Jeff VanderMeer

I first encountered this oddity some ten years ago. And I freely admit that it still confounds me. Originally, the Cosmic Baseball Association featured teams made up of philosophers, politicians, scientists, writers, criminals, and others, both dead and alive. Players have included a variety of disparate individuals such as catcher Noam Chomsky, pitcher Socrates, pitcher Maria Montessori, pitcher Kasia Karazim, shortstop Andy Warhol (1995, 1996, 1997), pitcher William Burroughs (1996, 1997), infielder Philip K. Dick, pitcher Zelda Fitzgerald (but oddly not F. Scott), pitcher Wilhelm Reich, shortstop Alan Turing, left fielder Al Capone (1995, 1996, 1997, 1998), first baseman Scipio Africanus, second baseman Omar Bradley, pitcher Courtney Love, infielder Frederic Chopin, pitcher Pat Nixon, pitcher Che Guevara (1996, 1997), pitcher Chester Arthur, pitcher Mother Teresa, and pitcher Vanessa Williams. Later they added concepts such as astrological signs, fictional characters, domain names, planets, and Abbott & Costello.

The Association records box scores, season stats, and even hosts a World Series.

Like traditional baseball the Association keeps track of individual statistics.

Nowhere on the site does it discuss how the games are played or the statistics determined. A Google search uncovered the July 14, 1999 Seattle Weekly article “Plating Sylvia Plath” that supplies some answers.

Each team has at least 24 players, including a pitching staff of ten. Each prospect enters the league with a randomly generated Candidate Player Profile simulating 500 plate appearances. Prospects that score well in that Player Profile are assigned positions and given rookie profiles based on first-year data from 1952 to 1992. Prospects that don’t score well are passed to the Candidate Pitcher Profile, which assigns each entity an ERA of 3.51 and simulates 175 innings pitched to determine their throwing potential.

All players accumulate stats over a lifetime of play, which takes place in a combination of off-the-shelf and homegrown software. (There are, nonetheless, regular requests for game tickets, a sign that the Net’s irony level is dangerously low.) The software calculates player performance as well as random factors such as injuries and “eccentric behavior.” Over time players may retire, shift into management (the Pisces’ Nin pitched for 12 years with a lifetime ERA of 3.52–Stan Williams, are you listening?–before ascending to manager), or move into the front office.

The article also reveals the origins of this unusual version of baseball.

The Cosmic Baseball Association began in 1981 when Andrew Lampert pondered the glut of cultural, historical, and biographical factoids he’d accumulated from years of living in the 20th century. How can anyone manage all that information? What’s it all mean, anyway? Fifteen years later, he might have used a database to make sense of it; fortunately, he hit upon a far more engaging structural metaphor.

The Association has achieved a cult-like status with a 2000 article in the New York Times and even a regularly produced online Journal of the Cosmic Baseball Association. I still don’t understand exactly what they are doing, but it sure seems like a lot of fun.