Zimmer's 'sorry' would've pleased the poet

Don Zimmer has been praised for having the class to say he was sorry after Saturday's Yankees-Red Sox fracas in which the Yankee bench coach and three others were fined. Marianne Moore would have been glad - but probably not surprised - to hear it.

Mr. Zimmer was in the pantheon of athletes celebrated by the prize-winning poet whose cape, gloves, and tricorn hat could hardly be imagined in the bleachers. Back in Zimmer's playing days, Moore hailed such "miracles of dexterity" as "a certain feat by Don Zimmer - a Dodger at the time - making a backhand catch, of a ball coming hard from behind on the left, fast enough to take his hand off." She said, "I don't know how to account for a person who could be indifferent" to such miracles.

The baseball press makes it sound almost like a Boston miracle that anyone apologized after the unpleasantness at Fenway Park. Who could be indifferent to someone who shows that love of baseball means occasionally having to say you're sorry?

• Rod Nordell is a former editor at the Monitor.