• LINK to CURRENT NEWS
  
• BEAT-L List Burns Up (March 27)
  
• Al Capone- 1998 Cosmic Player Plate (March 22)
  
• Spiro Agnew- 1998 Cosmic Player Plate (March 21)
  
• Carolyn Adams- 1998 Cosmic Player Plate (March 16)
  
• 1998 Season Begins (March 15)
  
• Phil Ochs- 1998 Cosmic Player Plate (March 10)
  
• CBA Detail Plates Revised & Updated (March 5)
  
• Pre Season Game: Woodsox @ Busriders (March 4)
  
• Jack Kerouac Chronology Plate (March 2)
  
• Pre-Season Team Standings (March 1)
  

---

March 27, 1998
BEAT-L Burns Up

Fans of the Dharma Beats cosmic baseball team will be sad to learn of the demise of one of the internet's most interesting and active mailing lists, the BEAT-L. Maintained by Bill Gargan from the City University of New York (CUNY) the list had been engulfed in a flame war sparked by the Jack (and Jan) Kerouac literary estate controversy. In a farewell message to the list members, Mr. Gargan wrote:

...things have become impossible because of the Kerouac estate feud. I've done everything in my power to try to keep the list free of the acrimony associated with this dispute but it seems I've failed. My personal mail in recent days has been full of complaints and attacks from both sides. Frankly, I no longer have the time or the energy to devote to this conflict.

The "sides" Mr. Gargan refers to include a team represented by Kerouac biographer Gerald Nicosia and a team run by the Sampas family who currently own the rights to the estate.

The BEAT-L list was begun by Gargan in 1995 and it was originally designed to be an academic forum for the discussion of the major Beat personalities including Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. At its peak, probably when Allen Ginsberg died (April 1997), the list membership was close to three hundred active subscribers.

Some of the former list members are attempting to resurrect the ashes that remain after the BEAT-L flame wars. For information about that effort contact Diane Carter (dcarter@together.net).

The original BEAT-L will be missed.

Al Capone is the veteran leftfielder for the Paradise Pisces in the cosmic Overleague.

Alphonse Capone, also known as "Scarface", was the paradigm of the American gangster in the 1920s. Through a ruthless and murderous reign Capone ran the Chicago crime syndicate raking in millions and millions of dollars. Estimates place Capone's own net worth during the height of his power in the late 1920s at $US20 million. This wealth was derived from the selling of liquor, gambling, and prostitution, which, of course, were all crimes during the 1920s.

Estimates vary but Capone is reputed to have been involved in some 400 murders. Capone had his rival Dion O'Banion shot. He ordered the demise of three of the six Genna brothers (the other three fled the country). Capone also orchestrated the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (7 shot dead). And Capone personally smashed the heads of three of his former associates with a baseball bat, and then shot them for good measure.

Despite his ironic media popularity Capone was a ruthless murderer. But Capone also was an icon of the American way of life during the 1920s. But isn't the subterranean gangster just the flip side of conventional society, perhaps reflecting the aspirations of a culture disenchanted with itself and its leaders?

Capone Enjoying a Baseball Game


Click Here to go to the Al Capone 1998 Cosmic Player Plate.

Click Here to go to the 1998 Paradise Pisces Roster.

Spiro Agnew is a coach for the CBA's team of 1960s personalities, the Psychedelphia Woodstockings.

Agnew secured a law degree shortly after serving his country during World War II. A few years later he became involved in Baltimore County politics in Maryland. Eventually he became the state's governor and that's when Richard Nixon picked him to be his running mate in the 1968 United States presidential election. Agnew was infamous for his polemical diatribes aimed at the liberal political activists and media.

Ultimately because of unethical behavior during his tenure as Maryland's governor Agnew had to resign from the vice presidency.

Carolyn Adams Walker Garcia, also known as "Mountain Girl" is the starting catcher for the Pranktown Busriders. She's also known as one of the stars in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. She was for a short time Ken Kesey's lover. Together they had a daughter. She was for a longer time Jerry Garcia's mate. She and Jerry had two daughters together. Today she lives a somewhat agrarian life in the state of Oregon with her partner and ex-loggerman Bill Burwell.

Neal Cassady gave her the "Mountain Girl" name. Cassady met her in a Palo Alto cafe and soon she was living with the other tatterdemalions that had assembled around Kesey in the early 1960s. She met Jerry at the San Francisco State Acid Test in the Fall of 1966 and by all accounts it was love at first sight.

1998 is CBA's 17th cosmic season. The 1998 Season begins with 24 cosmic playing teams in three leagues representing over 700 players, managers, coaches and owners. There are over 100 rookies on the cosmic rosters.

The first game of the new season was played between the Paradise Pisces and the Dharma Beats. In a 4-0 shutout the Pisces sent a message to all the other teams: "We are the CBA's flagship team." It's a long 162-game season so it will take more than one game to make that statement stick. If either the Beats or the Busriders win the Cosmic Universal Series this season the Pisces are going to have a hard time claiming flagship status.

Phil Ochs is a starting pitcher for the 1998 Psychedelphia Woodstockings. Lillian Roxon in her Rock Encyclopedia (1969) has this to say about Ochs:

Bob Dylan was not the only one to be a poet, politician, singer, composer, news commentator and arch satirist...[Ochs'] first album in 1964, All the News That's Fit To Sing, established him as the first of the singing journalists...

The story of Phil Ochs is a sad one. He never exactly weathered the 1960s and after a sustained bout of depression he killed himself in 1976.

The Detail Plates that explain how cosmic players are created and how cosmic games are generated have been revised and updated. Also included is a revised Cosmic Games Index plate with links to all available Cosmic Game Reports. Information on playing Personal Cosmic Games is available on the Index plate. Additional links to the Membership Plate and to comments about and reviews of the CBA can also be accessed from the Details Plate.

Last season's winner of the Cosmic Universal Series, the PRANKTOWN BUSRIDERS, easily defeated the hippie-trippy PSYCHEDELPHIA WOODSTOCKINGS, 5-0, in a pre-season exhibition game played in Pranktown. Busrider pitcher Cathy Casano picked up right where she left off by shutting out the Woodsox. Woodsox pitcher Phil Ochs had a rocky outing which is worrisome to Woodsox manager John Lennon. With little offensive power the Woodsox will be very dependent on its pitching staff.

If the American writer Jack Kerouac had lived, in ten days on March 12, he would have celebrated his 76th birthday. But alas, he died in 1969 at the age of 47 from too much alcohol and from too much sadness. During his lifetime he published eighteen volumes of novels and poetry, including the book that launched his problematic fame in 1957, On The Road. As a result of that book and the subsequent publicity it generated, Kerouac became known as the "father of the Beat Generation". Despite the Beat Generation's genesis in the post World War II 1940s it wasn't until the late 1950s that the culture really assimilated the concepts. Spawned by a small nexus of disaffected college students the Beat concept grew into a cultural vortex that greatly swayed the subsequent decades. As a literary movement its roots are sunk in the traditions of aesthetic romanticism. The artist-ego is affirmed as it fights off the homogenization of the cultural landscape. The spiritual arises and defeats the material. Every word Kerouac ever wrote speaks about this Quixotic quest of the individual. And, as his life is reviewed and studied and analyzed the single most important point to be understood about that life is that its function was to write. More than a so-called "writer's writer", Kerouac could only write. He had no other purpose during his relatively brief appearance on the landscape.

The Cosmic Baseball Research Alliance (COBRA) has created the Kerouac Chronology Plate to honor an individual who's literary output is now understood to be a national treasure.

Kerouac is the starting leftfielder for the Dharma Beats, a cosmic team in the Overleague. His association with cosmic baseball began in 1983 when he was the owner of CBA's team of authors, the Eden Bohemians.

In real life Kerouac did play both sand lot baseball in his hometown of Lowell and for the Horace Mann Prep school baseball team. However, he won a scholarship to Columbia University for his talents as a football player. Even so, as a personality, true to his Piscean nature, Kerouac is more about baseball soul than football's growl.

In preparation for the regular playing season which begins March 15, the teams are currently involved in a light schedule of pre-season exhibition games. The team rosters are set and these exhibition games help the teams work out some last minute chinks. For a current list of standings check out the 1998 Season Main Plate

Cosmic Baseball Hits:

CBA News & Information Plate- March 1998 News Archive
URL http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/0398news.html
Published: March 31, 1998
Copyright © 1998 by the Cosmic Baseball Association

Email: editor@cosmicbaseball.com

231
v9.02