Sunday Baseball

The East Side Slashers were playing the Terrors,
Piling up hits, assists and errors;
Far from their stuffy tenement homes
That cluster thicker than honeycombs,
They ran the bases like busy bees,
Fanned by the Hudson's cooling breeze.

Mrs. Hamilton-Marshall-Gray,
Coming from church, chanced to pass that way.
She saw the frolicking urchins there,
Their shrill cries splitting the Sabbath air.
“Mercy!” she murmured, “this must stop!”
Then promptly proceeded to call a cop;
And the cop swooped down on the luckless boys,
Stopping their frivolous Sunday joys.

Mrs. Hamilton-Marshall-Gray
Spoke to her coachman and drove away
Through beautiful parks, o'er shady roads,
Past splashing fountains and rich abodes.
Reaching her home, she was heard to say
“How awful to break the Sabbath day!”
The Slashers and Terrors, side by side,
Started their stifling subway ride
Down through the city, ever down
To the warping walls of Tenement Town.
Reaching their homes, the troublesome tots
Crept away to their shabby cots
And dreamed of the grass and the droning bees,
The pure, cool air and the waving trees,
And how they had played their baseball game
Till the Beautiful Christian Lady came.
Sunday Baseball

by William F. Kirk, 1910
