Double Play by Robert Wallce

             The sport of baseball, just as in any sport is a game of inches, speed, power and gracefulness. The poem "Double Play" by Robert Wallace shows each of these characteristics. Baseball is a sport that is one of my personal favourites. Along with being a sport I enjoy immensely I also play baseball for the university. Therefore, this poem has helped to relate my situations on the playing field to the world of poetry. Robert Wallace puts emphasis on one particular play in baseball, the double play. Wallace depicts the double play as a form of art and speed, he shows this through the use of figures of speech such as simile and metaphor and the use of imagery.
             Wallace uses figures of speech such as similes and metaphors to depict a double play as a form of art and speed. Wallace triggers thoughts of the mechanics of the pitcher using the simile, "...the pitcher winding/ like a clock about to chime comes down with the ball," (lines 2-4). This shows how a pitchers wind-up and delivery for the ball can be compared to a clock about to chime. As the pitcher reaches back to release the ball his motions are similar to a clock winding up about to strike and as the pitcher releases the ball, this motion is parallel tot eh clock alarming at the top of the hour. This line also affected my personal feelings about pitching/throwing as I have endured many hours of instruction on the proper mechanics of throwing a baseball. Another simile which Wallace uses to describe the actions of a baseball is when he states; "...hit/ sharply, under the artificial/ banks of arc lights, bounds like a vanishing string" (lines 4-6). This use of a simile shows the speed of the ball being hit at such a high rate that the flight of the baseball looks like a white string flashing across the field. The ball being depicted as a white string in the lights also affects me because in many games which I've played at night it can ...

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Double Play by Robert Wallce. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 06:24, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/26422.html