Romance in Shakespeare Bats Cleanup

Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, by Ron Koertge is written in the form of poetry by a 14 year old boy who was a jock, but is now bed-ridden due to mono. He turns to writing different types of poetry as an outlet both for his emotions and thoughts as well as to ease his boredom. Keven Boland used to be a baseball star as first baseman for his team, but finds himself unable to play. Suddenly, his great passion is taken away from him. Strangely, when he is able to play baseball again, he finds that he misses writing poetry and continues to do so. He still writes about his every day life, which, as a 14-year-old boy, includes girls . We get glimpses into his emotions and views through his poetry.

The first time that Kevin talks about a girl is in the poem See Ya Later which talks about a television show Kevin is watching where two guys try to win the same girl. He then has a dream about being on the show and losing both scenarios that he envisions. Here we get a short insight into Kevin's view of himself. We quickly learn that his mother has passed away and that he currently does not have a girlfriend. Although one is clearly more traumatizing than the other, both indicate that he may not feel like he is capable of keeping a girl in his life.

The second indicator that his self-confidence may be suffering is in a poem about his first "girlfriend." The poem Gone in Sixty Seconds tells how he got his first girlfriend through passing notes, but when she asked why he liked her, he didn't know. This led to a breakup. In the next poem, Confession, Kevin says that he only liked her because she had heard that she liked him first. Keep in mind that this was in middle school, so having a girlfriend meant being amazingly cool, not necessarily a sign of desperation. However, he was unable to keep his first girlfriend for very long.

Then we get to the poem about Goldie, we could call Goldie his first "love," she is certainly his first memorable girlfriend. The Thicket of Indiscretion tells us that they would sneak into the bamboo grove and make out, but he kept waiting for her to dump him, because she dumps everyone. Kevin became unable to enjoy the girlfriend he had (whether she was a good girlfriend or not is irrelevant) because he is worried about not being able to hold onto her.

We see the two male role-models that Kevin has struggling with the same issue. Kevin's dad lost his wife.  It was out of his control, but it is still a hard loss. Kevin's baseball coach is dumped in the middle of a game and even tells his players to "stay away from women" (Weird Advice). Maybe it's not so weird that Kevin is afraid of losing whatever girlfriend he has.

Finally, we meet Mira. She becomes Kevin's girlfriend and he is willing to go meet her very uptight father (Scrutiny), goes to a family gathering where he is ridiculed and threatened (Park/Ark, Batter Up), and even allows his friends to find out about his writing poetry (Hotmail) for her. It seems like Kevin has found a girl he will be able to keep. Again, since this is high school, there is a good chance that it will end. However, Kevin is with a girl who isn't like Goldie, who seems to share interests with him, and who he is willing to put up with a lot of grief for. Hopefully, after Mira, Kevin will stop being afraid of abandonment with girls.

This issue in Kevin's life would be easier to analyze if it were written in prose, but I don't think we would get the same emotion. We also wouldn't have the same story. The entire reason why he and Mira start talking is because he is writing something in the dugout. They then have a conversation about whether or not he lied about it being poetry. The relationship may be easier to understand if Kevin had been writing in full paragraphs, rather than being condensed into lines of poetry, but the relationship would not have happened in the first place.