The first time I saw Nick Etten's picture

remains a fond memory of childhood.

Red bottomed 1943 stamp

with washed out colors of him gracefully

posed in lordly Yankee pinstripes, bat cocked,

a pulsing extension of his being.

That year his twenty two homers were league high;

with Oakland's Oaks he scalded 43.

Fielding, Nick looked more at home in baggy

Phillie uni that seemed accessorized

with flopping shoes and squirting flower.

One day with the Yanks in between innings

he laid his glove in foul ground near the bag

and (MAN CLAWS CAT) a candy wrapper

flew into it. Next day Joe Trimble wrote,

"Etten's glove fields better without Etten".