The Park With Nobody In It: Braves Field 1957

With apologies to Bob Cooke and Joyce Kilmer. This article is reprinted from the 1994 Special Membership Edition of the Boston Braves Historical Association Newsletter.

Whenever I go to Allston,
on the subway called the “T,”
I pass by a poor old ball park,
where the turnstiles rust by degree.
I know I’ve passed it a hundred times,
but I always stop for a minute,
and look at the park, the tragic park,
the park with nobody in it.

This park on the way to Allston,
needs forty thousand pairs of eyes.
And somebody ought to cheer it up,
by coming out there under the skies.
It needs new life and laughter
and the seats should be occupied.
‘Cause what it needs the most of all
are some people sitting inside.

Now if I had a lot of money
and all of my debts were paid.
I’d put a gang of men to work
with brush and saw and spade.
And I’d buy that park and fill it up
the way it used to be.
With fellows like Sain and Tommy Holmes
and a great guy named Torgy.

They say the park’s not haunted,
but I hear there are such things
that hold the talk of the Braves of old
and their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this park isn’t haunted,
but I wish it were, I do.
For it wouldn’t be so lonely,
if it had a ghost or two.

A park that has done what a park should do.
A park that has sheltered life.
Has put its loving concrete arms around
a Braves fan and his wife.
A park that has echoed a baseball song
and held up a rookie’s feet,
is the saddest sight when it’s left alone
that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Allston
with the help of the MBT.
I never walk by the empty park
without pausing in hopes I won’t see,
a park there empty and barren,
with seats that are falling apart.
And I can’t help thinking the poor old park
is a park with a broken heart.