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| Archived News & Information: November, 2001 | Archived November 30, 2001 |
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Updated November 28, 2001 Cosmic Universal Series XX - Warriors and Woodsox (War & Peace)Warriors Win 2001 Cosmic Universal Series | |
(11.22.2001) This series, the 20th in the Cosmic Baseball Association's history, is being built up as a battle between war and peace. The Overleague pennant winning and militaristic Wonderland Warriors against the activist-acting, peace-loving, drug-dropping hippies of the Middleleague, namely the Psychedelphia Woodstockings. Each team has its fans.
Warriors Win Series, 4-2 GamesLt. General Claudia Kennedy (U.S. Army, Ret.) closed out this series for the Wonderland Warriors in the seventh inning when she knocked out her fourth series home run. The final game of the 2001 Cosmic Universal Series was marred by three errors. And remarkable for a bizarre bottom of the eighth inning when Psychedelphia Woodsox pitcher and protest musician Phil Ochs had what we will just call an "episode" on the mound. It has been twelve seasons since the Warriors won a Cosmic Universal Series. They are the only cosmic team to have a perfect 3-0 record in the Series. The Woodsox have now been to the Series twice and they are still looking for that ultimate and elusive Series championship.
Game 5 (November 26) Warriors Win, 2-1 Warrior thirdbaseman and Israeli army General Moshe Dayan opened the game with a solo home runand centerfielder and the United States army's first female Lt. General (three stars) hit a solo homerun with two outs in the Warrior ninth inning and that, as they say, was that. In a re-match of the pitchers from the first game of the series, both Warrior pitcher Sun Tzu and Woodsox starter Timothy Leary pitched above average games. The Warriors also committed another fielding error...that makes one Warrior error in each of the last four games. The Woodsox haven't committed an error yet in the Series.
Game 4 (November 25) Woodsox Win, 1-0 Psychedelphia Woodstockings Oscar Janiger and Howard Zinn combined forces to manufacture the only run scored in the game. In the fifth inning, thirdbaseman and American historian and college proferssor Zinn smacked a leadoff single to leftfield, just over the head of shortstop and American Revolutionary warrior Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox. Utopian idealist. musician, commune leader and secondbaseman Lew Gottlieb flew out to centerfield. Leader of the North Vietnamese communists and Woodsox firstbaseman, Ho Chi Minh also flew out, to shallow right field. Zinn is still on firstbase, with two outs. Woodsox pitcher and founder of the Youth International Party Abbie Hoffman draws a walk. Zinn moves to second; two out, two on. Warrior pitcher and first female commanding officer of a U.S. Navy commissioned ship Darlene M. Iskra has faced psychiatrist and LSD researcher Janiger twice before in the game. Twice she got Janiger out, a fly ball to center, a groundout to second. On the first pitch in the fifth inning to Janiger, the Woodsox centerfielder smacked a curveball into right field for a single...and Zinn scored the first and only run of the game.
Game 3 (November 24) Woodsox Win, 5-3 Few cosmic baseball fans were looking forward to this game because the cosmic baseball fates had matched up on the pitching mound two culturally unsavory individuals. The Wonderland Warriors were starting William Calley, jewelry store proprietor and former United States Army Lieutenant convicted of massacring souls at the village of My Lai in Vietnam on March 16, 1968. The Psychedelphia Woodsox were starting Charles Manson, convicted murderer and 1960s acid-fascist cult leader. Both pitched fair games but Manson prevailed as the Woodsox won their first game of the series.
Game 2 (November 23) Warriors Win, 9-6 The Warriors won Game 1 behind phenomenal pitching. So in Game 2 the team decided to show everyone that they could win with their big guns (five homeruns were knocked out in the game, all by Warriors.) Even Warrior pitcher and Navy Admiral Jeremy Boorda produced big today, with his bat, not his right throwing arm. (Boorda was 2 for 3 at bat with a double and a homerun. Opposing pitcher and activist folk singer Phil Ochs finally just walked Boorda in the 8th inning.)
Game 1 (November 22) Warriors Win, 3-1 The Warrior lovers had more to cheer about today. Warrior pitcher and military theorist Sun Tzu dazzled the home crowd with a masterpiece that included giving up only 1 run and striking out 12 Woodsox batters. The Warriors won the game, 3-1 and lead this best-of-seven games series, 1-0.
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November 20, 2001 Cosmic Baseball GameBio-Chemical Warfare Game | |
The recent "anthrax" terrorism in Washington, D.C., while not the first anthrax episode, is fast becoming a demarcation line. The world is now fully sensitized to the dangers of biochemical warfare and its presence in our lives. In a provocative and controversial book by Dr. Len Horowitz, Emerging Viruses, claims are made that the viruses that cause AIDS and Ebola are not naturally occurring but have actually been concocted in biowarfare laboratories. In the cosmic baseball game played between biological and chemical warfare agents the Chemicals won. In the larger scheme of things the result of this game is unimportant. Biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction each suggest nightmarish visions of a world gone mad.
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November 19, 2001 Cosmic Baseball PlayersVestal Virgins Sign Rookie Pitcher Clara Immerwahr | |
Clara Immerwahr has been pitching in the Utopian Chemical League for the past several years. She is a left-handed power fastball pitcher who apparently has added a couple of other pitches to her repertoire. The Virgins deactivated pitcher Angela Mannheim to make room on the roster for Immerwahr.
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November 13, 2001 Cosmic Baseball PlayersPisces Want to Sign Mobster Bugsy Siegel | |
Siegel, who on June 20, 1947, was shot to death in a likely mob-directed assassination, while he was visiting his lover in Beverly Hills, California, has enjoyed a rehabilitation of sorts in recent years. Not many sociopaths can claim such honors as Siegel. There is for instance a Benjamin Siegel plaque just outside the Garden Wedding Chapel in the newest iteration of the Flamingo Hotel. Originally opened by Siegel in 1946 with 151 rooms, the current day hotel is a Hilton mega resort with over 3,500 rooms (room rates average between $89-$269 per night.) The new Flamingo has minted $5 poker chips with Bugsy Siegel's face on one of the sides, much like American president Abraham Lincoln appears on a one cent piece. There is the 500-seat Bugsy's Celebrity Theater inside the hotel at 3555 Las Vegas Boulevard, South. Currently the comedy troupe "Second City" performs in the theater (Tue & Sat 8 & 10:30pm; Wed - Fri & Sun 8pm; Box Office: 702.733.3333 or toll free 1.800.221.7299. Tickets are available for $27.95 plus tax.) The Flamingo Hotel also has Bugsy's Bagel Company, an "American delicatessen" with meals for $15 or less. These are strange honors for a man described as a sociopath by Mark Gribben in his essay on Siegel at The Crime Library.
Bugsy was a textbook sociopath. He took what he wanted when he wanted it and the emotion of remorse was alien to him. In his mind, other people were there to be used by him, which was demonstrated by his long record of robbery, rape and murder dating back to his teenage years. Whether or not cosmic baseball fans are ready to embrace a character of the likes of Bugsy Siegel remains to be seen. From Pisces management's point of view, the notorious mobster could be an important roster addition.
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November 10, 2001 1935-2001Ken Kesey, Owner of the Pranktown Busriders, Died Today | |
Like others in the counterculture, Kesey was influenced and inspired by psychedelic drugs.
After high school, Kesey received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to enroll in the Creative Writing program at Stanford. While at Stanford, during the summer of 1960, he participated in experiments involving chemicals at the Stanford psychology department to earn extra money. These chemicals included psilocybin, mescaline and LSD. He published his first novel, One Flew Over the cuckoo's Nest in 1962. His second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion came out two years later in 1964. Also in 1964 Kesey and his troop of psychedelic warriors known as the Merry Pranksters toured the United States. A well-regarded chronicle of the Pranksters is found in the 1968 book Kesey joined the Cosmic Baseball Association in 1983 when the Psychedelphia Woodstockings drafted him from the American Acid League (AAL). Kesey had distinguished himself in the AAL as a hard throwing, out-of-control, strikeout type of pitcher. After the 1987 cosmic season Kesey went to work for the Dharma Beats, Jack Kerouac's team. (Kesey and Kerouac had met in New York during the summer of 1964.) For reasons never fully explained, Kesey was deactivated for four seasons (1991-1994) and then he returned to pitch for the Beats during the 1995 season. He retired as a cosmic baseball player after the 1997 season. In eleven cosmic baseball seasons, Kesey compiled a won-loss record of 109-116 and a career Earned Run Average of 3.40. In 1998 he became the owner of the Pranktown Busriders, a cosmic team in the Middleleague. Related Links
The first "prank" was the now mythical trip to New York in the summer of 1964 in a rehabilitated 1939 International Harvester school bus known as "Furthur." A sign on the back of the bus described its inhabitants: "Caution- Weird Load." Fourteen young men and women departed the La Honda camp on June 14, 1964. Neal Cassady, also known as "Sir Speed Limit" and also known as one of the primary icons of the Beat generation for his starring role as Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On The Road was the chauffeur. Cassady provided the surreal link to the immediate countercultural past. The bus, outfitted with speakers and tape recorders and amplifiers and painted in day-glow colors and inhabited by a mixture of people with some place to go and others just along for the ride sped across the south announcing the birth of the new counterculture. In a sense, this trip was Kesey's third work of art served up for public consumption. It was a piece of performance art that would be further refined during the "acid tests".
Ostensibly the trip was to see the New York World's Fair and to attend the publication party for Sometimes a Great Notion. There had been a number of interesting group experiences on the way to New York as the Pranksters dropped acid and presented themselves to American society. In New York, there was a much-described party where the Pranksters met Jack Kerouac, their spiritual forefather. According to several reports this meeting did not go well. Kerouac was put off by the Pranksters' irreverence and the Pranksters perceived Kerouac as a man more closed down than opened up. The day after this meeting the Pranksters drove to Millbrook, New York, headquarters for Timothy Leary's mind-expansion enclave called the Castalia Foundation. Like the Pranksters Leary and his colleagues were exploring the social possibilities of the psychedelic drugs. Nevertheless, while the subject matter might be similar the method of exploration was different and there was some tension between the two groups. Describing the reactions the two groups had of each other Jay Stephens writes: "What [the Pranksters] found was a bunch of Ivy League eggheads walking around in robes and talking like comparative religion professors...The Castalians regarded the Pranksters in their Day-Glo costumes, as the sort of thing that might happen if you put LSD in the punch at a Greek mixer-- a bad fraternity prank."
From the coolness of the East Coast the Pranksters went by way of Calgary, Alberta to the hot tubs of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. The Pranksters were back in La Honda by the end of August 1964 after having spent about $70,000 dollars and after having exposed some 50 hours of 16mm film and after having recorded endless hours of audiotape. The plan was to make a movie out of the recorded experience. But instead of making the movie the next Prankster project was to be the staging of the "acid tests."
What did it mean to "pass" the acid test? And did you pass the test just by dropping acid and confronting the psychological undergrowth that was unearthed by the psychedelic drugs? "The willingness to endure what could be a rather harrowing ordeal [taking LSD] was for many young men and women a way of cutting the last umbilical cord to everything the older generation had designated as safe and sanitized. If smoking marijuana turned people into social outlaws, acid led many to see themselves as cosmic fugitives." (Lee & Shlain, Acid Dreams). Yeah, the desire and willingness to take the trip, that was how you passed the acid test.
So the Pranksters were very much a cultural vanguard, providing a service as they carried the countercultural ball relaying it from the Beat generation of the 1950s to the hippies of the 1960s. But where is that ball now? Who has it and who are they giving it to? Well, it is our belief that the ball is in the gloves of those individuals somewhere in their forties and fifties. The middle-aged now need to take their hands off their wallets and throw the ball to their children who are getting bored waiting.
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November 5, 2001 Cosmic Baseball TeamsVestal Virgins To Get New Team Logo | |
If you or someone you know would like to send in a Vestal Virgins Official Team Logo please use a digital format. (JPG, GIF preferred). Send the design file to: virgins@cosmicbaseball.com. The Vestal Virgins welcome your contributions. Arendt indicated that a final decision will be made no later than February 11, 2002.
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November 4, 2001 Reality BaseballPredicting World Series 2001 Game Seven | |
If however, "Mystique and Aura" are really nightclub dancers as Arizona Diamondback Curt Schilling suggests then the outcome should be more positive for the D'Backs. Schilling will have affirmed his manager's point of view that the supernatural has nothing to do with baseball. When asked about the possibility that the Yankees possessed some supernatural powers, Arizona field manager Bob Brenly soberly replied, "I think that's cheapening what the Yankees are all about...They are a great baseball team. Trying to play it off to something supernatural I think takes away from the ability of these players." It's clear-cut now. If the Yankees win it will be because the Diamondbacks commit some heinous and careless error. The error will have been supernaturally ordained. If the Diamondbacks win, fate, destiny and all their relatives will have had nothing to do with it. The reason will probably have something to do with smart pitching*.
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November 1, 2001 Cosmic Baseball PlayersPisces & Capitalists Vie for Silvio Gesell | |
How much either team wants to cough up to sign the rookie hurler is unknown at this point...but the stakes could climb astronomically. The Capitalists (2001 record: 73-89, last place in the Middleleague) are in desperate need of pitching improvement. The Pisces (84-78, 2nd place in the Overleague) are deactivating Jerry Lewis and are looking for a rookie pitcher.
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The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. Kesey's next novel after Notion was Sailor Song published in 1992. In a June 14, 1992 Kirkus (book) Review a reader wrote, "After 25 years, a new novel from Kesey--a brilliant, funny, heartening tale of the power of love to stomp out evil in the last decent town on earth--proves that the heroic old Trickster can still pitch a fastball. "
