ogden

In mid-December in Life magazine, Poet Ogden Nash sang the praises of his beloved Baltimore Colts, who at the time were the hottest team in professional football and likely champions of the NFL.  A week ago last Sunday the Colts met the AFL's New York Jets in the Super Bowl.  Nash and 65 million others watched in amazement as the underdog Jets trampled the Colts, and Nash composed this lament:

Prognostications Are for the Birds;

Lay Off Me, Please, While I Eat My Words

The gods of sports outdid themselves

On that wildest of January Twelves.

So I weep with the army of loyal dolts

Who gave seventeen points and bet on the Colts.

As the ancient Greeks besieging Troy

Used words to bulldoze and pre-destroy

And boasted that their skill and bravery

Would doom the Trojans to death or slavery,

So Broadway Joe, like great Achilles,

Declared that the Colts were only fillies.

Less modest than Caesar in his claim,

He bragged of conquest before he came.

Some figured that he'd outgrown his pants

To count his chicken in advance.

Spectators came prepared to cackle

And hoot in glee at Joe's debacle.

Debacle indeed the record shows,

But whosoever it was, it wasn't Joe's.

The Colts who clobbered the Rams and Browns,

Who gained the yardage on crucial downs,

Who gave defensive linemen conniptions

And ruined  the offense with interceptions,

Those Colts, like Florida snow that melts,

Seemed to have trickled somewhere else.

They couldn't get anywhere in particular

As long as Joe remained perpendicular,

In which position he did remain,

Throwing strikes like Denny McLain.

Well, it might have been the finger of tate,

Or possibly something that they ate.

But I credit the arm and the tricky calls

Of the gay deceiver of Beaver Falls.

Oh, a cloud of Jets eclipsed the stars

And the only sound in Baltimore bars

Was the sickly hack of a Hong Kong cough

And the click of a TV set turned off.

The Super-Bowl Limited of the Colts

Was derailed with a grind of bumps and jolts

By the sabotage of the playboy whiz

Who is just as good as he says he is.

For the moment it's Vale Baltimoria,

and Ave Flushing, Queens, Astoria.

Sic transit gloria.

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