The Baseball Poet: Fernando Perez, an outfielder on the Tampa Bay Rays, is also an acclaimed poet. He recently had a piece published in Poetry Magazine. “The piece in Poetry: It’s set in a stadium in Caracas, Venezuela, and starts with a scene ‘amongst the patch of dusky high-rises,’ and in the middle of a crowd, ‘packed beyond capacity,’ with a ‘purse-lipped riot squad’ with ’spanking machetes from their hips,’ and ‘pulsating bass drums’ and ’scantily-clad, head-dressed goddesses strutting’ and ‘flares that don’t always set out vertically, sometimes landing in the outfield still aflame.’” He went to Columbia University. [St. Pete Times]