A life measured in innings and heartbeats, Culver City Senior Softball League player Henry Schipper felt the urgency to complete his love story after emergency double-bypass heart surgery in 2021.
“It gave me a pang to think I could be gone without sharing my feelings for the game of baseball with friends, family, and even strangers,” said Schipper, a veteran documentary filmmaker of 125 primetime shows.
Many poems in his anthology, The Ball Dreams of the Sky, were inspired by 14 years of reflection on baseball and life, while playing outfield at Veterans Park during league games.
“Most of us in the league have been playing baseball since we were kids,” Schipper says. “And it amazes me how my love for the game is the same as it was back then. It’s pure and unchanged.”
Each poem in his collection is a reckoning with legacy—both familial and athletic—where the ghosts of ancestors and the camaraderie of teammates become woven into the rhythm of play.
Schipper‘s parents were Holocaust survivors, and he linked his early experiences of playing ball to family life under the shadow of WWII.
“I was impressed by how Henry related baseball to seminal events in his life that reverberate deeply within all of us,” said CCSSL manager Bill Katz.
As I followed each play
the ball disappeared, again and again,
though the gates of a geist haus,
a spirit home, full of those
I never knew, bubbes and zeydes,
shot, gassed, burned, all of them
gazing right through me, stunned
at the lost horizon of their field of dreams.
The game’s rituals—warming up, swapping stories, embracing small victories—remind everyone that the true perfection of baseball mirrors life’s elusive grace: remaining fully present, pitch after pitch, inning after inning.
“My favorite poem of the book says the perfect game is not 27 up and down. It’s about staying tuned into the entire game, knowing what’s going on and being ready. And Henry was talking about more than baseball,” said league teammate and friend Scott Sasseen.
After all these years, do we still
have to keep score? The game
is fun in so many ways
that have nothing to do with win
or lose. I used to come to be a star.
Now I come to feel a star,
the warm one, and to move
and mingle with others who shine,
basking in the field of play.
Schipper’s book has garnered admiration from teammates and sports celebrities.
New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner Ira Berkow, ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian, and baseball historian John Thorn have praised Schipper’s collection of verses.
“Just as 216 red stitches hold a baseball together with strength and purpose, Schipper uses his love for the game to bind together the moments and lessons of his life,“ said former LA Dodger All-Star Shawn Green.
The Ball Dreams of the Sky can be ordered through Amazon and Barnes & Noble
POET AT THE PLATE: Culver City Senior Softball League player Henry Schipper steps to the plate in front of catcher Dick Pack and umpire Johnny Lopez.
Mike Cohen
