GAMES THREE AND FOUR:
LAUREATES 6 UNIVERSE 5
Robert Louis Stevenson pitches a little bit better than Harriet Beecher Stowe as the Laureates edge the Universe 6-5 in Game 3 to take a 3-0 series lead. Stevenson was hammered in his only other start in the post-season, 17-1, by Merv Griffin’s LA Gamers. Stowe came into the game with a 3-1 playoff record. The Universe took a 3-0 lead, as Stevenson surrendered 3 solo home runs in the first three innings to Delmore Schwartz, Anthony Hecht and Philip Levine. The Laureates climbed back into it, by playing small ball. In the fourth inning, Sara Teasdale walked, stole second, went to third, as catcher Maya Angelou’s throw went into center field, and scored on Mirza Ghalib’s sacrifice fly. In the fifth, Teasdale walked again, was caught in a run down trying to steal second, but made it all the way home when second baseman Bob Dylan’s throw went into left field. In the sixth, the Laureates’ JK Rowling bunted her way on, went to second when Stevenson’s slapped grounder happened to hit the third base bag, and both scored on a two base error—a dropped fly by Juvenal. The Laureates now led 4-3, but the sixth inning wasn’t over. Teasdale walked, and with two outs, no one having hit the ball hard against Beecher Stowe yet, Charles Dickens hit a long home run. With the Laureates now up 6-3, and their pitcher Stevenson having retired 12 straight, James Wright singled with one out in the seventh for the Universe. Delmore Schwartz then hit the next pitch for a home run (his second of the game and fifth of the post-season!) to make it 6-5, and that’s how it stayed, as Stevenson handed the ball off to Leigh Hunt, Edmund Burke and Livy, who got the final out, Delmore Schwartz on a swinging strike three.
LAUREATES 10 UNIVERSE 6
The Dublin Laureates, owned by Nahum Tate, sweep Steven Spielberg’s Phoenix Universe, four games to zero, to win the 2020 Scarriet Poetry Baseball championship. Trailing 6-5 entering the top of the ninth, the Laureates scored five runs off closer Jean Cocteau, who yielded his first runs of the playoffs. Henrik Ibsen, Delmore Schwartz, and the Universe’s starting pitcher, Raymond Carver, homered against the Laureates’ Samuel Johnson to give the Universe a 5-0 lead. Dana Gioia relieved Johnson and allowed a home run to Juvenal as the Universe lead grew to 6-0. J.D Salinger, the fourth pitcher for the Laureates, shut out the Universe for the final three innings, fanning six, and picked up the win. Sara Teasdale began the scoring for the Laureates in the sixth against Carver, when she singled in JK Rowling. Oliver Goldsmith then tripled in Teasdale and scored when Alexandre Dumas reached on an error. Dickens doubled in Dumas; Aphra Behn then doubled, to score Dickens, chasing Carver, and making the score 6-5. Gore Vidal, Oliver Sacks, and Harold Bloom of the Universe kept the Laureates from scoring through eight, as the Universe held onto a 6-5 lead. Jean Cocteau, who had been invincible for the Universe, started the ninth by walking Dumas and allowing an infield hit to Dickens. Aphra Behn then doubled off the wall to drive in two, as the Laureates now took the lead for good, 7-6. Dublin added three more runs in that fateful ninth, capped by a run scoring double by Sara Teasdale, as the Laureates prevailed, 10-6, to sweep the World Series.
Nahum Tate, 17th century poet and owner of the Dublin Laureates, known for writing and producing King Lear with a happy ending, gradually became the story of the season, as ridicule turned to respect, with his team’s increasing success—led by the pitching of Jonathan Swift and the hitting of Aphra Behn. The story of the Dublin Laureates finally eclipsed others—One, the collapse of Ezra Pound and the Berlin Pistols in the Glorious Division, (the Laureates winning the Glorious Division by a hair over the Florence Banners, led by Dante and Keats.) Two, Merv Griffin’s “Light Verse” Los Angeles Gamers winning the Peoples Division in a 3 team race by one game over the Kolkata Cobras with a pitching staff led by Tagore, Rumi, and Gandhi, and Chairman Mao’s Bejing Waves, managed by Jack Dorsey, and their starting crew of Voltaire, Lao Tzu, Lucretius and Rousseau. Three, Ben Franklin’s Boston Secrets (“America’s Team”) with the dominating Plato (25 wins) crushing the Society Division with a league-leading 95 wins (eliminated by the Wild Card Banners in the playoffs). Four, the Madrid Crusaders, and their “religious” team finishing first in the Emperor Division, with help from Handel, Beethoven and Mozart, over the Rome Ceilings of Milton, Michelangelo, Petrarch, and William Blake. And finally, the Phoenix Universe winning the Modern Division over John D. Rockefeller’s Chicago Buyers—who stuck with the team they had all year, including a pitching staff of Whitman, Twain, Sigmund Freud, and Paul Engle, while Steven Spielberg opened the bank to add players like Martin Luther King Jr. mid-season.
Congratulations to the Dublin Laureates!!
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Champions, Glorious Division 91-63
World Series Champions, Playoff Record 8-2
Manager, Ronald Reagan
Motto “Luck is bestowed even on those who don’t have hands” –Mirza Ghalib
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2020’s Starting Line up
1. Sara Teasdale 2b
2. Oliver Goldsmith cf
3. Alexandre Dumas lf
4. Charles Dickens 1b
5. Aphra Behn rf
6. Mirza Ghalib 3b
7. Boris Pasternak c
8. JK Rowling ss
9. Jonathan Swift, Blaise Pascal, Robert Louis Stevenson, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, J.D. Salinger, Livy p
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Ronald Reagan, in the champagne-soaked club house, after game 4, hugged by Teasdale and Ghalib,”What’s wrong with happy endings, again?”