Base-Ball Ballads/The Mogul's Dream

by Grantland Rice

"Come, enter quick," St. Peter then replied;
"Heaven's joys to such as you are not denied."

 

 

THE MOGUL'S DREAM.
(With apologies to "The Actor's Dream.")

One night a mogul died, and straight his soul
Set forth upon its journey to the goal
Of all good people. But the gate was locked;
So while he shivered in the cold, he knocked—
Not once, but twice—he rapped with all his might
Upon the pearly entrance, barred and tight.

"Who comes," St. Peter cried, "with all that din?"
"It's me," the magnate cried. "Please let me in."
"And who are you," he heard the good saint say,
"That you should hear the golden harps, I pray?
What have you done upon that earth so drear,
That you should mingle with the angels here?"
"I was the manager," he straight replied—
"The mogul of a ball team ere I died."

"And what means that," replied the saint, "pray tell?"
"It means that all you ever get is—well,
I won't repeat the word I had in mind;
And yet no other fits that I can find.
Through fall and winter every year I plan
To gather in a pennant-winning clan;
I labor hard from early morn till night
In search of talent anywhere in sight;
Right off the reel, my pitchers one by one
Blow up, and then my catchers are undone;
And for my trouble, what get I in thanks?
The fiendish yelp of twenty thousand cranks.
My life was one of fiendish, piercing woe,
The roughest on that unkempt plain below;
Aye, to the full I've drunk life's bitter dregs—
Hissed, jeered at, pelted with decrepit eggs.
And to what end I come back in the spring?
Only to hear the anvil chorus ring."

L'Envoi.
"Come, enter quick," St. Peter then replied;
"Heaven's joys to such as you are not denied;
Choose any harp among these scenes of mirth.
O HAPLESS SOUL, YOU HAD YOUR HELL ON EARTH!"