When Benny Agbayani Became a Met

my ancestors rose and cheered.
From their ancient graves,

pairs of arms rose to make the wave.
Every burial site, a stadium and,

for every one of his at-bats
Mayon Volcano spat a puff of smoke

visible for miles. Children in T-shirts
with the number 50, hand-scrawled by Sharpies

would run into the streets and clang
on metal pans calling all to feast

and when Benny’s cleats dug into the box,
the little cloud of dust rising from his spikes

would drift across continents, into the living room
of every Filipino, issuing a sneeze

which would be followed by a blessing.
The diaspora, a flood of blessings,

watching the orange, blue, and white uniforms
pixelated into millions of screens.

Tens of thousands of nurses held their breaths
when they looked up between shifts

and saw him rest the bat on his shoulder
staring down the pitcher. When Benny Agbayani

was a Met, whole families, once torn apart
by distance held each other close, wrapped

together tightly in the embrace of phone cords,
the web of telephone lines crisscrossing the nation.

Each long distance call the shimmering pulse of a wrist
bracing for the recoil of the bat making contact.

When Benny fielded fly balls we’d all look
into the sun for the speck of something—

something to ease us into the heartbeat
of Americana where it was always

summer and the lawn markings
formed grids visible from space.

When Benny Agbayani was a Met we thought
the organ’s roar was for us and the syncopated applause

put us into a rhythm in tune to our hearts.
When Benny Agbayani put his mitt to the ground

to stop a daisy cutter, millions of us put our ears
to the earth to hear the rumblings

of what we hoped would be thousands of footsteps,
following his path. But instead they were galloping

towards home. We’d raise the brim of our caps
and nod our chins at a cool breeze

or the smell of fryer oil. And when Shea
sang in one voice “B-B-B-Benny and the Mets”

we stood and put are hands to our hearts.
We rocked back and forth on our heels

watching the strike zone get smaller
and smaller. Watched as the sun made

our shadows grow and we waited until the roster
made room for us in the show, now and in the ever after.

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“Growing up in eastern Oregon, I never saw any Filipinos around, so when Benny Agbayani played for the Mets, it was my first glimpse of what was possible for Filipinos. Of course, I was lousy at baseball and had no chance in the big leagues, but it was certainly something that inspired me. I make mention of a few points regarding the Filipino Diaspora, namely the line about nurses, and it’s important to assert that they were heavily impacted by the pandemic as frontline medical workers. That was weighing on my mind when I wrote the poem. Also, the National Baseball Poetry Festival had its inaugural launch in 2023, in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the impetus to write about baseball was inspired by the event.”
—Oliver de la Paz