Dear Frances Crockett

Abstract

Dear Frances Crockett Chris Arvidson (bio) Just about every dayI walk around the ballparkWhere flags with the pictures of pastBallplayers, owners, and managers wave to meThe legends of Charlotte baseball. Yours is my favorite—the only woman.You look so serious and businesslikeSo smart and professionalYour blond hair stylish and smoothIt's not how I remember you. I see you decades ago out at the old ballparkThe wooden one that sometimes burnedThat sat in the middle of a middle-class neighborhoodThrough the open door of the rickety trailer near the front gateThat served as your general manager's office. You're sitting at a beat-up old deskA huge fluffy white dog at your feetAnd do I recall a cigarette in one waving hand?The other holding a phone to your earAs you conducted the team's business. [End Page 1] Chris Arvidson chris arvidson is a writer living in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she frequented the Charlotte O's (Orioles) minor league games decades ago. She coedited The Love of Baseball: Essays by Lifelong Fans (McFarland). Chris holds an MFA from Goucher College and teaches at UNC Charlotte. Her poetry chapbook The House Inside My Head was released by Finishing Line Press in May 2021. Copyright © 2022 University of Nebraska Press