Major League Baseball 2004 March 29, 2004 |
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Major League Baseball starts its 2004 season in Japan when the Yankees and the Devil Rays play two games on March 30 and 31. MLB's calendar indicates that the official "opening day" is April 5. The All Star game will be played in Houston on July 13. The regular playing season will end October 3; the playoffs will begin October 5. The American and National League Championship Series will start on October 12. The 2004 World Series will start on October 23...PREDICTION Scholars at the Cosmic Baseball Research Alliance (COBRA) are predicting the Boston Red Sox of the American League will win the 2004 World Series. The odds controlled by karma would argue against that prediction, but statistical odds suggest the possibility...SPRING TRAINING 2004 Spring Training game attendance is up over 17% in Florida. Average attendance figures rose from 5,105 to 5,978 per game...STEROIDS Should Mark McGwire's 1998 season home run record (70) have an asterisk? How about Barry Bonds' 2001 home run record (73)? Are all of baseball's recent statistics skewed by the players' use of performance-enhancing drugs? It's a problem that exposes Major League Baseball's hypocrisy. The excitement generated by these home run records also generates profits...ECONOMICS The Yankees will again have the highest payroll in baseball. Last year, Steinbrenner paid nearly $12 million in luxury taxes; he's playing by the rules, so don't wail on him. ..CODA Major League Baseball is a sport controlled by greed; its connections to the spiritual aspects of the game get more and more tenuous each season.
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Cosmic Game: Beats @ Ionians March 28, 2004 |
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Art and Science. The two cultures. This game between individuals associated with the Beat Generation movement in the 1940s and 1950s and men of science and philosophy had all the tension one would expect. All of the offensive issues were taken care of by the completion of the second inning. The Ionians had more hits (by two), but less runs (by one). Computer scientist and Ionian pitcher Robert Atanasoff's six strikeouts were cancelled out by the six walks he served up, three of them to Beat poet hipster Charles Plymell. Plymell scored one run and so did Herbert Huncke, the Beats' heroin poet of a catcher in the wry. Immanuel Kant, inventor of the "Categorical Imperative" machine and veteran Ionian centerfielder accounted for the only Ionian run in the game. William Burroughs picked up the win and the long lost Lew Welch secured the save.
Link to Game Report
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Season 2004 Launches March 15, 2004 |
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The Cosmic Baseball Association's 23rd season started today. The Season Opener was played between the Paradise Pisces and the Washington Presidents. The Pisces are the CBA's flagship team and the Presidents won the 22nd Cosmic Universal Series. Twelve (12) teams, competing in two leagues will play a 162-game regular playing season which will conclude next September.
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Dragons Draft Moog and Theremin March 8, 2004 |
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Like much of the contemporary music scene, the Delta Dragons are going electronic. Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog Synthesizer (1964) and Leon Theremin, inventor of the Theremin (1920) and the father of electronic music have joined the Cosmic Baseball Association's team of musicians, composers and singers. The Dragons compete will compete in the Cosmic Lowerleague for Season 2004. Moog will play in the outfield; Theremin is an infielder.
The Moog Synthesizer was the first playable modern configrable musical synthesizer. The Moog was popularized when composer Wendy (nee Walter) Carlos recorded the albums Switched-on Bach (1968) and The Well-Tempered Synthesizer (1969). The film Clockwork Orange (1971) further popularized Moog's synthesizer.
Moog's invention relied on the work done by the Russian musician/spy Leon Theremin. Theremin's instrument, (originally introduced as the "Heterophone" and then referred to as the "Theremin") was created in1920. Unique in the wotld of musical instruments, the Theremin is played without being touched. Instead, hand or body movements generate the musical sounds. Theremin, who met Lennin in 1922, lived an extraordinary and long life that spanned two apparently incompatible worlds: the world of the creative artist and the world of international politics. More than most, Theremin's story is also a microcosm of the history of the 20th Century.
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Ionians Draft Burton and Sternbach March 4, 2004 |
The Alphatown Ionians picked two pitchers from the draft pool last month. Robert Burton, the 17th century author of the gargantuan Anatomy of Melancholy and Leo Sternbach, a chemist who created Valium, a drug to reduce anxiety, will join the team for the upcoming season. Burton's book, initially published in 1621, is an awesome catalog of melancholy. Sternbach's discovery (Valium was first marketed in 1963) was an extraordinarily popular palliative for melancholy.
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Marge Schott Passes Away March 2, 2004 |
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One of Major League Baseball's most prominent anti-heroes died today of lung-related problems. Margaret Unneweh Schott, former Cincinnati Reds owner, was 75 years old when she died. She was one of five daughters of Edward Unneweh, a wealthy lumber businessman in Cincinnati. In 1952 she married Charles Schott, who was also a member of Cincinatti's well-to-do set. The marriage produced no children. When her husband died in 1968, Schott took over his various business enterprises, which included car dealerships. In 1981 she became a limited partner with a group of other partners who owned the Reds. She became the primary owner of the team in late 1984. Schott became a baseball anti-hero in the 1990s when she made a series of racial and ethnic remarks that offended a variety of groups. She was suspended by Major League Baseball for the 1993 season as punishment for her crude comments. In November 1992 she remarked that Adolf Hitler "was good at the beginning, but he just went too far." After additional insensitive comments, she was forced to sell her controlling interest in the Reds (for $67 million) in October, 1999. Former MLB Commissioer, Fay Vincent, called Schott a "tragic figure" who had "enormous limitations."
Marge Schott is a coach for the Vestal Virgins, the Cosmic Baseball Association's team of interesting women. Her corporeal demise will have no effect on her current status at the Cosmic Baseball Association.
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New Cosmic Team: New Ceutical City Pharmers March 1, 2004 |
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After the Cosmic Baseball Association restructured and contracted itself by deactivating twelve teams, there were no active non-humanoid cosmic baseball teams. The gap has just been filled by the creation and activation of a new team, the New Ceutical City Pharmers. The Pharmers consist of various prescription drugs. The team, therefore, represents a study of the pharmaceutical industry which is both rich and controversial.
On February 6, 2003 South Korean leukemia patients staged a demonstration in front of the Seoul office of the Novartis pharmaceutical company. The patients were protesting the cost of an important new leukemia drug, Glivec, manufactured exclusively by Novartis. At US$19 per tablet and a yearly tab of $50,000 for the daily 8-tablet regimen, the cost of Glivec was out of the reach of the patients.
In 1987 Merck & Co., Inc. released for patient use the drug Mectizan (ivermectin). The drug prevents "river blindenss" an insidious disease affecting millions of people in less developed environments. Each year Merck donates the drug to people in some 31 countries where the disease is prevalent.
The stories of Glivec and Mectizan provide the dialectics for a debate that ranges from bioethics to capitalist economic theory. The New Ceutical City Pharmers have been forged from this controversy. The Pharmers will compete in the Lowerleague.
Link to Pharmers 2004 Team Roster
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Alice de Forest Sedgwick
