Airport Beers in ‘Aisle 228’ with poet Sandra Marchetti

7 min readSep 15, 2023

Airport Beers is an interview series. The following is an interview between Bryan Harvey and poet Sandra Marchetti. Sandy published a collection of baseball poems earlier this year with Stephen F. Austin State University Press. The collection is titled Aisle 228:

Bryan Harvey: You’re obviously into baseball. You often comment about the sport online, and you wrote a book about it. But what storylines or moments have intrigued you most about the game this summer?

Sandy Marchetti: So many! I’m a Cubs fan, so Justin Steele’s chase for the Cy Young (and our attempts to even get the national media to notice him) has been an “eyes glued to the screen” situation. Cody Bellinger’s resurgence is also a beautiful thing to watch — he’s really showing off now the five-tool player he was in his MVP season, and he’s hitting the ball to the opposite field and driving in runs every which way and that is so fun to watch. National storylines I’m interested in include the Orioles rise to prominence and Brandon Hyde’s role in that, Seattle riding the tidal wave to the top of the NL West, and the comeback the stolen base has made. I’m also watching the Oakland situation with mouth agape, as the A’s hold a special place in my heart (and even the Coliseum!) as a teen in the 2000s who used to watch their late games on ESPN seemingly every week.

BH: Have any of these storylines prompted poems? What was the last baseball poem you wrote? Was it for Aisle 228?

SM: You know — they really haven’t. Oftentimes I need perspective to write about current baseball events. I’m sure eventually you will read an Elegy to the Oakland A’s, or something like that. The most recent baseball poem I wrote was a short piece comparing an iconic Wrigley Field hot dog vendor’s call to that of a mourning dove. I’m sending it out to magazines now. I thought when I published Aisle 228, that would be the end of baseball poetry for me — at least for a while. I wrote a couple pieces here and there, including one for Ichiro’s retirement, but took a bit of a break. However, baseball is such a huge part of my life and when the pandemic happened and we missed it for most of the summer of 2020, I found myself writing about games and players of the past again, and the new experiences of summer without baseball. I’ve written a lot of poems that don’t quite fit with Aisle 228 but do focus on the sport — some of them are a little more post-apocalyptic and contemporary, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them yet.

BH: The poem you wrote for Ichiro in Aisle 228 is one of my favorites in the book. I think I’m big on anything that tries to deal with awe and wonder and why we gravitate to a particular person or event. He’s also neither a power hitter nor a Cub. What drew you to him?

SM: Just to clarify before I dive into my answer proper — the poem I wrote for Ichiro in 2019 that I referenced in my answer above is here, about halfway down, titled: “Poem in Which I am Never Ichiro”.

I wasn’t sure if you thought “Myth” or “Pete Rose and Ichiro Meet in Baseball Heaven or at Card Show” were the poems I wrote in tribute to his retirement. They weren’t. Also, I’m not sure which one you are referencing in question #3. Maybe “Myth”? I’m not sure it matters. Read over my answer and see if it works for you?

BH: I should have said poems — I liked all the Ichiro poems.

SM: Thank you so much! I feel like the book does grapple with those themes. When I was younger, I remember reading a book of true baseball stories and the word “demigod” was used a lot. That’s a concept I wanted to explore. Who is a demigod and why do we see them that way? How do they still show their humanness? Ichiro embodies these questions — from his difficult relationship with his father to his legendary preparation routines and his batting practice homers. He’s a figure shrouded in mystery and somehow preserved in amber, still suiting up each day as if he’s playing. We know he can still perform miraculous physical feats. I’m rarely interested in power, I guess I’d say — but longevity and grit are things I love. I am also interested in the quiet players. Greg Maddux, for example, is my favorite player of all time. So anyway — contemporary poetry really shies away from engaging with sentiment and nostalgia, but part of the challenge of writing about these experiences and events is that they cannot be separated from those “cliched” emotions. So how do you write something that people still want to read? That was the question I toyed with while writing Aisle 228.

BH: Maddux has always been a favorite of mine too. I grew up an Atlanta fan. What’s your dream pitching rotation?

SM: Yeah, he was easy to root for in my book. The stories of him on the mound are legendary — telling the infielders what pitch he’d throw and exactly who the ball would go to, his expert fielding, the economy of pitches, everything. An artist in the truest sense of the word, though he would never admit it. As far as the dream rotation, I’m going to go with guys I loved to watch and read about rather than strictly the “best ever,” though there may be a mix of both here: Greg Maddux, Barry Zito, Chuck Finley, Cole Hamels, Sandy Koufax. A runner up might be Orel Hershiser. Oh! I surprised myself with so many lefties. Still, lefties have a bit of magic, don’t they? They do it with smoke, mirrors, and great curveballs.

BH: Your poems refer a lot to finding games on the radio. how does hearing baseball help with seeing the game’s poetry?

SM: I’ve heard that baseball is the game that lends itself best to the radio. It’s not a game of back and forth, but rather of completion (in turns around the bases) so spatially maybe it’s easy to “see”? Also, even with the pitch clock (and thank God for it!) it’s slow enough that we can process it. I listened to some of the U.S Open on the radio this past week and was entirely lost, for example. When you listen to baseball, you can shut your eyes, or look at out at the road or a blank field, and picture the game in your head. I feel the ghosts rising and taking shape before me as the words are spoken, like I might when reading a good novel. I can construct the story in my head and focus on the details I’m most interested in. Some folks have asked me what authors have most influenced my writing style. For this book, it’s not authors — it’s Pat Hughes, Vin Scully, Len Kasper, and other broadcasters. Their cadences, stories, and descriptions are the voices that I turn to for guidance creating these moments, and I think I’ve learned something from the hours of listening.

BH: And does driving play any part in your writing method?

SM: Regarding driving — I’ve pulled off many a time to open my notes app or grab for a napkin and write down some lines. I think that’s pretty common? The hours in the car on book tour in service of my first full-length collection, Confluence (2015), helped to write Aisle 228. I listened to a lot of baseball on the radio at night on the road — games I didn’t care about, teams that were out of the race, minor league games, etc. during those couple of summers and I wrote many of the early poems of the book during that time and directly after.

BH: You crash into a cornfield — or maybe that’s too violent. Anyway, you’re near a cornfield. Who shows up to play catch?

SM: Considering my questionable driving history, let’s avoid the crash! I don’t know that the folks who show up are necessarily “ghosts” — my dad would be there and Vin Scully. I’d love to watch a combo like Tinkers, Evers, and Chance. It would be great to hear stories from someone like Manny Ramirez. I’m also a huge Dan Plesac fan — ha ha. He just seems like someone I could talk to the whole time, he’d have great jokes, and never make it awkward.

BH: Dare to make any postseason predictions?

SM: I’m really interested to see how much of the “new game” translates into the postseason. Will there be as many steals? More pitch clock violations? Will there be fewer pregnant pauses/dramatic moments? I’ll be watching that for the overall health of the sport. The AL is so wide open — I want teams like the Orioles or Mariners to take the leap this year and become real postseason presences. I’m all for more teams being serious contenders. As far as the NL, I’m sure one of the “heavy hitters” will be knocked out sooner than we expect, and at least one team is going to get really hot at the end of September and play well into the postseason. You’re not going to pin me down further than that!

Sandy Marchetti’s Aisle 228 is her second collection of poems. In 2015, Sundress Publications published her book Confluence. She has also authored multiple chapbooks and appeared in several literary magazines, including: Pleiades, Ecotone, Southwest Review, Blackbird, and Subtropics. As a member of the literary community, she also worked as Poetry Editor for River Styx Magazine and earned an MFA from George Mason University. She is also a Cubs fan.

Airport Beers is an interview series. Past sessions include: