ESPN opening day poem

ESPN has been promoting their opening day coverage with a poem and an old-time cartoonish commercial. Is it a real poem? If it is, what's it called? I've been searching around online and I can't find it.

Thanks for the help.

 

There once was a man from Nantucket...?

 

It struck me as something they came up with themselves.

 

The ball is pitched
And there you are ...

 

Well played.

 

I take it this isn't a poem they wrote while driving to Los Angeles for SC?

 

It probably is... but I was hoping it was a real one.

 

Hey, if you enjoyed it, that's all that should matter.

 

Is this the Bart Giamatti poem we're talking about? TV folks trot it out like mad ... if this is the poem you're talking about, it's called "The Green Fields of the Mind." Not really a poem, so much as an essay. Starts like this ...

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops."

I can remember Bob Costas doing it in voiceover as an intro to a World Series probably 20 years ago ...

 

Was Stuey Scott doing his dumbass poetry jam again?

 

No, it's not that one, although I really like that one too.

 

The 2010 Opening Day poem is this: