The Cosmic Baseball Collectibles online E-Store is open for bizness with two unique items for sale.

Edition 2 of the Casey at the Bat T-Shirt is available in Large and Extra Large sizes. The first edition of the Casey T-Shirts sold out quickly last Fall. The 2nd Edition has a new design by graphic artist Karen Funk. The shirt is 100% cotton and costs US$20 (price includes shipping & handling.)

Snappy looking Cosmic Baseball Logo Caps are also for sale at the E-Store. This baseball cap is a two tone (sand and hunter green) all cotton affair with a sturdy metal adjustment buckle for a wide variety of head sizes. The Cosmic Baseball Association logo is embroidered on the front. This elegant cap sells for $US25 (price includes shipping & handling.)

Related Links

• Casey at the Bat T-Shirt

• Cosmic Baseball Logo Cap
  

Kim Fairchild is a rookie utility player for the Vestal Virgins, the Cosmic Baseball Association's team of interesting women. She is also a rising star in the realm of photography. She recently had a gallery show of her work in Washington, D.C. which received some very favorable reviews. Part of that show is available online at the Cosmic Baseball Association's website.

In her exhibition notes of Fairchild's show, artist and critic Rachel Perlis wrote, "The ethical implication of self-expression is her theme. What do we expect of our artists in a culture whose karma is based on commerce and gain? The artist in this environment either joins or disengages. The better artists seem to become conscientious objectors. If mindless teamwork is part of the current ethos then it is not surprising that we have artists like Fairchild who are obsessively individualistic."

Related Links

• To the Exhibition
  
• "The Biology of Kim Fairchild" by Rachel Perlis
  
• Season 2001 Vestal Virgins
  

Both teams had a lot of fun at the plate during this cosmic game. A combined 18 runs, 22 hits and seven homeruns (including Business Card's 7th inning Grand Slam) kept the pitchers busy and frustrated as both field managers let their starters go the distance.

Library Card with with five runs batted in on three hits including a round-tripper got the nod as this game's Most Cosmic Player (MCP). Road Ray rightfielder Freeway had an admirable day at the plate with a total of four runs batted in on two consecutive home runs.

All in all it was a pleasant three hour rest stop located on the information superhighway.

Related Links

• Link to Game Report

• Other Game Reports

• Association for Information Systems

In a very shrewd move the Alphatown Ionians, the Cosmic Baseball Association's team of philosophers and scientists, signed pitcher and leading visionary of the information science field, Paul Otlet. Born in Belgium in 1868 Otlet was first a lawyer, then a bibliographer and eventually an information systems theorist. He was also a utopian internationalist, a pacifist (he lost a son during World War I) and a socialist. In a remarkable and grandiose stroke of imagination Otlet attempted to put all of human knowledge on three-by-five cards.

In 1934 he published Traite de documentation (Treatise on Documentation). His attempt to generate a synoptic outline of human knowledge eventually fell out of favor. However, other notables in the field, such as the now-legendary Vannevar Bush were, directly and indirectly influenced by the contributions of Otlet who died in 1944.

Ionian scouts first eyed Otlet while touring the cities and towns associated with the Document Management Systems League. In addition to pitching for the Bibliographers in that league, Otlet briefly managed the Information Cards who play in the Intellectual Property League.

Related Links

• The Case of Paul Otlet, Pioneer of Information Science, Internationalist, Visionary

• Michael Buckland's Otlet Page

• Paul Otlet's Book and The Writing of Social Space

• Information Cards @ Roadrays A Personal Cosmic Game Report

The editors of Current News & Information do not like to make a habit of reporting on unconfirmed rumors. However, the rumor that the Cosmic Baseball Association is planning to deactivate the Imperial City Insects is, if true, cause for some concern. If any cosmic team were deactivated during the season it would be an unprecedented action. In the case of the Insects, it would create immediate disarray in the Underleague, where the team competes.

The problem with rumors and gossip is one never knows what the facts are. In the case at hand we have found no credible source who would officially confirm the rumor, which surfaced late in the day on Sunday. On the other hand, we have noted a similarity in a couple of the rumor threads. Apparently a number of teams have complained about having to be on the same field with the Insects. By looking at the schedule it is relatively easy to determine which teams have played the Insects. But no one from the Anarchists, Pre-Raphaelites, Minstrels, B'Stormers or Mothers would comment on the record. Another unconfirmed rumor thread which seems too bizarre to be taken seriously suggests that a number of entomophobiacs have infested circles close to people with decision-making power. And yet another rumor claims the Insects have committed some transgression so egregious that immediate deactivation is necessary. Just exactly what the nature of the team's transgression might be, no one is saying. It is not known what Insect management thinks of all this gossip. No one really knows how to understand their utterances.

Of course our immediate response is to be against the deactivation of any currently competing cosmic team. The schedule disarray problem alone is reason enough not to support an action with such disruptive repercussions. But in lieu of any hard facts isn't it best that we wait to pass final judgment on the issue? And if this whole thing turns out to be a figment of someone's imagination, then at least we won't officially be on record with an opinion.

Related Link

• Imperial City Insects Season 2001 Official Team Roster

The Cosmic Baseball Association's website which is currently spread out over six different hosting servers is beginning a consolidation to an environment where almost all of the sites pages and graphics will be centrally stored. The theoretical benefits of a distributed communications system notwithstanding, administrative demands mitigate the issue.

Given the number of pages and associated files the migration is expected to last approximately a month. We have issued directives to transfer the domain name "cosmicbaseball.com" to reflect the changed location of the stored data. Because the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical method of relating names with addresses the propagation of the new name and address information throughout the network can take several days. During this propagation stage it is possible that the "www.cosmicbaseball.com" domain name will not correctly find our new Internet Protocol (IP) address ( "208.55.110.193" ). We apologize for any inconvenience this causes our visitors.

For those of you interested in the technical issues associated with the domain naming system, we refer you back to some of the original Request for Comment publications (RFCs) dealing with DNS. How to match name and addresses in the evolving network of computers known as the Internet is an interesting part of computer networking history. RFC 805 published on February 2, 1982 describes the need and implementation of an information program/protocol that can deliver machine-readable name/address data describing "networks, gateways and hosts." The issue of "domains" was only recently emerging. RFC 819 published in August 1982 defined the benefits of the new Internet domain naming convention: "The Internet naming convention provides absolute naming with the naming universe as its universal reference point." Out of context, this might seem either trivial or silly. But the DNS concept supported the decentralization of the fast-growing and increasingly complex network of connected computers. RFC 2673 issued in August 1999 discusses the use of "bit string labels" in the DNS. The benefits of using this extended label type are highlighted.

In any case we hope that our domain name and new address correlation propagates quickly.

When both of the links below send you to the same cyberspace location then propagation will be complete:

• Cosmic Baseball Association by IP Address [208.55.110.193/]
• Cosmic Baseball Assocation by Domain Name [cosmicbaseball.com]

Related Link

• DNS-Related RFCs

The Major League Baseball season begins today inside Hiram Bithorn Stadium in Puerto Rico when the Tornoto Bluejays and Texas Rangers play the first regular game. Bithorn was the first Puerto Rican to play in the Major Leagues when he debuted on April 15, 1942 as a pitcher with the Chicago Cubs. In four seasons, Bithorn compiled a 34-31 won/loss record and a 3.16 earned run average.

There are two new baseball venues for the new season. And the shift from "stadium" to park" to describe baseball fields continues. The Pittsburgh Pirates move out of Three Rivers Stadium and into PNC Park. PNC, by the way, is a financial services company that will be paying about US$1.5 million a year to have its name associated with the new park. The new park cost $228 million to build and ticket prices in Pittsburgh will go up from last year's average of $11.80 to $21.48. Milwaukee citizens also have a new place to watch Major League Baseball: Miller Park (the Miller Brewing Company paid $40 million for naming rights) replaces County Stadium. The $400 million dollar baseball field cost the lives of three construction workers in July 1999 when a crane accident occurred. Ticket prices are escalating in Milwaukee from $11.72 to $18.12.

Overall, the average ticket price for a Major League Baseball game is $18.99 up 13% from last season. A ticket to the oldest and smallest baseball field in the Major Leagues, Fenway Park in Boston, is also the most expensive with an average cost of $36.08. A ticket to the MetroDome in Minnesota costs the least, with an average price of $9.95. Compared to other major team sports baseball tickets are a bargain well below the National Basketball Association's average of $51 per ticket. The National Football League's average ticket cost is $49 and tickets to a National Hockey League games cost an average $48 each.

The relationship between the price of ticket and baseball player salaries is up and up despite the Players Union's attempts to deny any relationship. In 1991, the average MLB player salary was $851,492. This season the average is $2.2 million (Alex Rodriquez's 10-year $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers certainly exerts some weight on the average.)

One thing Major League Baseball would like to lower is the time it takes to play the baseball game. Last season it took an average of 2 hours and 58 minutes to play a game. Long baseball games do not disturb us.

On the playing field itself the vertical strike zone is being enlarged while the horizontal strike zone will be narrowed. There is supposed to be a new emphasis on calling so-called "rule-book" or high strikes. (This potentially significant change will probably extend overall game time as ball/strike disputes erupt between umpires, pitchers, batters and managers.)

Will the Yankees join their Yankee brethren of 1936-1939 and 1949-1953 and win four consecutive World Series? Probably not. Will baseball owners and players avoid a ninth work stoppage since 1972 when the Basic Agreement expires on October 31? Probably not. Will the Boston Red Sox win the World Series, probably not.

Who will win the World Series next October? Probably the other New York City Major League Baseball team. But if not the Mets we feel confident that it will definitely be a team that plays in a stadium.

Related Link

• Major League Baseball Official Website
  
  
  
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At the January 26 meeting in Groton, Massachusetts the Board of Directors passed a resolution authorizing the formation of a partnership between the Cosmic Baseball Association and Cosmic Baseball Collectibles^TM. The partnership "will be for the purpose of selling unique cosmic baseball merchandise" according to the resolution.

In deciding to move forward with commercialization the Board indicated that it was motivated by the increasing number of requests made by friends and visitors to the CBA's website for cosmic baseball merchandise. Those among us who do not favor commercialization believe the reason is perhaps less altruistic then the desire to satisfy other people's desires. Nevertheless, the formation of the partnership is a significant step in what may turn out to be a new and different direction for an association that had resisted for twenty years the pecuniary aspects of reality.

Cosmic Baseball Collectibles^TM is a Delaware-based business specializing in the production and marketing of "unique cosmic baseball collectibles such as Cosmic Baseball Team T-shirts and caps." Cosmic Baseball Collectibles^TM will be the distributors of the 20th Anniversary Cosmic Baseball Calendar which will be available for purchase in the Fall of 2001.