Duluoz Legend @ The Kerouacs
The 2005 Jack Kerouac Memorial Game
March 12, 2005The Kerouacs Win, 6-4
Jack Kerouac was born March 12, 1922. Had he not died in 1969 he would today be 83. Each year the Cosmic Baseball Association plays the Jack Kerouac Memorial Game to honor this American writer and avid fan of baseball and the imagination.
Rosters
Kerouac came up with the concept of the Duluoz Legend after reading Galsworthy while on board the Merchant Marine steam vessel the George Weems. Kerouac had left New York on August 18, 1943 and somewhere near England he formulated the legend. Kerouac commentator Richard Hipkiss writes,
The Duluoz Legend, in the final analysis, is the saga of Beatness, of man stranded between an unsatisfactory world and an untenable heaven, somewhere in the void. (Robert A. Hipkiss, Jack Kerouac- Prophet of the New Romanticism. 1976)
The Duluoz Legend is often described as an autobiographical fiction. History has not yet decided what are the exact constituent parts of the legend. Generally, the Legend consists of a series of novels written by Kerouac somewhere between 1936 and 1965. The novels were not written in the same order of the periods they cover. For example, Visions of Gerard, which covers the very early part of Kerouac's life in Lowell, Massachusetts was written in 1956. The last book written and published by Kerouac, Vanity of Duluoz, covers the 1939-1946 period, or the period that immediate led up to the coalescing of the "Beat Generation."
Kerouac remains constrained inside Beat historical and literary analysis. More recent examinations of the Legend, for example, James Jones' Jack Kerouac's Duluoz Legend The Mythical Form of an Autobiographical Fiction (1999) begin to break the constraints. Jones incorporates Freudian analysis and oedipal mythology into his study.
Kerouac's work, from the inside, may yet be seen as an exercise in sanity; an attempt to discard the shroud that covered him. He could only find relief from the malaise by writing it out.
It is no fun, no sport, this eternal thinking of mine which goes on a good twelve hours a day. Why do I do it? It's a form of brooding...And how my mother is used to it! I think if I were not around the house brooding she would be certain the wheels of the universe had stopped turning. (Kerouac, "The Town and the City Worklogs" : June 27,1947)
Brooding about the house with mother...what's not Beat about that image?
Box Score
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Official Attendance
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Game Time
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Weather
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Umpires
Elise Cowen was a poet and Allen Ginsberg's friend in the 1950s. In 1962, in New York, she committed suicide. LuAnne Henderson was Neal Cassady's girlfriend and the woman in between Kerouac and Cassady during one of their road trips. She would later point out that the scene in On the Road with the cold cream didn't happen. "We did take our clothes off, because it was sweltering hot. I mean, we were just dying. We didn't have any cold cream. I would have loved to have had some. Any kind of cream." Natalie Jackson was another of Neal Cassady's girlfriends. She either fell or jumped to her death in 1955 in San Francisco.
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Official Scorer
Lucien Carr
A Beat Generation muse, Carr introduced Ginsberg and Kerouac and Burroughs to each and the Beat Vortex found its center in and around Columbia University in the late 1940s. Recently removed from the real world, he is an everyday player for the Cosmic Baseball Associaton's team of Beat Generation personalities, the Dharma Beats.
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Most Cosmic Player
 Dennis McNally
McNally is the author of Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America. An historian, former publicist for the Grateful Dead rock band, McNally says "I've always been in sympathy with subcultures outside the conventional "mainstream" culture, connected to the bohemian tradition."
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Score Card
Inn. 1: 05 Duluoz
Jack Kerouac [Starter]
Tristessa K . . .
Doctor Sax K . . .
Dharma Bums 5 . . .
Inn. 1: 05 Kerouacs
Vanity Duluoz[Starter]
A Charters 9 . . .
D McNally 8 . . .
T Clark 1B . . X
B Gifford BB . X X
G Nicosia 4-6 FO X . X
Inn. 2: 05 Duluoz
Visions Cody 1B . . X
Visions Gerar3-1 . X .
On the Road 7 . X .
Subterraneans1B . . X 1
Big Sur 2B . X . 1
Vanity Duluoz3-1 X . .
Inn. 2: 05 Kerouacs
E Amburn 1B . . X
J Dorfner 7 . . X
P Maher 6-3 . X .
Jack Kerouac 8 . X .
Inn. 3: 05 Duluoz
Tristessa 3 (Foul) . . .
Doctor Sax BB . . X
- Doctor Sax X-CS . . .
Dharma Bums 1B . . X
Visions Cody 6-3 . X .
Inn. 3: 05 Kerouacs
A Charters 4-3 . . .
D McNally 1B . . X
T Clark 6-4-3 DP . . .
Inn. 4: 05 Duluoz
Visions Gerar9 . . .
On the Road 1B . . X
W-Pit . X .
Subterraneans6-3 . X .
Big Sur 5-3 . X .
Inn. 4: 05 Kerouacs
B Gifford 5-3 . . .
G Nicosia 1B . . X
E Amburn 7 . . X
J Dorfner 1B . X X
P Maher 3B X . . 2
Jack Kerouac K X . .
Inn. 5: 05 Duluoz
Vanity Duluoz3-UN . . .
Tristessa 6 . . .
Doctor Sax 4 . . .
Inn. 5: 05 Kerouacs
A Charters 8 . . .
D McNally 6-3 . . .
T Clark 1B . . X
B Gifford 6-3 . X .
Inn. 6: 05 Duluoz
Dharma Bums 1B . . X
Visions Cody 6-4 FO . . X
Visions Gerar6-3 . X .
On the Road 7 . X .
Inn. 6: 05 Kerouacs
G Nicosia 1B . . X
E Amburn 5 (Foul) . . X
J Dorfner 7 . . X
P Maher 7 . . X
Inn. 7: 05 Duluoz
Subterraneans4-3 . . .
Big Sur 1B . . X
Vanity Duluoz1B X . X
Tristessa Safe on FC . X X 1
Doctor Sax 8 X . X
Dharma Bums 7 X . X
Inn. 7: 05 Kerouacs
[PH] J Jones 9 . . .
A Charters 1B . . X
D McNally 2B X X .
T Clark 7 SAC . X . 1
B Gifford HBP . X X
Maggie Cassid[Relief]
G Nicosia 3-UN X X .
Inn. 8: 05 Duluoz
Jan Kerouac [Relief]
Visions Cody 2B . X .
Visions Gerar3-1 X . .
On the Road 7 SAC . . . 1
Subterraneans1B . . X
Big Sur 6-3 . X .
Inn. 8: 05 Kerouacs
E Amburn 4-3 . . .
J Dorfner BB . . X
P Maher 4-6 FO . . X
[PH] S Eding 1B X . X
A Charters E-1 . X X 1
D McNally 3B X . . 2
T Clark 6-3 X . .
Inn. 9: 05 Duluoz
Leo Kerouac [Relief]
[PH] Desolat 3 . . .
Tristessa 3-UN . . .
Doctor Sax 6-3 . . .
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Score Card Key
| 3-UN, Out, firstbaseman unassisted | 6-3, Out, shortstop to first baseman | 1B, Single |
| 5-3, Out, thirdbaseman to firstbaseman | 2B, Double | BB, Walk |
| 6, Out, pop out to shortstop | K, Out, Strikeout | 7, Out, fly out to leftfielder |
| 8, Out, fly out to centerfielder | E-1, pitcher error | W-Pit, Wild Pitch |
| 4-3, Out, secondbaseman to firstbaseman | 4-6 FO, Out, secondbaseman to shortstop, force out | 6-4-3 DP, Double play, shortstop to secondbaseman to firstbaseman |
| 9, Out, fly out to rightfielder | 3B, Triple | 5, Out, line out to thirdbaseman |
| X-CS Caught stealing | 3-1 Out, Firstbaseman to Pitcher | 3-Foul, Out, foul out to firstbaseman |
4, Out, secondbaseman unassisted | 6-4 FO, Out, shortstop to secondbaseman | 5-Foul, Out, foul out to thirdbaseman |
FC, Out, Fielders choice | SAC, Out, sacrifice | HBP, Hit by pitch |
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Game Notes
This was one of the better Jack Kerouac Memorial Games. The books of the Duluoz Legend jumped out first with a two run second inning and held the lead until the fourth inning when The Kerouacs tied the game. The fifth and sixth innings were scoreless. In the top of the seventh, the Duluoz Legend books got a run and The Kerouacs answered in the bottom of the same inning. In the top of the eighth inning Jan Kerouac replaced her father on the  mound and proceeded to yield a run manufactured by the Legends. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Legend of Duluoz pitcher, Maggie Cassidy, who entered the game in the bottom of the seventh, walked John J. Dorfner, author of Kerouac: Visions of Lowell and Kerouac: Visions of Rocky Mount. Paul Maher, author of Kerouac: The Definitive Biography (2004) hit a grounder to the secondbaseman which resulted in Dorfner's force out at secondbase. Stephen Edington, pinch hitting for Jan Kerouac and the author of Kerouac's Nashua Connection hit a single, advancing Maher to thirdbase. Ann Charters, author of one of the earliest Kerouac biographies (Kerouac: A Biography, 1973) hit a little dribbler to Maggie Cassidy on the mound, but she bobbled the ball and Maher scored the Kerouacs' fourth and game-evening run. Maggie Cassidy was obviously shaken up on the play because her next pitch to Dennis McNally, author of Desolate Angel, a social history of Kerouac and the Beat Generation, was smacked deep into right field for a triple scoring Edington and Charters. That was all the Kerouacs needed. Leo Kerouac, Jack's father threw just three pitches in the ninth inning to retire the Legends.
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