Nahum Tate, mocked and ridiculed as inauthentic for his popular, stage-revision, “Happy Ending” King Lear, the Poet Laureate of England 1692-1715, and one of Pope’s “dunces,” is celebrating today; the team he owns, the Dublin Laureates, has captured the flag of the Glorious Division in a close and heated race with the favored Florence Banners.
As Colley Cibber, Drury Lane theater manager, actor, Poet Laureate of England 1730-1757, and “dunce,” utility infielder for the Laureates, put it in a letter to Pope, “I wrote more to be Fed than be Famous.” There is no pretense in the Laureates—they are not the “cool kids.” They are the panegyric group, earnestly playing in the spirit of moral populism, and whatever has been said of them, look at what they’ve done. They are champions of the Glorious Division!
Predictions were not good for them at the start of the year—Edmund Burke, Thomas Peacock, Samuel Johnson, and Leigh Hunt comprised the core of their starting pitching. The reclusive Italian from the north of Italy, Titus Livius, or Livy, historian of the Roman Empire, and friends with Augustus, was chosen by Tate as the Laureates’ relief ace.
Dublin did not win a lot of games at first, but they won most of their close games when Livy was involved. The Laureates had a 9-7 record when Jonathan Swift joined the team; Dublin had already proved themselves as a team which could score runs and win close games. But starting second baseman Sara Teasdale felt the change when Swift became their starting pitcher and promptly won five straight. “A shiver of delight went through our team, like an electric charge, and the warmth of it never let up. The team knew in their hearts, around the twentieth of April, that the coming autumn would find us joyful.” Samuel Johnson was winning in April, as well. Burke and Peacock were inconsistent, and eventually Robert Louis Stevenson and Blaise Pascal replaced them. Laureates’ manager Ronald Reagan never rested, as the season progressed, in shaping Dublin’s destiny. Robert Boyle and JD Salinger arrived to help the bullpen; Hans Christian Anderson was brought in for spot relief.
Dublin’s offense was as impressive as Jonathan Swift’s 22 wins.
Aphra Behn hit 34 homers to lead the club, followed by Dickens (33) and Dumas (30). Sara Teasdale slugged 20 homers from the lead off spot! (She also led the team with 31 stolen bases.) JK Rowling, batting eighth, added 16. Center fielder Oliver Goldsmith: “It was like watching fireworks.” Boris Pasternak, the catcher: “It was a mutual thing. Our pitchers felt no pressure to retire every batter, and that relaxed them, so they pitched better. This was because we scored so many runs. And the hitters were at ease, and hit well, because they had confidence in our pitching.”
Good news for the Florence Banners. They earned the league’s Wild Card spot, as they won 8 of their last 10, including 3 out of 4 against the Laureates. So they’ll be hot going into the playoffs. Had Shelley pitched better in two starts at the end of the year, the Banners may have caught the Laureates on the last day of the season. Dublin clinched their division crown with 3 straight wins against the imploding Carriages—Pascal beat Andrew Marvell 4-1, Robert Louis Stevenson beat Virginia Woolf 2-1—Ghalib, the 19th century Persian poet, got the Laureates’ winning hit (a double off the wall)—and Samuel Johnson beat Hazlitt 7-2 for his 12th win of the year (Johnson pitched hurt for most of the season).
The Banners were led by Shelley’s 23 wins (Virgil added 19, Dante, 17, da Vinci 14) and Friedrich Schiller’s 37 homers (John Keats was second with 25). Boccaccio and Botticelli are the stars of the Florence bullpen. The Banners’ owner, Lorenzo de Medici, who has not hidden the fact he believes his is the best team in the division, said Tate “does not know anything,” and predicted great success in the playoffs for the Florence Banners.