Marty Peterson, player/manager of the winning Saint Anthony Residence softball team, was an erudite man who hand-wrote prose and poetry in his journal during his drinking years. This untitled, undated poem is in “A Season on the Drink,” used with permission of Peterson’s family.

These are the lonely ones

picking cigarette butts from the street

or out of sand ashtrays

What thoughts invade their

bowed heads

oblivious to strangers’

passing eyes

They cast their eyes

upon the ground

old clothes and worn shoes

add sadness to the body bent

Other days perhaps

found their head erect

looking skyward