BANNERS 9 SECRETS 4
The city of Florence is on the verge of a huge celebration. The no. 1 seed Boston Secrets are one game away from being eliminated by the Wild Card Banners. Guido Cavalcanti hit a grand slam and drove in six runs to lead Florence to a 9-4 win in game 4, who are now up 3-1 in the series. A shutout by Plato is the Secrets’ only win. Dante Alighieri will start game 5 in Florence against Edgar Allan Poe. If the Secrets win, the series will return to Boston. Leonardo da Vinci earned the victory, fanning 7 before leaving in the sixth inning, when Nathaniel Hawthorne hit a 3 run homer, making the score 6-3. Mikhail Lermontov of the Banners and Stephen Cole of the Secrets also hit homers. Moliere took the loss for the Secrets. Giovanni Boccaccio and Marsilio Ficino came out of the bullpen to seal da Vinci’s win.
LAUREATES 19 GAMERS 14
Charles Dickens hit 2 more homers and the Dublin Laureates held off a furious rally in Los Angeles, as the Gamers fell short 19-14, and now trail the best-of-seven series 3 games to 1. John Betjeman and Joe Green continued their hot hitting for the Gamers—7 RBI and a homer by Betjeman, 4 RBI and a homer for Green. The Laureates led 13 to 2 after 5 innings. Samuel Johnson, who got the win, imploded in the sixth—which could have been a much bigger inning for the Gamers, but Arnaut Daniel was thrown out trying to score in a controversial call. The home plate umpire, Albert Einstein, said Daniel missed home plate sliding in to beat the throw. Daniel attacked Einstein and was thrown out of the game. John Townsend Trowbridge and Mirza Ghalib also homered for the Laureates, as Woody Allen was gone by the second inning. LA did tie it, 13-13, in the seventh. However, the Laureates’ Leigh Hunt and Hans Christian Anderson shut out the Gamers the rest of the way, and Dickens hit a grand slam in the 8th off Garrison Keillor. Lewis Carroll will try and keep the Gamers alive tomorrow in LA, against Jonathan Swift.
UNIVERSE 4 CRUSADERS 1
Delmore Schwartz belted a 3 run homer off George Handel to break a 1-1 tie as Martin Luther King Jr and the Universe stopped the Crusaders in Phoenix, tying up the series 2-2. Yusef Komunyaaka and Anthony Hecht hit back to back doubles to give the Universe a 1-0 lead in the second inning. Handel then retired the next 14 hitters in a row. Meanwhile the Crusaders scraped together a run to tie the game in the 5th, with singles by Hilaire Belloc, Phillis Wheatley, and Leona Florentino. Lionel Trilling relieved King in the 8th with the bases loaded and got Aeschylus to pop up to end the inning, and Jean Cocteau set down the side in order in the ninth. The game one starters, Harriet Beecher Stowe of the Universe and Ludwig Beethoven of the Crusaders, will face off again in game 5.