
Players
Rookies are in italics
Joan Vollmer Adams, Infield 1924-1951 "The fires that smoked the Beat engine were started with Joan as patron and muse." (Women of the Beat Generation). Eventual wife of William Burroughs who accidentally shot her to death on September 6, 1951 in Mexico.
Mary Carney, Pitcher Boyhood girlfriend of Jack Kerouac. Kerouac's novel, Maggie Cassady, is part of the "Duluoz Legend" and tells of his teenage years growing up in Lowell and romancing Mary.
Carolyn Cassady, Pitcher b. 1923 Neal Cassady's second wife and mother of three of his children. Carolyn was also briefly Jack Kerouac's lover. She wrote a memoir, Off The Road, which recounts her life with Cassady and the other Beat figures.
Ann Charters, Pitcher Charters wrote the first Jack Kerouac biography and she is one of the major academic authorities on the Beat Generation writers. She has edited the Portable Beat Reader and the first volume of Jack Kerouac's letters.
Elise Cowen, Rightfield 1933-1962 A poet who became part of the Beat nexus in New York while she was attending Barnard College. Through her friendship with college friend Joyce Johnson, Cowen met Allen Ginsberg and others in the growing Beat orbit of the 1950s. On February 1, 1962 Elise Cowen jumped through a closed window in her parents' apartment and died instantly when she hit the ground.
Brenda Frazer, Utility b. 1939 Born into the middle-class in Washington, D.C., Brenda Frazer began her association with the Beat Generation when at 19 she met the poet Ray Bremser. She married Bremser and together they had a daughter Rachel and lived in Mexico. Five years after the marriage during which time she changed her name to Bonnie Bremser, she left her husband and gave her daughter up for adoption and went to New York where she met Allen Ginsberg and lived on his farm in Cherry Valley, New York. She published an autobiography, Troia: Mexican Memoirs in 1969. According to Women in the Beat Generation in the 1990s Frazer has moved to Michigan where she works for the Department of Agriculture "having left her Beat life far behind."
Naomi Ginsberg, Outfield Allen Ginsberg's mother. Politically radical, she was a communist, and emotionally unstable, she was institutionalized, Ginsberg wrote the poem "Kaddish" as a reflection of her life upon her death.
Diana Hansen, Secondbase Neal Cassady's third wife whom he married in Mexico on July 10, 1950 despite already being married to Carolyn Cassady. Neal met Diana in New York where she earned a living as a model. Diana had a son by Neal.
Joan Haverty, Catcher 1931-1990 Jack Kerouac's second wife and the mother of his only child, Jan Kerouac. She wrote an autobiography entitled Nobody's Wife which dealt with her tumultuous two year involvement with the Beat nexus.
Luanne Henderson, Firstbase Neal Cassady's first wife and the woman in the middle between Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's Beat classic On the Road.
Joyce Glassman Johnson, Pitcher b. 1935 Several months before Jack Kerouac's On the Road was published in 1957, Barnard college student Joyce Glassman met the soon-to-be-called "King of the Beats" at a Howard Johnson's in New York. She bought him a couple of hotdogs and commenced an affair that would not endure his transition to celebrity. Johnson wrote an award-winning memoir about her and other women, including Elise Cowen and their relationship to the boys club known as the Beats. Minor Characters was published in 1983 and despite its ironic title, it demonstrates just how important women were to the Beat writers.
Jan Kerouac, Thirdbase 1952-1996 Jack Kerouac's only child, Joan Haverty is her mother. Her father spent most of his life denying or ignoring the fact that Jan was his daughter. Nevertheless Jan became a writer and published several books during her relatively brief life including the autobiographical Baby Driver and Trainsong.
Joanne Kyger, Centerfield b. 1934 In 1957 Joanne Kyger moved to San Francisco and became involved in the literary renaissance then occurring by the bay. She met poet Gary Snyder and lived in Japan with him where they were married. Greatly influenced by Zen Buddhism, Kyger has published many volumes of poetry filled with poems addressing the intersection of life and spirituality. A reviewer wrote that Kyger's work "is like handling a porcupine traveling at the speed of light."
Alene Lee, Pitcher The woman that Jack Kerouac had a brief but intense affair with and about which he wrote his novel The Subterraneans where she is called "Mardou."
Edie Parker, Shortstop 1923-1992 A daughter of a well-to-do Grosse Pointe, Michigan family, Parker became enmeshed in the Beat Generation while living with Joan Vollmer Adams in New York. Through Adams and Lucien Carr she met Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac in the 1940s. She became Kerouac's first wife on August 22, 1944. The marriage did not last long when after a few weeks of life in Grosse Pointe, Kerouac split to get work with the Merchant Marines.
Janine Pommy Vega, Pitcher b. 1942 As a high school student this poet went to Manhattan and absorbed the Beat scene that had been ignited by the publication of Jack Kerouac's On The Road. In New York she met and became friends with Elise Cowen and Herbert Huncke and others associated with the Beats. Infected with the wanderlust explicit in the Beat message she began a lifelong series of travels which led to several volumes of poetry including her first, Poems to Fernando published in 1967. Fernando was a lover she traveled to Europe with and who died suddenly at age 33. It nearly broke the poet's heart.
Anne Waldman, Leftfield b. 1945 Daughter of bohemian parents (her mother knew Isadora Duncan) Waldman grew up in Greenwich Village and is a self-described second-generation Beat poet. She has also been active in the promotion of poetry as the director (1968) of The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery and as a co-founder (1974) and teacher at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado.
Staff
Stella Sampas, Field Manager d. 1990 Jack Kerouac's third and last wife. Stella was the sister of Sebastian Sampas one of Kerouac's closest boyhood friends. Kerouac married Stella in November 1966. Stella essentially was a caretaker to both Kerouac who was consuming himself in alcohol and his mother Gabrielle who suffered a stroke shortly after Kerouac's marriage to Stella..
Diane De Rooy, Coach b. 1951 Despite the fact that Ms. De Rooy writes, "I'm not a Beat. I stand outside and look in" she might very well be representative of the third wave of the Beat Generation. De Rooy also writes that "Kerouac is my life, literally. Through understanding him and his conflicts, I'm able to accept myself as one of the 'town deviates' my parents were always pointing out."
Diane di Prima, General Manager b. 1934 "More than any other woman of the Beats, di Prima has taken her place alongside the men as the epitome of Beat brilliance." (Women of the Beat Generation) Di Prima's direct involvement with the Beats began in 1957 when she met Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso and others in New York. Her Memoirs of a Beatnik is essentially an erotic accounting of her relationships with the Beats. Her work now spans fifty years and includes thousands of poems including the epic "Loba."
Jay DeFeo, Team Owner 1929-1989 It was Jay DeFeo's painting that lined the walls of the Six Gallery on the evening of October 7, 1955-- the night Allen Ginsberg read his generational polemic "Howl." But DeFeo is best known for her painting "The Rose." Begun in 1959 she did not complete the painting until 1967. The painting was in storage for 25 years in San Francisco until 1995 when it was placed in New York's Whitney Museum. DeFeo is "universally recognized as the primary visual artist of the Beat Generation." (Women of the Beat Generation)
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