By Ed Alstrom

Thanks to you Banterites who responded so nicely to my post! I read all of you every day, and have the utmost respect for all of you. Hell, even the jazz talk is right on point.

I wanted to give you one more Shep nugget to chew on. I mentioned in the post a handwritten poem he had showed me (on his own Yankee stationery), that he had penned after an infamous incident. He showed it to me on the sly, and his real fear about it getting around was that it would ‘get him fired’, so seeing as that’s not an issue now, I’ll take the liberty of issuing this as a ‘Banter Exclusive’.

I don’t think it will get him fired, or me in any trouble (I hope not, anyway), and you all deserve to hear it, Plus, it’s brilliant, concise, and pretty damn funny:

“O, Kevin Brown let his team down
When he fractured his hand on the wall.
Better instead he had fractured his head,
Then it wouldn’t have mattered at all!”

I, too, wish there could be a book of these published. He said he had ‘hundreds’ of them!

Editor’s Note: Bill Madden has a tribute to Sheppard today that includes another poem…Don’t miss it.

Ed Alstrom plays the organ on the weekends at Yankee Stadium.

[Drawing by Larry Roibal]