The Shoebox - Day 9

Brook Jacoby
3B - Cleveland
#17, Topps "Big", 1988

I am the player and the player's son.
I am the all-star he was not. Nothing
great in this line but his hopes.
No blood quantum, no oaktag card.
I have traveled from shameful
cartoon to shameful cartoon
and earned the path for walking.
Drafted in Sherman's fire and rising
in river's fire--more than one woman
with a sense of things has told me
to expect a third. These things love
threes. Where then? What else gives fire?
A dragon, a grove of oaks? I've seen
so many men cursed with time
to wonder.