Laureate fever is sweeping Los Angeles.
A small band of fans have gathered in an undisclosed location near Hollywood to vocally cheer on the Laureates, the “Irish” team of the Scarriet Poetry Baseball League.
A few supporters had signs saying, “We Want Yeats! We Want The Beatles!”
One of the fans could be heard saying, “The Beatles were Irish, you know…”
John Lennon plays on the Tokyo Mist with Yoko Ono.
George Harrison plays on the Kolkata Cobras.
Paul McCartney plays on The Carriages, the team owned by Queen Victoria.
And William Butler Yeats plays with Ezra Pound on Eva Braun’s The Pistols.
Laureate fans wants these players on their team.
“It’s only fair! We’ve got a good team, already, but we want to be better” said one young, brown-haired, brown-eyed, beauty, giggling.
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Scarriet readers will recall that in game one of this series, in Los Angeles, the host Gamers of Merv Griffin, led 8-3 going to the ninth.
The Gamers then yielded 6 runs in the final frame—an Aphra Behn grandslam off bullpen ace Menander the winning blow. The Laureates had loaded the bases against relief pitcher Charles Bernstein.
The Dublin Laureates are owned by Dublin-born, 17th century English poet laureate, Nahum Tate.
Tate made a name for himself re-writing King Lear with a happy ending.
The Laureates are guided by popularity and kindly humor.
The Gamers and the Laureates, of the twenty five teams in the Scarriet Poetry Baseball League, are most representative of Light Verse and Satire, though the Laureates tend to be sagacious and moral; the Gamers are more playful and slapstick.
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The motto of the Gamers, written by starting pitcher, Lewis Carroll, is “He thought he saw an elephant that practiced on a fife.”
The third baseman of the Laureates, Mirza Ghalib, the Urdu/Persian poet, is responsible for the Laureates motto: “Luck is bestowed even on those who don’t have hands.”
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The muses are jealous of these proceedings; it is only with great difficulty, and with the assistance of the one muse who talks to us, Marla Muse, that we are able to broadcast our spotty coverage of full season play. This game was played weeks ago, but we’ll get the general news out to you, more or less, in a timely manner.
Marla Muse: All the muses covet this league. Only imagination itself is more dear.
Idealist philosophy gets news every day. We just can’t possibly get it all.
~~~
The 19th Century English Thomas Love Peacock, who befriended the much younger Percy Shelley, and wrote satires of elaborate conversation (with no plot), liked, more than anything, as most writers did then, to walk the British Isles up and down, finding he could not write very well on long voyages aboard ship. Thomas Peacock is the Laureates’ game two starter.
Facing Peacock is the L.A. Gamers wry and fanciful poet, E.E. Cummings.
Cummings went to Harvard, and eloped with the wife of Scofield Thayer, owner of the revitalized Dial Magazine of the 1920s, which gave T.S. Eliot his prize for “The Waste Land.” Scofield Thayer’s uncle, Ernest Thayer, wrote “Casey At The Bat.”
Ernest Thayer has no desire to play for Scarriet Poetry Baseball—which he thinks is silly. But Merv Griffin is putting tremendous pressure on Thayer to play for the Gamers. We’ll see.
Alex Trebek is calling balls and strikes behind home plate here in Los Angeles, on a beautiful sunny day.
Ronald Reagan is the newly named manager for the Dublin Laureates.
The first base coach for the Laureates is Arthur Guinness and coaching at third for the Laureates is Bono.
Bob Hope is the Gamers manager. Groucho Marx is the first base coach, and over at third for the Gamers is Moe Howard.
Here are the Lineups…!
The 1-0 Laureates have Sara Teasdale leading off, playing second base, followed by Oliver Goldsmith in center, Alexandre Dumas in left, at first base, Charles Dickens, Aphra Behn in right field, Mirza Ghalib holding down third base, Boris Pasternak, the catcher, JK Rowling at short, and Peacock, the pitcher.
The Gamers will try again to get their first win of the season with Noel Coward at short, Betjeman in center, Billy Collins in left, Eugene Ionesco, catching, Thomas Hood at second, W.S. Gilbert at first, Ogden Nash in right, Joe Green at third, and the pitcher, Cummings, batting ninth.
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Bob Hope’s Gamers take a 4-2 lead into the eighth—Dorothy Parker, a new Gamer acquisition, pinch hitting for Cummings in the bottom of the seventh, ripped a double (as we see in this replay) off relief pitcher Dana Gioia to drive in Billy Collins and Thomas Hood, to break a 2-2 tie.
But here, in the top of the 8th, when Menander allows a single to the Laureates Teasdale, and walks Goldsmith, scattered boos and groans can be heard around the LA ballpark.
Lorne Michaels, the Gamers pitching coach, hops out of the dugout to talk to Menander:
“Go right after him, let’s get a double play ball,” Michaels says.
What else can he tell him? Menander complies, and Dumas hits one on the ground…but by the diving Noel Coward at short!!—a single. The bases are loaded!
Out comes Bob Hope, the Gamers manager. The call to the bullpen is going out to Christian Morgenstern!
Morgenstern earned a spot on the Gamers roster with this gem:
The Two Asses (Die Beiden Esel)
Not too enchanted with his life,
An ass once told his lawful wife,“I am so dumb, you are so dumb,
The two of us should die, now, komm!”But it should come as no surprise,
That they decided otherwise.
Charles Dickens greets Morgenstern with a double down the line in right, clearing the bases.
The Laureates, for the second straight game, have rallied in the late innings, as they take a 5-4 lead!
Charles Dickens, the most popular author of all time, claps his hands vigorously over his head as he stands on second base, Noel Coward and Thomas Hood a picture of disappointment on either side.
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In the bottom of the ninth, the Laureates Gioia walks Joe Green on four pitches!
Livy, the closer for the Laureates, is warming up.
The pitching coach for the Laureates, Robert “Bobby” Kennedy, slowly walks out to the mound.
The Laureates Gioia stays in!
Gioia faces Gamers pinch hitter James Whitcomb Riley—who also walks!
The New Formalists are known for being too careful sometimes, Marla.
Marla Muse: That’s two walks in a row for Gioia. Reagan’s got to take him out now! Come on Ronnie!
Out of the dugout comes manager Ronald Reagan. That’s all for Gioia.
In comes Livy, and he will face Tony Hoagland, pinch hitting for Coward. There are two on and no outs for the Gamers!
Strike three! Got him swinging…
John Betjeman, centerfielder for the Gamers is now at the plate (bit of an irony, Betjeman is a poet laureate of England—his amusing verses are why he signed with Griffin’s team)…
Oh! Livy’s fastball goes right by Betjeman, a swinging strike three.
Two down.
Here’s Billy Collins for the Gamers. Remember, Collins scored the go ahead run for the Gamers back in the seventh.
Livy delivers…
Billy Collins hits it sharply to Teasdale at second…she’s got it! Nice play! Over to Van Morrison (defensive replacement for Dickens at first,) and that’s it!
Laureates 5, Gamers 4!
The Laureates go to 2-0, as they prevail again in Los Angeles!
Dana Gioia earns the win. Livy picks up the save.
“Another one in the bag,” said a smiling Ronald Reagan after the game.
Is that really Ronald Reagan? It’s difficult to see. Is that him?
Marla Muse: That’s him.
Tomorrow it will be James Tate of the 0-2 Gamers against the 2-0 Laureates Samuel Johnson.
This is Scarriet Poetry Baseball News.