Dear Mr. Rose:
even though you told me
to get lost
when I asked you
for your autograph, politely,
at Shea Stadium
when I was a teenager,
I still hope
you are enshrined
in Cooperstown someday,
because having more knocks
than Ty Cobb
or anyone else
is almost
as spectacular
of an achievement
as my mother
teaching herself
and her parents
how to speak, read
and write English
as a first generation
Italian American,
in a chippy game
of cultural assimilation
where there was
no seventh inning stretch.