"The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field" Explication

In "The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field" by Robert Hugo, a man sees a mentally "handicapped" boy being talked about by audience members, and it makes him remember things that he himself felt guilty for. "The dim boy claps because the others clap, The polite word, handicapped, is muttered in the stands," In my opinion, the author  is using this line to making a statement about our society: we go along with the crowd when we don't know what to do, much like this poor boy does in this poem. The line "Isn't it wrong, the way the mind moves back" is the author saying that, even though they are talking about a mentally disabled boy, they still retreat back to the safe word of "handicapped" and do the "socially acceptable" thing. He is saying that even though we have no problem talking down to someone below us, heave forbid we use the wrong words doing it.

Through the mention of the "stands", the score of the game (5 to 3), and the fact that the poem is set at "Spurgin Road Field" or "West Side Field" as it's named now, the author is telling us he is watching a baseball game in 1946. But, the author is referring to two different baseball games in this poem: the one he is watching at Union Station and the one from his childhood where the people are talking about the small boy. When he remembers the game he went to when he was younger, he starts to reminisce about his past, and seeing the people talk about the dim boy brought back memories of things he was ashamed of. Like watching that little girl get beaten by her father. When the author says he laughs at such things, it was more out of disbelief than comic relief. I think he was laughing because if you were poverty-struck in the 1940's this wasn't an uncommon thing to witness, and he thinks it's disconcerting that it had become just "one of those things." He was using sarcasm that takes the form of irony to make his point, because laughing is NOT someone's usual reaction to that kind of scenario.

"The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field" is a sad poem about segregating the disabled from the physically enabled. It talks about the cruelty conformity can bring forth in a society because everyone just does what people expect without considering the consequences.