Poem About Bunting Compare And Contrast

Practice Essay 2 #1
The article and the poem about bunting are very similar but look very different. It was tough to pick which one I liked more because they both had qualities that the other one did not have, the poem on one hand had more meaning behind each word and that a couple of words could be dissected and analyzed to have a bigger and deeper meaning they what they present. The article on the other hand is more straightforward and the words are more shallow and not as deep as the words in the poem. I liked the article better just because it has more detail and is more descriptive and that is what I prefer to read.
The article and the poem were alike in multiple ways. One way the article and the poem were alike was that they both described

a past event when their fathers taught them how to bunt. The beginning of both passages start off by describing the setting of where their fathers are teaching them to bunt.

In the article, it takes place in the backyard of the authors house while his other siblings are paying no attention to him and his father because they are doing other things, the poem takes place in what I like to picture as a rough, not in the best shape, neighborhood baseball field near Carmichael Motors. In both of these writings the authors compare the bunt to a sacrifice, the sacrifice being that the bunter is willing to sacrifice his stats and a chance to be on base to help his teammates prosper and simply take one for the team. In the article, the author compares it to brains over brawn and making the most of what you have. Both of the authors at the time in the story were young, in the article the author was 6 years old and in the poem the author doesn't exactly say how old he is but he had played three years of organized baseball, so this gives you a little clue. The author of the article is now telling this story 45 years later and the author of the poem is telling it years later as well. At the time when both of their dads were teaching the authors how to bunt, all the authors were worried about was hitting a homerun, when I was a

little kid all I wanted to do was hit a homerun instead of getting thrown out at first for bunting. The author in the poem says that he admires what his dad is doing but he still has his eyes on the bank that served as the center field fence. In the article the author describes that swinging the baseball bat away in baseball is what is fun not bunting. The author’s dad never taught any of the authors older siblings how to hit a baseball but only bunt and the authors thought it was because they would break a house window or even hit a neighbor's house. The two different writings were alike in many ways but were also different.
The two writings differed in a couple different ways.

The article on one hand is a lot more detailed and tells the reader more about the author's life and what kind of living situation the authors family has. The author doesn't come right out and say it but his family is not the wealthiest. He says that his dad had two jobs and coaches the school sports team to make a little extra money and that their aqua blue station wagon was about to die. On the other hand the poem does not go into much detail, the only way you get more detail is by dissecting the poem and pulling the information out, but even then the poem isn't as descriptive as the article. The author of the article compares his life to baseball and how him and his siblings were not long ball hitters, they lost jobs, lost their savings, lost faith and even lost their dad. The author thanks his dad because they are masters at stretching things out, getting the most from what an opportunity offers, and keeping it going with nothing more than grit in their hearts and a grip on the bat. The author of the article says “that’s what he really had us working on in the backyard.” meaning that he was teaching the author and his siblings life lessons that they will not always succeed and hit home runs, but if they get knocked down in life to stay determined and make that out count as a run in the long run. The author’s dad compares bunting to life and in the article the author says his dad was very impatient but when it came to

teaching the author and his siblings how to bunt he was very patient. This shows that the author’s father cared about his kids and wanted to teach them that life is more than just hitting home runs. I also believe it is important for the author’s dad because he spent every weekend teaching the author how to bunt and he even taught the authors older siblings in the past which shows that it also has value to the author's father. The poem the author doesn't compare it to his life directly, but the last line of the poem the author said he is getting a grip on the sacrifice meaning that he is finally starting to understand the reasoning why his father taught him how to bunt. These two simply writings had a lot of meaning behind them and I really liked the story of the article.