A new book about Dharma Beat catcher, Herbert Huncke, who is credited with providing the word "beat" to the Beat Generation, will be published in September. According to an email announcement by the book's editor, Ben Schafer, it should be available in the bookstores by early October. Huncke died in 1996. His association with the Beat Generation began in the 1940s when he met William Burroughs who introduced him to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The recently departed Burroughs penned a foreward to the Herbert Huncke Reader, which will be published by William Morrow & Co. The book contains excerpts from Huncke's 1990 autobiography, Guilty of Everything, his journals, letters, diaries and 16 pages of photographs.

• Click Here to visit Huncke's 1997 Dharma Beat Player plate.

• Click Here to visit the 1997 Dharma Beat Official Team Roster

The first of several Honored Cosmic Player Plates has been published and it honors the innovative 20th century rock musician and composer, Frank Zappa. Honored Cosmic Player Plates contain the Official Cosmic Record for the subject and usually an essay on some aspect of the honoree's life. The Zappa plate has an essay on Zappa's life and work before the 1966 release of his first album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out. Photos, links and other references are also included on the plate.

Other former cosmic players who will be honored over the next year include the philosopher Hannah Arendt, the English writer D. H. Lawrence, filmmaker Maya Deren, writer Anais Nin, and the ancient Greek poetess, Sappho. Candidates for Honored Cosmic Player Plates must be retired (not terminated) cosmic players.

Click Here to visit the Zappa Honored Cosmic Player Plate.

The Eden Bohemians have been playing solid baseball this year, and they'll finish above .500 this season. The Woodsox, on the other hand, are a sub-.500 team that drifts near the cellar of the Middleleague. But for this game, the tables got turned and the band of sixties personalities whooped the pants off the serious authors.

Starting Bohemian pitcher Kurt Vonnegut gave up five earned runs in the first two innings and the rest of the Bohemians, despite knocking around 10 hits never had a chance. Sinclair Lewis, author of Arrowsmith and Main Street among other novels continued his phenomenal hitting by going 3-for-4 but the Bohemians stranded 10 baserunners.

The Woodsox do not often show much offensive punch but today they whacked 11 hits, including a homerun by game MCP Ho Chi Minh, a triple by the acid man Owsley Stanley, and four doubles. But the Woodsox also had trouble getting baserunners back to home stranding nine.

Woodsox pitcher, Jerry Rubin, has done it again, pitching another complete game. Both teams left something to be desired defensively, each team had two errors.

Click Here for the Game Report

The Vestal Virgins have drafted Frieda von Richthofen Weekley Lawrence (1879-1954) as their first choice in the summer draft. The Virgins are going to have to replace a couple of pitchers and Frieda Lawrence has all the needed potential to be a star pitcher on the team next season. In her real life, Frieda was the strong-willed woman who left her husband and children because she fell in love with the writer D. H. Lawrence. (D.H. Lawrence played one cosmic season for the 1987 Bhutan Vanguards). Frieda was a tempestuous and quite liberated soul. The poet Anna Wickham wrote a poem called "Imperatrix" describing Frieda's actions after a passionate fight with Lawrence. She went across the lake and made love to a woodcutter. The poem ends with the poetic Frieda speaking:

Here is a woodcutter who is so weak
With love of me, he cannot speak
Tell me dumb man, am I pleasant, am I pleasant?
Farewell philosopher! I love a peasant.

The League Playoffs between the two best teams in the Middleleague and the two best teams in the Underleague will begin October 15. This best-of-five series will determine who is the best in each league. The best of the Middleleague meets the best of the Underleague in the Cosmic Subleague Series, a best-of-seven affair beginning October 21. The winner of the Subleague Series meets the best of the Overleague in the best-of-seven Cosmic Universal Series which begins Thanksgiving Day, November 27.

This may have been one of the sloppiest cosmic games played this season. And it is surprising because usually when these two teams meet we get an excellent contest. The Beats have long wanted to supplant the Pisces as CBA's flagship team. However, after this game, maybe neither team deserves that title. All of the scoring was completed by the second inning. So what the fans got to see for the last 7 innings was horrendous defense and good pitching. Five errors were committed by the two teams in a unique display of fielding ineptitude. Pisces rookie pitcher, Luis Bunuel, not only made riveting and introspective cinema, he pitched a lovely game today, yielding one run on six hits with 10 strikeouts. Somewhat of an iron man, Bunuel pitched a complete game. Pisces field manager, Henry Miller thinks that Bunuel, maker of the films L'Age d'Or, Un Chien Andalou, Virdiana, Belle du Jour and others, will be one of the Pisces' marquee pitchers.

CBA has put online a new section called Details that attempts to explain how cosmic players, teams and games are created, managed and played. CBA is not a Rotisserie league and its players are not derived from the real world of Major League Baseball. Members of CBA can create regular teams that compete during a season or Personal Cosmic Teams that play a simulated game against any other team, real or imagined. For more information please visit the Details Plate.

William Seward Burroughs, called the "stone-faced godfather" of the Beat Generation died of a heart attack in Lawrence, Kansas on Saturday August 2. He was 83 years old. Author of some of the most inventive literature of the century, Burroughs was a heroin addict, homosexual and a spokesman for the Nike shoe company. Burroughs, with his younger comrades-in-art, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac formed the nucleus of the Beat movement in the late 1940s. The Beats influenced succeeding generations. The hippies, the punk-rock movement, generation-X all have been informed by Burroughs' imagination. He was a transcriber of the dark side of the soul and an innovator of technique. His first novel, Junky (1953) transcribes the world of the drug addict. However the work that he is probably most well-known for is Naked Lunch, completed in 1959 and published in the United States in 1962 after an obscenity trial. His "cut-up" method of literary creation yielded several novels including Nova Express (1964). He is also well known for having accidentlly shot and killed his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer Adams, in Mexico in 1951. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter and later claimed that Vollmer's death caused him to become a writer. Burroughs and Vollmer had one son, Bill, Jr. born in 1947, who became an alcoholic and drug addict and died in 1981 from complications associated with liver disease.

Burroughs is in his seventh season as a starting Dharma Beat pitcher. His corporeal death will not affect his next start which will occur on August 8 when the Beats play the Wonderland Warriors. For more information about Burroughs at the CBA see his 1997 Cosmic Player Plate.

CBA published its redesigned Welcome Home Page which was created by Piet Cocteau. Mr. Cocteau replaces Ms. Dina Damico as our senior designer. Ms. Damico has returned to her home town of Cincinnati to pursue other career goals. Mr. Cocteau is considered one of the more innovative graphic designers in the business and has spent the last 10 years running his own design firm in Paris, France and Washington, D.C.