spectacle, but the silence between pitches. The way it teaches you to live with failure. The way everything slows down in the batter’s box—just you, the pitch, and what you do with it.
“Down 0–2” came out of that feeling. It’s not a poem about baseball. It’s about life when you’re behind in the count. When things don’t break your way, it’s about persistence, patience, and learning to swing anyway.
To quote Brad Pitt in Moneyball, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”
Enjoy!
—Ryan
DOWN 0-2
In the batter’s box, life just makes sense.
It’s you and the bat and the ball
and a side-arm lefty with a wicked
knuckle-curve.
You can go down looking.
Take a base on balls.
Or you can put the barrel on the bat
and watch as it sails toward the sun.
Sometimes the stars align
and you find yourself on base,
other times you go down swinging,
just to do it all again.
You don’t have to be fast.
You don’t have to be strong.
All you need to do is put bat to ball.
You’ll miss more than you’ll hit.
You’ll whiff as much as you walk—
life, like going down 0-2.
All you can do is
get back in the box,
sit back on the pitch,
and try your best
to turn his curve into a hit.