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In the early Olympic games, athletes used to run a mile and then recite a poem.  The first poet-in-residence of an English football team, Ian McMillan, remarked that football chants are like huge tribal poems.  Generally, though, sport and poetry have never seemed natural companions in human enterprise.  Until the New York Mets baseball team suffered in 2007 arguably the worst collapse in Major League Baseball history.  To describe the anguish fans felt, The New York Times turned to a poet, Frank Messina.  "Nothing was really representing the fan's point of view," Messina told Wikinews reporter David Shankbone in an interview.  "There's a lot of hurting people out there who can't express what happened."
And to those who read the Times last Saturday, Messina wants you to know his father never apologized for raising him as a Mets fans.  "I never asked for his apology, and he never apologized, nor did he owe us one.  I was misquoted in the New York Times."  
Messina's parents taught him about opposite ends of the spectrum of life.  "My mother was supportive even when I made mistakes.  She taught me to never give up no matter what vocation you choose in your life."  Whereas Messina's mother taught him to never give up, his father taught him how to die with grace.  He passed away from cancer in 2005.  "I got to see a man who accepted his fate. He was like the Captain of the Titanic. My mother was also calm. I was the one freaking out inside. I saw someone who had acknowledged his own demise, accepted it, and died at home. He was a tough old guy. It takes a lot to accept that; it takes a very strong person.  Some of the special moments toward the end was sitting with him and watching baseball games."
It is baseball that has garnered Messina attention now.  He has performed in 32 countries and 40 states, and in 1993 he founded the band Spoken Motion, a spoken word band.  What is striking about Messina is that his work has branched two worlds that often don't interact: downtown coffeehouse denizens of poetry and the denizens of Shea Stadium.  It is Frank Messina who has personalities as diverse as Joe Benigno, the archetype of the New York sportscaster at WFAN, reflecting on love and poetry. "No one would question a poet writing about love for a woman," said Benigno, "but when you’re a fan of a team, the emotional attachment is even stronger...."   Benigno sounded similar to avant-garde writer and musician David Amram, who said Messina's poems paint "the stark beauty of the streets, the pain of 9/11, the joy of everyday life, the mysteries of love all fill the pages of this book. It's a feast of images and sounds that stay with you."  
I spoke with the person Bowery Poetry Club founder Bob Holman called the "Rock n' Roll Poet Laureate" recently in Washington Square Park:
DS:  You have received a good deal of attention recently.
DS:  What goes through your head when that happens?
DS:  You have a long career in poetry, but as of late the attention you have garnered is for the Mets-inspired work.  How do you feel about having a lot of your work overshadowed by the Mets work?
DS:  Can you recite a stanza that expresses how you feel right now?
Do you know what it's like
to be chased by the Ghost of Failure
while staring through Victory's door?
Of course you do, you're a Mets fan
caught in a do-or-die moment
in late September at Shea
As one that's battled hard
through many a broken dream
Let me say, "in order to rise to the occasion
you must be willing
to go down with the ship",
Have no fear, no hesitation,
for Winning shall be it's reward!
Don't let them get in your head!
you've kept it up this long
You're a Mets fan in late September
and you'll fight til the glorious end
Cheer the team today;
(your boys in orange and blue)
Let them hear you shout
as they fight for what's mightily due
DS:  Sports fans aren't known as patrons of poetry.  Have you had interaction with 'new readers' through your Mets work?
DS:  Moments like that must make you realize you have touched people who aren't normally touched by poetry.
DS:  Jack Nicholson once said, "The fuel for the sports fan is the ability to have private theories."  What are some of your private theories?
DS:  The second-class citizen in a first rate city idea that is found in one of your poems.
DS:  You and poet Ron Whitehead embarked on a "War Poets" tour of Europe.  You as a pro-war poet, and Whitehead as a pro-peace poet.  Forgive the crude terminology; I realize there is probably nuance in there.  In the over four years since that tour has your outlook evolved at all?
DS:  What is your feeling toward the Iraq War now?
DS:  Do you still feel the Iraq War is protecting us, and that the original reasons you supported it are still valid?
DS:  When you look at the state of the world, what five descriptors come to mind?
DS:  And are you hopeful?
DS:  Where do you get that hope from?
DS:  Joe Benigno said, "No one would question a poet writing about love for a woman, but when you’re a fan of a team, the emotional attachment is even stronger, because women come and go, but your team never changes."  Do you think that analogy really holds, because you are attracted to the Mets, and you are attracted to women, and the players on both of those teams in your life change. 
DS:  The difference is that you know what to expect from the players on the Mets.  They have defined roles and there is some certitude.  With women, as the players change you don't know what they are going to do; whereas in baseball the players have roles and you know what to expect of them.
DS:  You were the recipient of the 1993 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award.  In 1996 I met Ginsberg at the Naropa Institute in Boulder.  I asked him about NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association.  He told me to follow him into the bathroom.  As I stood there he peed and told me he wasn't for having sex with children, but that he thought that age-of-consent laws were outdated, that he knew what he wanted when he was fifteen and that he thought everyone does at that age.  He said he wasn't for sex with children, but that it should not be illegal to have sex at that age.  When you accepted the Ginsberg award, did you have an issue with some of his political stances?
DS:  All evidence is that he was not a predator, but that he was a voice for change of age-of-consent laws.
DS:  What's a lesson your mother taught you?
DS:  How would you choose your death?
DS:  Have you ever had a moment where you saw your death?
DS:  Did you have any realizations?

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Frank Messina: An interview with the 'Mets Poet'