FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 15, 2023


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Woodbury Library to Celebrate Baseball with Literature


(WOODBURY, Conn. - June 15, 2023) - Woodbury Library will celebrate that great American pastime baseball with an open mic on Thursday, July 20, from 6 to 7 p.m. in the Gallery at the library at 269 Main Street South.  The event is free and open to the public.


Featured poets are  Bill Moorhead of Guilford, Sara deBeer of West Hartford, and Ed Dzitko of Woodbury.  The event will be moderated by Woodbury poet laureate Sandy Carlson.  Moorhead plays regular fast-pitch hardball in a league in Rhode Island and in tournaments in Florida.  He went 2-0 for the D.C. classics in the 2011 Men’s Senior World Series, 55+ division, and shared the MVP award. DeBeer is a published poet who has taught poetry-writing classes for the past 10 years for Beat of The Street, a program for people who have experienced homelessness. Since 1978, Sara has worked as a professional storyteller, presenting programs of multicultural folktales to audiences of all ages. Dzitko has 30 years of experience covering youth, high school, and adult sports for newspapers and radio in western Connecticut, and several online publications. He spent 10 years as a youth baseball and basketball coach and was a nationally certified soccer, baseball, and softball official for 15 years. His lifelong affinity for baseball, its history, and the Yankees started with his first trip to The House That Ruth Built when he was four years old.


Following the featured poets, others will be invited to the microphone to share their baseball poetry or their favorite baseball-related poems or prose selections.  The open mic will close with a community reading of “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Thayer.  This year marks the 135th anniversary of Thayer’s publication of the poem.