3 Books Published by City Point Press on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

One can watch many baseball games before seeing a triple play. With this book E. Ethelbert Miller completes his baseball trilogy. How I Found Love Behind the Catcher’s Mask is a collection of poems that celebrates baseball by putting a spin on how the game brings meaning to one’s life.

Well known Washington, D.C. poet, former Howard University professor, and literary activist, Ethelbert Miller is personal and political when writing from the batter’s box or pitching mound. Here are poems that tip their caps to Joe DiMaggio, Ken Griffey Sr., and Emmett Ashford.

Miller’s book does not duck from examining the Black Sox Scandal, the career of Glenn Burke or the tragedy of Carl Mays. Miller’s own life at times is a playing field for sadness and what

Ellington called “mood indigo.” But his love for baseball is a complete game and continues to reflect the hard heat of pleasure. After If God Invented Baseball and When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and other Baseball Stories, this book, like a triple play, is a thing of beauty.

“Baseball should create a new position, poet laureate, and give it to E. Ethelbert Miller. In his third collection of baseball poems (‘a double turning into a trilogy,’ as he writes), Miller weaves knuckleballs and pickoff throws with universal themes of family, race, relationships—and the issues of our time, like rioting and voting rights. With allusions to Monbouquette and Giacometti, Henderson and Danticat, How I Found Love Behind the Catcher’s Mask will make you laugh, think and feel a whole new way about baseball and the world around it.”—Tyler Kepner, national baseball columnist for the New York Times and author of the best-selling K: A History of Baseball In Ten Pitches

“Ethelbert Miller is one of the most significant and influential poets of our time.” —Gwendolyn Brooks

Much-honored Washington, D.C. poet activist E. Ethelbert Miller delights and surprises us with his deft imaginings and portraits. Ethelbert’s poems play out in baseball rhythm and express the joy of living, despite the bitter challenges in today’s world. These poems define our time and allow us to see ourselves as human through the lens of baseball, family and music.

When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and Other Baseball Stories is Miller’s second book of baseball poems. Here he touches new bases. There are poems about Marcel Duchamp and Ornette Coleman as well as Whitey Ford and Don Larsen. Miller’s poems move the outdoor game indoors where there are moments of disappointment and despair. Baseball can be a blues game. Tommy John surgery is a way of holding onto hope. Many of these poems were written during the Covid pandemic. They beckon fans back to the ballpark. They remind us to enjoy a game that is precious and maybe even essential to our wellness. Coming after If God Invented Baseball, Miller seems to emerge from a literary dugout after a brief rain delay, ready to celebrate the American pastime again.

Here are poems that celebrate and interpret the game by one of America’s finest poets. They are for everyone who has experienced the magic released when three holy things come together: bat, ball, and glove.

“Ethelbert Miller is one of the most significant and influential poets of our time.”Gwendolyn Brooks

If God Invented Baseball is a complete game of baseball poems, a full nine innings pitched by a “master twirler,” whose complete arsenal includes fastballs, curves and change-ups, and the occasional knuckler, to keep readers swinging for the fences, his full artistry on display.

Ethelbert Miller’s work captures the enjoyment of the game from childhood to old age. Baseball fans will place this book next to their scorecards, peanuts and beer. Poetry readers will equally be delighted.

If God Invented Baseball is a book for the ballpark and the home.

“If William Blake could see the world in a grain of sand, then Ethelbert Miller can see the world in a baseball. This ebullient collection of baseball poems encompasses a dazzling array of human experience: childhood and aging, marriage and divorce, jazz and philosophy, segregation and liberation. There are the heroes Miller emulated on the ball fields of the South Bronx: Mantle, Mays, Clemente, Cepeda—but so much more we would never expect, like a first kiss commemorated by the trading of baseball gloves. Even Gandhi makes an appearance in the dugout, befitting a poem that makes the connection between bunting and non-violence. Funny, tender, wise and lyrical, these poems make the case that baseball was invented not by God or Abner Doubleday, but by a poet named Ethelbert Miller.”Martín Espada