About 80% of this globe's population lives on less than one dollar a day. Being poor isn't a healthy way to live either. An estimated eight million children die each year from treatable and preventable diseases. Being poor they have no access to vaccinations and other medical care. The social darwinists notwithstanding, on the cosmic baseball field, The Poor outfoxed The Rich. Little, malnourished Wee Jones pitched a fine 3-run game as every Poor batter except Python Jones got a hit. The five-run ninth inning that The Poor posted almost seemed to be more about rubbing salt in a wound then anything else. And when the rich men stomped off the field at the end of the game, one could nearly feel the tension and the hostility between the beaten billionaires and the victorious poverty-striken.

• Link to the Personal Cosmic Game Report

The Cosmic Baseball Association begins its 20th cosmic season today. Nearly 600 players on 24 teams in 3 leagues will play a simulated 162-game schedule that ends in September. Four new teams have joined the league.

As the flagship team the Paradise Pisces always play the first game of the new season. This year the Pisces took on the Washington Presidents in the season opener.

Despite John Adams' sixth inning grand slam the Presidents fell to the Pisces, last season's champions, 8-6. There was plenty of good hitting and moments of superb pitching during the inaugural game of the 20th cosmic season

Washington President rookie George W. Bush debuted with an 0 for 4 performance at the plate. Veteran President pitcher Ronald Reagan tried helping himself offensively with a third inning solo homerun. The Pisces simply picked up where they left off last year with strong offense (Drew Barrymore, Bobby Unser and Anton Vivaldi had homeruns) and aside from his sixth inning blunder Pisces starter Wyatt Earp pitched a solid game.

The 22 other teams play their first games tomorrow.

What a pleasure that the cosmic baseball season has begun.

• Link to the Season 2001 Main Plate

• Link to the Season Opening Game Report

The Cosmic Baseball Association's Board of Directors announced today the appointment of Ms. Molly Pauker as the new Commissioner of the Cosmic Baseball Association. Ms. Pauker takes over the position from Mr. Harvey Nosowitz who had been commissioner since 1998. Ms. Pauker becomes the Association's fifth commissioner and the first woman to hold the position. A distinguished Washington, D.C. attorney, Ms. Pauker said in her formal acceptance speech to the Board and staff that under her stewardship the Cosmic Baseball Association would "undertake renewed efforts to reach out to our many loyal fans & fulfill their continual requests for tangible CBA memorabilia."

Commissioners of the Cosmic Baseball Association

Members and friends of the Cosmic Baseball Association can now nominate potential cosmic players using an online nomination form at the CBA's website.

Virtually anybody or anything can qualify as a cosmic baseball player. If you are not sure whether your nominee has already played cosmic baseball you can search or browse CBASE an online database that contains composite records for all cosmic baseball players since 1981.

• Link to the Cosmic Player Nomination Plate

It's nice to see a brand new team beat a league champion. The Phaetown Cars, a new squad in the Underleague beat the Psychedelphia Woodsox, last season's Middleleague champions in a well-pitched pre season game. If the Cars' pitcher, the 1955 Ford Thunderbird, pitches like it pitched today the team might just have a phenom on their hands. In nine innings the '55 T-Bird gave up two runs on two hits, struck out ten and walked nobody.

Pre Season games, especially the inter-league variety, are not usually reliable predictors of how particular teams will perform during the regular season. Most analysts expect the Woodsox to repeat their league leading performance this year, or at least be in the thick of any pennant race in the Middleleague. New cosmic teams usually get trounced although last year's Speed City Velocitors, a rookie club in the Underleague played some of the best baseball in any league and won the Underleague pennant, by beating the Pre-Raphaelites in a one-game playoff. Will the Cars surprise the pundits?

• Link to the Cosmic Game Report

Ayn Rand was an outfielder for two seasons (1998-1999) with the Alphatown Ionians, the Cosmic Baseball Association's team of philosophers and scientists. Her performance as a cosmic player was below average. But apparently she studied the game intensely because her skills as a manager are much better. In two seasons as the field manager for the Heartland Capitalists, a team of business men and women, she's won more than she's lost (166-158 won-loss record.)

In real life Ayn Rand was a controversial writer-philosopher. She wrote The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged novels which expressed her deeply felt ideas on the human condition. She stopped publishing fiction in 1957 and began teaching and writing about her philosophical ideas that collectively she called objectivism. Like all philosophical systems objectivism includes metaphysical, aesthetic, ethical and epistemological theories. Her ethics of "selfishness" and her atheism help make her a provocative voice in the general debate of ideas.

• Link to Ayn Rand Interview

Other Field Manager Interviews

• William Allingham
• Kurt Cobain
• John Lennon
• Anne Sexton