• CURRENT NEWS
  
• Zelda Fitzgerald: 1998 Cosmic Player Plate (July 24)
  
• Cosmic Game Report: Anarchists @ B'Stormers (July 21)
  
• 1998 Cosmic Player Draft (July 20)
  
• Call for Baseball Poetry (July 18)
  
• Book Review: Lydia Arendt on Kersade (July 16)
  
• CBA Website and Membership Data (July 11)
  
• Cosmic Game Report: Superbas @ Woodsox (July 5)
  
• Statistics: 1998 Rookie Batters (July 3)
  
• Mid-Season Notes (July 1)
  
• June News (Archive)
  

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July 24, 1998
Zelda Fitzgerald: 1998 Cosmic Player Plate

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is a rookie pitcher with the 1998 Vestal Virgins.She was also a writer, painter, and dancer but she remains better known as the crazy mate of the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Born in the south, Zelda was first a liberated southern belle, then a paradigm for the "Flapper" (a creature of the "Jazz Age") and then finally a tormented soul who spent much of the last years of her short life in mental institutions.

Her husband called her a "whirlwind", Hemingway called her a "hawk", and Virgins manager Sappho thinks Zelda has the best arm of any pitcher in cosmic baseball today.

These two cosmic Underleague teams are both hovering at the .500 mark. And this game went right down to the wire.

At first, it looked like the Barnumstormers were going to prevail behind the solid pitching of Vantile Mack (257 lbs at age 7). Mack pitched 3 perfect innings but opened the fourth inning by yielding three consecutive hits. After getting American-born anarchist Murray Bookchin and Russian-born anarchist Alexander Berkman to fly out he walked Spanish-born anarchist Buenaventura Durruti pushing Italian-born anarchist Nicola Sacco across the plate for the Anarchists' first run. But the B'Stormers came back in the bottom of the fourth inning when, thanks to an error by Italian-born anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti, three walks by Russian-born anarchist Peter Kropotkin and a timely hit by Jane Campbell (628 lbs), two runs were scored.

Things fell apart for the B'Stormers in the top of the eighth inning when the Anarchists scored three runs on three hits, two errors and a walk. The B'Stormers made a comeback in the bottom of the eighth inning when they posted two runs and led the Anarchists 5-4.

The Anarchists were able to convert three hits into two runs in their part of the ninth inning and the weary B'Stormers went down in order in the bottom of the ninth, ending the game with an Anarchist victory at 6-5.

The cosmic baseball teams each selected three players to develop for next season's roster. The Vestal Virgins had the first round first pick and selected outfielder Lili Brik, noted Russian filmmaker, artist and lover of Vladimir Mayakovsky (who is a coach with the 1998 Paradise Pisces.)

Other first round selections included Clifford Odets (Eden Bohemians), Gordon Craig (Delta Dragons), and Hugo Munsterberg (Alphatown Ionians),

Lili Brik has played baseball in the Russian Artists League for three years and has distinguished herself as a solid-hitting, hard-throwing player. Her association with the poet Mayakovsky began in 1915 when they met in Moscow. A book about their love affair was written by University of Connecticut professor and 1998 Dharma Beat player Ann Charters. I Love: The Story of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lili Brik was published in 1979 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Mayakovsky's friend and fellow Futurist Viktor Shklovsky describes Lili: "[She] has brown eyes, a large head, is beautiful, redhaired, light, wants to become a dancer...She likes objects, earrings in the shape of golden flies, and old Russian charms, has a string of pearls and a lot of lovely trinkets, very old and familiar. She can be sad, feminine, capricious, proud, frivolous, fickle, amorous, wise, and what you will..."

The next issue of the Journal of the Cosmic Baseball Association, Volume 17, will be published online in October. It will feature a section on baseball poetry. The editors of the JCBA would like to invite CBA members and friends to contribute their original baseball poetry for this issue. Expository articles on baseball poetry and literature are also invited. For more information on contributions please email the Editors of the JCBA at jcba17@hotmail.com. Everyone is encouraged to contribute their work.

Anna Marie Kersade's new collection of poems, The Mind Fuck of Poetry has been attracting a fair amount of attention. Some think it's hot, some think it's crass, some think it's full of passion and some think Kersade's passion is really just misplaced hurt and anger. Lydia Arendt, a poet with two volumes of her own published poetry, takes a thoughtful and reasoned look at Kersade's work.

Arendt writes that "many of [Kersade's] poems are very good, despite the fact that the reader must overlook the poet's obsession with female sexuality." Well, ultimately, it is up to each reader to make their own judgment, but Arendt provides us with some useful insights into Kersade's poetry, pointing out that "one of Kersade's most unique qualities as a writer is the ability to wildly vent while at the same time to calmly purport some philosophical tenet on human nature."

CBA officially launched its website operations in July 1995. Since that time, three years ago, CBA has vastly expanded its website operations from the original home page and several cosmic team rosters to a site that includes over 500 web pages and some 3,200 graphic images. Collectively, the webpages and the graphic files take up some 20 megabytes of storage space on our internet service provider's hard disks. CBA does not use counters on all of its pages, however the home/welcome plate at http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/cba1.html receives an average of 100 visits a day.

Since the advent of CBA's website operations, the number of members has grown at a phenomenal rate. As of June 30, 1998 there were 1,100 members of the Association. Membership in the CBA is open to everyone. Annual dues of US$10 are optional. For more information on joining the CBA visit the Membership Plate.

For more information about the Cosmic Baseball Association visit the Details Plate.

Also, we would appreciate it if visitors would take the time to sign the Member/Guest Book.

Middleleague

The woeful Psychedelphia Woodstockings are on target for another sub-.500 season. This team of prominent and notorious characters from the 1960s just can't seem to put it together on the cosmic baseball field. It won't be surprising if the team undergoes a makeover during the off-season. Mario Savio continues to be the team's top offensive weapon but the Woodsox leave an average of ten runners on the bases each and every game. The pitching staff is old and wobbly. Look for a youth movement soon as management realizes it's time to rebuild from the ground up.

This season's crop of rookies is, in many people's opinions, the best ever. Many of the rookies have already assumed starting roles on their teams and others are threatening some of the veterans. It's too early to tell but there are several likely contenders for the rookie-of-the-season award including Balaam (Biblicals), Lynn Behrendt (Pisces) and Alexander Berkman (Anarchists). The poet Lynn Behrendt has displaced the venerable troubador Allen Ginsberg at firstbase for the pennant-contending Pisces. (Ginsberg has been quite vocal about wanting to be traded to the Dharma Beats, see this news item). Click Here for complete rookie batting stats through 80 games.

Halfway through the cosmic playing season it looks like the Pisces and the Beats are going to be battling for the Overleague pennant. In the Middleleague the Superbas would appear to have a lock on first place but there is some movement afoot by the Dragons and the Capitalists. In the Underleague the Fictionals and the rookie Muckrakers are the odds-on favorites to be sitting atop the league come the Fall.

Elizabeth Siddal, the enchanting Pre-Raphaelite shortstop leads all cosmic batters in all leagues with an outstanding .408 batting average. Ludwig van Beethoven in his first year as the Pisces' regular catcher leads all cosmic batters in homeruns (26) and runs batted in (69). In the pitching department, Pisces pitcher Timothy Leary is the only 11 game winner so far. Moung Phosset of the Barnumstormers leads all cosmic pitchers with 89 strikeouts

CBA's membership continues to grow and this season's rate of increase will probably set a record...Volume 17 of the Journal of the Cosmic Baseball Association has a September publication date...Cosmic Player Plates for Zelda Fitzgerald (Virgins), Vladimir Mayakovsky (Pisces), and Henry Miller (Pisces) are in the process of being completed and should be online within the next couple of months...CBA's Board of Directors is considering expanding the Underleague from ten to sixteen teams for next season...Enjoy the second half of the season.

CBA News & Information Plate
URL http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/cbanews.html
Published: August 1, 1998
Copyright © 1998 by the Cosmic Baseball Association

Email: editor@cosmicbaseball.com

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