Spielberg shakes things up in the Modern Division
the Modern Division
Rockefeller’s New York Buyers 37 27
Spielberg’s Phoenix Universe 33 31 (4)
Warhol’s Manhattan Printers 32 32 (5)
Harriman’s Arden Dreamers 30 34 (7)
Barnes’ Philadelphia Crash 25 39 (12)
A week ago, The Buyers, the Madison Avenue club, had the best record in the entire league.
That’s no longer true. The Secrets, who lead the Society Division, and the Cobras, first in the Peoples Division, now have more wins than Rockefeller’s team. Like the Ceilings in the Emperor Division, the Buyers are stalling in the summer heat.
Now we have Rockefeller, owner of the Buyers, oil millionaire—stingy, stubborn, domineering, conservative, unchanging—against a cheerful director/producer, who is emptying his purse and trying everything.
The Buyers were doing so well, there was no reason to change. It will be interesting to see what happens now. Time to panic? Rockefeller’s team has a 4 game lead, and more than half of the season left.
The Buyers’ Elizabeth Bishop still leads the league with 22 homers, but she’s only hit 2 in her last 19 games. Robert Lowell, who has 10, hasn’t hit a home run in 17 games. So what’s happening with this pair of sluggers? This has to be a concern for manager Charles Darwin. The Buyers have been outscored 61 to 45 in their last 16 games. True, this included a 12 game road trip, but a drought is a drought.
Then there’s the Buyers’ starting pitching.
Rockefeller paid a lot for Walt Whitman, their ace. Before their current slide, Whitman was 4-2, with a few well-pitched no-decisions. He’s 1-3 in his last 4 starts.
Paul Engle. Is the poet and creative writing entrepreneur really that good? The Buyers pitcher got to 9 wins almost faster than anyone—but he’s lost his last 3 starts.
The lefty starter for the Buyers, Mark Twain, like Engle, couldn’t lose in the months of May and June, but lately he’s 1-3, and got rocked 21-10 in his last start.
Sigmund Freud, another big bucks purchase for Rockefeller, quickly won 5 games, then slumped. Now he’s turned it around somewhat.
Rockefeller has gone with a modest bullpen, and so far he’s done alright with it—Helen Vendler, W.K. Wimsatt, Monroe Beardsley, and Judith Butler. Eight wins out of the pen. Which is fine.
Does Swami Vivekananda, Rockefeller’s advisor and pitching coach see any pitching moves coming from his boss? “No.”
Does Darwin plan on shuffling the lineup at all? Charles, the manager, says, “No.” (Louis Simpson is playing okay right now for the Buyer’s injured center fielder, Robert Penn Warren.)
But some Buyer fans don’t like their team’s conservative attitude, especially when they see what Steven Spielberg is doing with his Universe—11-5 in their last 16 games—outscoring opponents 85 to 62. Paul Celan now has 10 homers, tied for second on the team with Bob Dylan; Juvenal has 14 homers to lead the club, and Delmore Schwartz is red-hot has 7 homers to go with a .381 batting average.
Universe manager Billy Beane and pitching coach Tom Hanks have made big changes to the Universe’s starting pitching. (The Universe have not signed Frida Kahlo or Diego Rivera; some snags still have to be worked out—these two may go to Harriman’s Dreamers.) Harriet Beecher Stowe is still the Universe’s ace, and she picked up her 4th and 5th win of the season, recently. Beecher Stowe has not pitched like an ace, yet, but Spielberg has faith. Milosz, Trilling, Said, and Foucault are still in the bullpen.
But the following changes have been made. Spielberg has sent Harold Bloom (4-5) to the bullpen (“He’ll do better there:” Hanks) and replaced him in the starting rotation with left-hander Lucien Freud. Raymond Carver has replaced Randall Jarrell. And here’s the big one. Martin Luther King, Jr., signed at the end of June, has stepped into the starting rotation to replace Marge Piercy.
Lucien Freud is 3-1, Raymond Carver is 2-0, and King is 1-1, including a 1-0 masterpiece in which he beat the Buyers’ Paul Engle.
Here comes the Universe.
OK. But let’s not forget Andy Warhol’s Printers, who are turning their season around.
In a bold stroke, Warhol has added Old Master Hans Holbein the Younger, a southpaw junk pitcher to the starting rotation. He’s 3-0. “He can paint,” Warhol said. “That helps.” Paul Klee, another lefty, has replaced Stephanie Burt (1-6), and he’s 2-1 since taking over. Marjorie Perloff remains a fixture with 7 wins. Duchamp, the Printers ace, is out for 3 weeks; Toulouse Lautrec is 2-1 so far in his place. John Cage has added a new pitch, and is doing better in relief.
The Printers have also seen a power surge recently—Aristophanes and John Updike both have 18 home runs, tied for second in the division; the Buyers Garcia Lorca has 5 triples and 9 homers. Printers Manager Brian Epstein: “We were the laughing stock of the division for a while. No one’s laughing now.”
Pamela Harriman’s Dreamers, once in first place, are two games behind the Printers. Edna Millay leads the club with 17 round-trippers. Louis MacNeice has 14 dingers, but is out for three weeks with a sore back; Stevie Smith will play first base (and she quickly stroked 3 home runs) in his absence. Ace pitcher Simone de Beauvoir was beginning to establish herself after a long, rough, start, but she’s out now for a couple of weeks—William Godwin has stepped in and pitched very well, but he’s 0-3 in three close games. Also hurt, the Dreamers no. 2 starter, Floyd Dell; Mary Wollstonecraft is 2-1 in that spot. Anais Nin and Margaret Atwood (she began the year 4-0) have been steady lately as starters, and Jean-Paul Sartre joins Germaine Greer, Louise Gluck, bell hooks, Helene Cixous, and Michael Ondaatje in the bullpen. So let’s not forget the Dreamers, either.
What to say about the last place (12 games out) Philadelphia Crash? Their ace John Crowe Ransom was win-less, finally found his stuff (4-0, 1.10 ERA), but meanwhile, their other 3 starters, Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Pater go 1-9. Philly fans are screaming for changes, but none seem to be forthcoming. Picasso still anchors a bullpen with Jackson Pollock, I.A. Richards, Kenneth Burke, and Walter Benjamin. “We’ve got the greatest artistic and philosophical minds around,” said A.C. Barnes, who owns the Crash. “You don’t make a change just to make a change.” Stephen Spender leads the team with 11 homers. Allen Tate, John Gould Fletcher, William Carlos Williams, and Richard Howard need to hit more. Manager Giorgio de Chirico is under to pressure to do something, but if Barnes isn’t willing to spend money, what can he do? Some want Giorgio fired, and Henri Matisse, the pitching coach, or Paul Cezanne, the first base coach, to replace him. It really comes down to the performance of these three pitchers: Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Dewey, and Walter Pater. Will the Crash finally lose patience with them?
We talked to one of them, John Dewey.
Scarriet: Hi John, thanks for talking to us.
Dewey: Nice to be here.
Scarriet: You were 4-4 at the end of May.
Dewey: Yeah, I felt I was doing really well!
Scarriet: Wittgenstein was 4-5; Pater had only 2 wins, but was 6-6 in games he started.
Dewey: Everyone is so good in this league. You can’t expect to win all your games!
Scarriet: But John Crowe Ransom, your ace: 2-10 in games he pitches. And no wins for John.
Dewey: Yeah, that was tough to watch. He’s brilliant. He was upset. We were all upset. He’s the best we’ve got.
Scarriet: Was there a ripple effect? The whole team was affected? By John not winning?
Dewey: Oh, it was awful. And there was nothing we could do. His mechanics were okay, there was nothing wrong, per se.
Scarriet: And the whole team feels it.
Dewey: Oh, sure. Games are emotional. But they shouldn’t be. The emotion from winning and losing, that has nothing to do with playing well.
Scarriet: It must have felt good when John won his first game.
Dewey: Yes! He beat the Buyers! 5-1. We all felt good. Oh, it was great.
Scarriet: The fans want changes. Ransom finally wins, and then you guys, the other guys in the rotation, you have trouble…
Dewey: I know! After Ransom beat Whitman, 5-1, Freud beat me 2-0! Out-pitched me. Then we won that strange game, 4-0, Witty pitches great, Pablo got the win; and then Walter Pater loses 4-2, to Engle. I felt like we could have swept that series. Changes? We have a great pitching staff; we really do. There’s just so many good pitchers in this division… Every game is…impossible!
Scarriet: And the smallest things, even luck, can mean a win or a loss. Don’t give up! I hope the city of Philadelphia stands behind you.
Dewey: Oh the fans have been alright… I’m proud to play for this team. And Mr. Barnes is a wonderful owner. He is. And now that John is winning, we feel good. It’s a long season. We’ll come back.
Scarriet: John Dewey. It’s a pleasure. Thank you.
Dewey: Thank you.
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