One More Team Approved

CBA Board Chairperson Passes On

A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Ms. Stein was first elected to the Board of Directors on June 28, 1985. She was elected Chairperson, three years later, to the day, on June 28, 1988. During her tenure the CBA became more complex with more teams and players. During Ms. Stein's term in office the CBA launched its internet operations. Other significant initiatives, including the growth of the Cosmic Baseball Research Alliance and its library, are hallmarks of her Board leadership.

Ms. Stein was an avid supporter of children and their education, and believed in supporting those good souls who have chosen a career teaching the young. She helped create the Elinor Lampert Faculty Education Fund, in honor of a very close friend. Contributions in memory of Elka Stein can be made to:

The CBA Board has not yet announced a replacement, but the speculation has begun.

Diane Arbus Nominates Another Team

The new team consists of photographs created by Arbus and therefore if the nomination is accepted, Arbus' team will be both the first new team since the "2006 Contraction" and the first non-humanoid team to join CBA since the Omegatropolis Procoders (software application/programs) who were deactivated during the contraction spasm.

Arbus herself was a cosmic baseball player. She was an original member of the Bhutan Vanguards, a CBA team of visual artists. She pitched for one season accumulating a dismal 9.00 earned run average during six innings. She managed to strike out four batters and walked three. At the conclusion of the CBA's first season Arbus retired, one step ahead of being deactivated. In October 1997 the CBA honored Arbus' unique contribution to culture by publishing the Diane Arbus Honored Cosmic Player Plate, one of seven "memorial" plates at the CBA's website.

Parenthetically, one of Arbus' most famous photographs, A Jewish Giant at Home With His Parents in the Bronx, N.Y. (1970) is a photograph of Mr. Eddie Carmel who suffered from acromegaly which accounted for his large size. Carmel is on a short list of Paradise Pisces rookie candidates. Carmel qualifies for the Pisces having been born on March 16 (1936).

[Cousin]: Eddie works in the circus until 1969 when he can't get up on the platform anymore. In 1970 Diane Arbus takes a picture of Eddie in his parents' apartment: "A Jewish Giant At Home with his parents in the Bronx." It will become his legacy , published in Time, Newsweek, and Life. It now sits in the Museum of Modern Art.
GRANDMA: When I saw it I was startled...When you live with something and you are part of it, you don't see it as clearly as you can when you step aside or step back. And when I opened the magazine I was stepping back and it was startling, startling to me.
DAD: This was not a scene that I hadn't seen before. I mean I visited that room in that apartment with regularity. You know, there's my uncle in a certain dignified way, with his hands in his pockets looking something like a diplomat. And what he's thinking, I am sure, is he's feeling very sorry in some ways for himself. My aunt is probably saying to herself "What can I do for you?" Because that would have been her comment, and, uh . . . Eddie is looking down on them and I can't tell what he's thinking looking at his parents.
GRANDMA: He loved it. He loved that picture.
[Cousin]: He did?
GRANDMA: Yeah, he used to laugh at it. He'd say "Isn't it awful to have midget parents?" He'd say "Why did it have to happen to me? My luck, I have to have midget parents."

Coincidentally, Arbus is also a Pisces (b. March 14, 1923).

Esquire magazine was the first to publish her work in 1960. Sometime in 1962 she changed from using a 35mm single lens reflex camera to a 2 1/4" twin lens reflex camera. She was twice awarded Guggenheim Fellowships (1963, 1966). In the late 1960s she taught at several schools including the Parsons School of Design, the Rhode Island School of Design and Cooper-Union. Between 1969 and 1971 she took a series of photographic portraits of people with various mental disabilities.

Arbus married her high school sweet heart in 1941. She committed suicide in 1971. The year following her death the Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibited a retrospective of her work. In 1984 a biography of Arbus by Patricia Bosworth was published. (Bosworth apparently is one of the producers of the film Fur, 2006, about Arbus). In October 2003 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art launched "the most complete survey of her work ever assembled" in an exhibit called "Diane Arbus Revelations".

At this moment, some of Arbus' early work is on exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. as part of the exhibition called, "New York City from 1938 to 1958 Revealed in Photographs by 20 Major Artists from National Gallery of Art's Collection". The exhibit was launched September 17, 2006 and concludes on January 15, 2007.

The nomination may be a long shot. No official policy change that would impact the net number of active cosmic baseball teams has been announced. (Many believe the CBA will begin to reverse contraction by adding one or more teams in the near future, maybe as early as next season.) However, even if the number of teams is incremented, there are a significant number of petitions received chronologically in front of Arbus' petition.

Maybe because a new movie, an ersatz Arbus biopic, called Fur, just released in selected U.S. markets, will increase the odds of Arbus getting a cosmic baseball team. Ultimately, a panel of experts will evaluate the petition and ultimately this panel will decide whether or not Arbus' renewed effort at assembling a cosmic baseball team will be successful.

2006 Individual Cosmic Batting Statistics

2006 Individual Cosmic Pitching Statistics

Tolling the Taco Bell

No home runs were hit during game 3 as the St. Louis team won, 5-0 . The game took three hours and three minutes to play. Had a grand slam been hit, Taco Bell would have had to give away 46,513 cell phones. Nobody knows how many tacos would have been given away on November 1 between 2-5 PM had one of the baseball players hit a home run to left field on October 24.

Why was the telecommunications/fast food chain engaged in this World Series promotional campaign: "We can't think of a more fitting way to celebrate America's Favorite Pastime than by giving fans a chance of winning America's favorite taco," Taco Bell chief marketing officer Bill Pearce said in a statement. How many tacos was the company prepared to dish out if a home run was hit? America's population is at about 300 million, so likely something less than that amount.

Founder and CEO of Taco Bell, Glen Bell, always a man with numbers in mind, said at a news conference announcing the promotion that, "23 home runs have been hit during the last three World Series. 34.8 percent of those were hit to left or left-center field." What is the specific area in Busch Stadium that qualifies as the "target" zone? "Left field will be defined as the territory from straightaway center field -- directly from home plate -- to the left field foul pole, including the foul pole," according to Joseph Shields and Thomas Rinks, associates at the Forest Glen Metro Group in Silver Spring, Maryland. FGMG is notable in this context because FGMG was founded by the two men who created the talking Chihuahua that Taco Bell used to market its food services in the United States and its telephones in Canada. In 1998 Shields and Rinks filed a lawsuit against Taco Bell. The two men received about $45 million dollars as a result of the legal battle. 1975 World Series star Carlton Fisk's voice was heard on the Voice of America system promoting the promotion. And yes, alwats, there was controversy, real or imagined. Executive Vice President of Taco Bell, Wallace Robert Bell, was the home plate umpire during the third game of the World Series. Naturally, there has been talk that his strike zone was contorted enough to reduce the chances of a home run. That is, in our opinion, a fairly paranoid and unprovable assertion.