Archived News & Information Archived May 30, 2002

Archived News Items


May 27, 2002
Cosmic Baseball Games
Memorial Day Game: Dharma Beats @ Wonderland Warriors
Link to Cosmic Game Report
The Dharma Beats, behind the wild pitching of Beat icon Neal Cassady (7 walks), controlled this game from the beginning. The Wonderland Warriors (last season's Cosmic Universal Series winner) have been struggling in the Overleague this season. Starting pitcher, Jeremy Boorda (another U.S. Navy man) also got pushed around in the fourth and fifth innings. The Warriors went through four more pitchers in an attempt to thwart the Beat assault.


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May 14, 2002
Cosmic Baseball Games
Selected Boxscores of Cosmic Baseball Games
Link to Boxscores Index Plate
Boxscores of various Cosmic Baseball Association baseball games are now available via the Boxscores Plate. Boxscores will supplement the selected Cosmic Baseball Game Reports (see Games Plate) already available online at the Cosmic Baseball Association's website. Game Reports will be linked to the related boxscores. (NOTE: Not all cosmic game boxscores will be posted. Like Game Reports, only selected games will have online boxscores.)

"The greatest data compression in the world today is nothing as compared to the [baseball] box score invented in the 19th century." (Dan Okrent). Henry Chadwick (1824-1908) invented the newspaper box score as a means of capturing and accounting for the events of a baseball game. Chadwick, a transplanted Englishman, based his box score on the form utilized in Cricket (which with Rounders was a likely forerunner of Baseball.) Chadwick began publishing box scores of baseball games in the 1840s.

In addition to official cosmic baseball game "Boxscores" there are "Scoresheets" which itemize every "at bat" during a game. Scoresheets are not routinely published online but are available by sending an email request to statistician@cosmicbaseball.com. Please provide the game date and the competing cosmic teams (found on the boxscore plate.)




Link to Boxcores Index Related Link







May 12, 2002
Cosmic Baseball Games
Mothers Day Game: Armageddonia Anarchists @ Motherland Mothers
Link to Cosmic Game Report
The Motherland Mothers have not won a Mothers Day Game since they joined the Cosmic Baseball Association in 1999. This season is no different. The visiting Armageddonia Anarchists opened up on starter Aurelia Plath (Sylvia's mother) in the third inning and the Mothers never came back. The Cosmic Game Report includes brief comments on the game, on motherhood and on anarchy. There's also a column "From the Stands" by Joan Dalton.


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May 1, 2002
Reality Baseball Notes
Case No. 400545: Popov v Hayashi for Barry Bonds' 73rd Home Run Ball
The Ball is in this Court
San Francisco Superior Court Case
The Ball is in this Court
On October 7, 2001 San Francisco outfielder Barry Bonds hit his 73rd home run of the season, setting a new home run record. The home run ball flew into the right field stands of Pacific Bell Park. For a brief moment, according to videotape, Alex Popov had possession of the ball. But when the fans surrounding Mr. Popov converged on him the baseball was dislodged and eventually possessed by Patrick Hayashi.

Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball, hit in 1998, was sold for $3 million dollars. Mr. Hayashi, an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley, apparently contacted Michael Barnes, a Missouri-based lawyer who brokered the McGwire baseball sale. Barnes estimated that the Bonds baseball might be worth $1 million. He advised Mr. Hayashi to sell quickly.

Shortly after these events Mr. Popov, who owns a health food restaurant called Smart Alec's Intelligent Food Eatery in Berkeley, California, sued Mr. Hayashi. Judge David Garcia will hear the case in San Francisco Superior Court. The issue is: who owns the baseball?

On November 13, 2001 the court issued a temporary injunction forbidding Mr. Hayashi from selling the baseball. The Court has taken custody of the baseball until the issue is resolved. On November 19, Mr. Popov signed a court document indicating he would not sell the baseball.

Legal pundits point out that this is a fairly unique case. Mr. Popov's lawyer, Marty Triano said, "When we prevail, our victory will also protect all baseball fans who attempt to catch a fly ball." Triano arranged for Paul Finkelman, a professor of law and the author of Baseball and the Rule of Law to submit a statement supporting his client's position. Finkelman has written that baseball is a metaphor "for the way you think about a rule-based society."

(Parenthetically, Mr. Popov caught the ball with a baseball glove he borrowed from his girlfriend.)

The trial is scheduled to begin October 7, 2002...exactly one year after Bonds hit the home run.

Scholars at the Cosmic Baseball Research Alliance (COBRA) have issued a Preliminary Opinion based on the known facts of the event. Since greed and not historical appreciation is most likely at the root of the contestants' desires to possess the baseball, the COBRA Scholars suggest that Mr. Popov and Mr. Hayashi jointly agree to donate the baseball to the Hall of Fame. That would be a gesture completely absent of greed. Alternatively, the suggestion of newspaper columnist Frank DeFord might make sense: "Let us go to an appeals court and place the matter before Judge Solomon. Surely he will decree that the ball should be split down the middle. Let Popov and Hayashi both sell a semi-share. Half a homer is better than none." Seriously, gentlemen, give the ball to the Hall of Fame and call it a day.

Give the Ball to the Hall of Fame





April 29, 2002
Cosmic Baseball Coaches
Bohemians Owner Turgenev Fires Thackeray, Hires Dostoyevsky
Link to Fyodor Dostoyevsky Biography
The Russian Realists are coming; the Russian Realists are coming! First Ivan Turgenev buys the Eden Bohemians...now he's replacing team coach and English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray with ex-Bohemian coach Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky was a Bohemian coach during the 1997 season. In fact, Thackeray was the one who replaced Dostoyevsky the following season. The well-liked and respected Thackeray found out about his termination when field manager Fielding Dawson called him into the office late Sunday afternoon after the Bohemians lost 9-3 to the Psychedelphia Woodstockings. According to sources, Turgenev decided to can Thackeray and hire his fellow Russian writer sometime last week. One gets the impression that Mr. Turgenev is not done fiddling with his management team. Manager Dawson, skippering his team to a fairly dismal 16-21 record so far this season cannot be sleeping too well at night. The whereabouts of Leo Tolstoy might be of some concern. A nasty rumor had Bohemian G.M Henry Miller meeting Count Tolstoy at the Cosmic Delmonico Club for dinner last Thursday night.

Russian writer and pitcher for the Armageddonia Anarchists, Peter Kropotkin, remarked that, "the artistic qualities of his [Dostoyevsky's] novels are incomparably below those of any one of the great Russian masters..." This doesn't tells us much about the kind of cosmic baseball coach Dostoyevsky is. However, this tidbit might: in 1997 Dostoyevsky left the Bohemians as a disgruntled and angry man unable to communicate effectively with the players. If team owner Turgenev's motives are nationalistic and not focused on what's best for the team on the cosmic baseball field, we can kiss the Bohemians goodbye for awhile.



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April 23, 2002
Cosmic Baseball Players
Ex-Superba Robert Blake Arrested & Charged With Murdering His Wife
Blake as Baretta, 1975
Former Telecity Superbas secondbaseman Robert Blake was arrested on April 18 and charged with killing his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley on May 4, 2001. At the time of his arrest, the 66-year-old movie and television actor was wearing his Cosmic Baseball LogoCap.

Link to Logocaps
Blake Wearing Logocap
Blake won an Emmy Award in the Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series category in 1975 for his television portrayal of an unconventional police detective in ABC's television drama Baretta. The television show debuted on January 17, 1975 and ran for three and a half years (the last episode aired June 1, 1978.) Prior to that gig, Blake had turned in an outstanding performance as Perry Smith in the movie version of Truman Capote's haunting tale of murder, In Cold Blood. Blake's character, ominously enough, was a cold-blooded, pill-popping, killer who, along with an accomplice, murdered the Clutter family in Kansas during the 1950s. Perry Smith eventually paid for his crime by being hung to death.

Robert Blake has been in show business practically his entire life. Born Michael James Vijencio Gubitosi in 1933 in New Jersey, Blake's show business parents had him performing by the age of two. The Gubitosi family moved to Southern California in 1939 and young Michael Gubitosi (the name change occurred in 1942) began acting in the Our Gang comedies (also known as The Little Rascals on television.)


Bonny Lee Bakley
Blake was drafted by the Telecity Superbas, the Cosmic Baseball Association's team of television personalities, in 1983. He played secondbase for ten seasons and compiled a career batting average of .269 in over four thousand at bats. He batted .319 in 1989 and .305 in 1990. Blake was deactivated after the 1992 season.


Blake with Daughter
at Bakley's Funeral
Concerning the pending murder charges, Blake and his accused accomplice Earle Caldwell, pleaded innocent on April 22 in a Los Angeles court. But the police surmise that Blake killed Bonny Lee Bakley because he felt contempt for her and because he felt trapped in their marriage. Blake married Bakley in November, 2000 after it became clear that he was the father of her daughter Rose Lenore Sophia born in June 2000. Blake's contempt for Bakley might have had something to do with the fact that Bakley ran a mail-order business whose business as described in media accounts was "soliciting money from lonely men who answered her ads in magazines and newspapers." Blake met Bakley at a Los Angeles nightclub in 1999. On May 4, 2001, according to the Los Angeles Police Department, Blake shot and killed his wife just after they had dined at Vitello's restaurant in Studio City.


Blake in 1985
Based on the available information, a panel of Cosmic Baseball Research Alliance (COBRA) Scholars has pre-concluded that most likely Robert Blake did kill his wife. However, the panel notes that we do not likely know all the motives for the Bakley murder at this point. Based on this preliminary finding by the COBRA panel it is unlikely that Blake would be reactivated as a cosmic baseball player any time soon. If convicted of murder or homicide in a recognized court of law, Blake could become eligible to enter the Cosmic Baseball Association's Umpire Draft Pool.








April 21, 2002
Cosmic Baseball Players
Jack Kerouac Baseball Game on Display
Link to Kerouac 1998 Cosmic Player Plate
Last summer the New York Public Library's Berg Collection* acquired a sizeable portion of the archive of American writer Jack Kerouac. Included in the acquisition were materials related to Kerouac's imaginary baseball league (see "Jack Kerouac's Summer League"). Beginning April 26 as part of its periodic "New in the Berg Collection" exhibition series, some of Kerouac's baseball game materials will be on display.

The Berg's press information statement for the exhibit entitled Victorians, Moderns and Beats- New In the Berg Collection, 1994-2001 explains that available for public viewing will be,

an array of fascinating materials [Kerouac] created in relation to his passionate interest in baseball. As a youngster, Kerouac devised an intricate fantasy baseball game that required the use of hundreds of cards that allowed for very specific descriptions of each play. These card sets, along with related team rosters, and newsletters he wrote to report on the results of his fantasy games, are displayed in the exhibition and give a sense of the vivid imagination he had as a youth and which later found expression in his literary work.


Special Note to Our Members & Visitors...
If you visit the exhibition and would like to write about your experience please consider letting the Cosmic Baseball Association print your words. We would like to get a wide variety of reactions to the Kerouac baseball materials in the Berg Collection. And then we would like to include them in the next issue of the Journal of the Cosmic Baseball Association. For more information, please email editor@cosmicbaseball.com.


Exhibition Details
Dates
April 26-July 27, 2002

Times
Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 10 a.m - 6 p.m.
Tuesday, Wednesday: 11 a.m. 7:30 p.m.
Closed Sundays and national holidays.

Location
New York Public Library
D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall
Humanities and Social Sciences Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York, New York
Telephone: 212.869.8089
Website:  www.nypl.org

Admission to the Exhibition is FREE

*The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature includes collections of literary first editions, rare books, autograph letters, and manuscripts. It was assembled and presented to The New York Public Library in 1940 by Dr. Albert A. Berg, New York surgeon and trustee of the Library, in memory of his brother, Dr. Henry W. Berg.










 

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CBA News & Information Plate
URL http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/0502news.html
Published: May 31, 2002
Copyright © 2002 by the Cosmic Baseball Association

Email: editor@cosmicbaseball.com

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