Pamela Harriman’s Dreamers lead the Modern Division with a 12-4 record, thanks to Edna Vincent Millay’s 8 home runs, Sharon Olds’ 8 home runs, and Margaret Atwood’s 4-0 2.20 ERA record.
Atwood leads the entire Scarriet Poetry Baseball league in wins, and only the Carriages in the Glorious Division have as many wins as the red-hot Dreamers.
Anais Nin is 3-0 (1.40 ERA) and Germaine Greer has a couple of wins in relief.
Pitching coach Susan Sontag couldn’t be more happy, but she’s focused on the future and its details. “We’re working on Simone [de Beauvoir] not to over-throw. It will lead to wildness, and then she’s pitching behind in the count. This is very exciting [Scarriet Poetry Baseball] and some players get a little too excited; who can blame them?” Simone de Beauvoir (8.90 ERA) has 4 no-decisions in 4 starts, and in those 4 starts alone, the Dreamers have yielded more than half the runs they’ve allowed.
The Dreamers magic definitely lies so far with the starting pitching of Floyd Dell, Nin, and Atwood— together they are 9-2 with a 1.90 ERA.
“So far it’s working,” said Dreamers manager Averell Harriman; “with Olds on deck, they have to pitch to Millay, and she’s responded, and then after the damage done by Millay, Olds faces a somewhat shaken pitcher.”
Edna Millay bats third in the order, ahead of Olds in the cleanup spot—their 16 home runs engine is comparable to Joyce (8 Hrs) and Yeats (8 HRs) batting third and fourth for the Pistols. Tennyson and Longfellow for the Carriages have combined for 11 homers; Aeschylus and Bradstreet have 9 for the Crusaders; Li Po and Marx have 8 for the Waves; Rimbaud and Rabelais 7 for the Strangers.
The Dreamers, who play in lovely Arden Hamlet, about an hour’s drive north of New York City, better not look back, however. Right behind them in the Modern division at 11-5 are John D. Rockefeller’s The Buyers, who play in New York City, and they are tied with the Pistols and the Dreamers for the best 1-2 punch in the League: 16 homers have come from Robert Lowell (6) and Elizabeth Bishop—she leads all players with 10 home runs. Dylan Thomas, who bats fourth, has added 3; Kenneth Rexroth, in a surprise, has launched 4.
The Buyers, managed by Charles Darwin, have a solid pitching corps of Whitman, Freud, Twain, and Paul Engle; and they recently got bullpen help from newly signed Judith Butler, who quickly picked up two wins in relief. Helen Vendler, their stopper, is on the disabled list. If there is one stat that says the most, it might be runs scored and runs allowed, and the Buyers have the most impressive one in the whole league: 91 runs scored, 56 runs allowed. But will Bishop and Lowell continue to hit this way? We’ll see.
No pitcher for the Crash, owned by A.C. Barnes, (manager Giorgio de Chirico; pitching coach Henri Matisse,) is doing particularly well. Their ace, John Crowe Ransom, is winless. John Dewey, their no. 2, starter is 2-2, but lost 18-1 in his third start. The Crash are led by John Gould Fletcher’s four homers, followed by Allen Tate with two.
The Philadelphia Crash are 5-11, as are the Phoenix Universe, Steven Spielberg’s club, managed by Money Ball genius Billy Beane; Tom Hanks is their pitching coach. Juvenal has provided the pop for the Universe; he has clubbed 6 homers, but Bob Dylan, batting third, has only hit one; Anthony Hecht, batting 8th, is second to Juvenal, with 2 homers. Foucault has won a couple of games for the Universe in relief, but their starting pitching has been pretty miserable: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Randall Jarrell and Marge Piercy are all 0-3; Harold Bloom is the bright spot at 2-1 with a healthy 2.78 ERA.
Finally, we have the Printers, Andy Warhol’s team, in last place with a 4-12 record. Their manager is Brian Epstein. They have yielded 98 runs. They pounded the Dreamers 20-2 in one game, and lost another to them 15-18; John Updike has hit 5 homers for the Printers in the cleanup spot; Aristophanes has 4, batting third; Hart Crane and Kenneth Koch each have 2. Don’t ask about the pitching: Duchamp is 0-1, with 3 no decisions, Marjorie Perloff is 0-3, Stephanie Burt is 0-2, and Mark Rothko is 0-4. Pitching coach Peggy Guggenheim points to relievers who are getting lots of work and responding to it well—John Cage, F.O. Matthiessen, and new addition Hilton Kramer together have won 4 games. “The starters just need to loosen up, relax and get into a groove,” Ms. Guggenheim said; “Brian [the manager] and I are not worried.”
Richard Lovelace (pronounced “loveless”) has boomed three homers for the successful Dreamers in the second position in the lineup; Carolyn Forche, batting lead off, has stolen six bases and scored 17 runs. Pamela Harriman’s team, despite being managed by hubby Averell Harriman, a 20th century commercial/political titan, is dominated by women. Lovelace, the Dreamers third-baseman, a Renaissance lyric poet, and one of the few men with the club, hitting .399 and having a wonderful time so far, is the author of these famous lines:
Stone Walls do not a Prison make,
Nor Iron bars a Cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an Hermitage.
If I have freedom in my Love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
Neither batting box nor strike zone have contained, so far, these Dreamers of Dame Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman.
STANDINGS
Harriman’s Dreamers 12-4 — Runs 91, Allowed 76
Rockefeller’s Buyers 11-5 —Runs 91, Allowed 56
Spielberg’s Universe 5-11 —Runs 54, Allowed 70
Barnes’ Crash 5-11 —Runs 53, Allowed 84
Warhols’ Printers 4-12 —Runs 79, Allowed 98
LEADERS
Wins
Margaret Atwood, Dreamers 4-0 ERA 2.20
Anais Nin, Dreamers 3-0 ERA 1.40
Freud, Buyers 3-0 ERA 3.10
Harold Bloom, Universe 2-1 ERA 2.66
Paul Engle, Buyers 2-1 ERA 3.25
Floyd Dell, Dreamers 2-2 ERA 4.23
John Dewey, Crash 2-2 ERA 5.12
Relief
Foucault, Universe 2-1 ERA 0.90
F.O. Matthiessen, Printers 2-0 ERA 1.18
Judith Butler, Buyers 2-0 ERA 1.22
Germaine Greer, Dreamers 2-2 ERA 4.09
HRS
Elizabeth Bishop, Buyers 10
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dreamers 8
Sharon Olds, Dreamers 8
Robert Lowell, Buyers 6
Juvenal, Universe 6
John Updike, Printers 5
Aristophanes, Printers 4
John Gould Fletcher, Crash 4
Kenneth Rexroth, Buyers 4
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Scarriet Poetry Baseball News