Kerouac Had Novel Idea for Baseball

This brings new meaning to playing on the road.

The New York Public Library has acquired the archives of novelist Jack Kerouac--among them records of an elaborate fantasy baseball league Kerouac nurtured from youth, dating at least to the mid-1930s.

Kerouac’s rosters included Lou Gehrig and Pancho Villa--a center fielder to Kerouac--as well as imaginary heroes Homer Landry, Charley Custer and Luis Tercerero.

Icon of the beat generation and author of “On the Road,” Kerouac created a six-team league that included the Boston Fords, Pittsburgh Plymouths and St. Louis Cadillacs.

Games were played with marbles, toothpicks and white-rubber erasers thrown against a target some 40 feet away, the Associated Press reports, and Kerouac recorded the games pitch by pitch--even down to foul tips off home plate.

He wrote accounts of the league in “Jack Lewis’s Baseball Chatter,” and “The Daily Ball,” which included summaries of the day’s games.

Nor did Kerouac neglect the fiscal aspects of the league.

“Only the Pontiacs, Nashes and cellar-dwelling La Salles are in financial condition to buy any minor league players to improve their clubs at this time,” he reported one season.

Kerouac, who died at 47 in 1969, kept the league alive into his 30s, but lost some of his records on a trip to Mexico City--with Villa leading the league in stolen bases.

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Trivia time: Who wrote the baseball novel “The Natural” that was adapted as a movie starring Robert Redford in 1984?

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Joined at birth: Troy Aikman and Daryl Johnston, former Dallas Cowboy teammates now working together as Fox Sports analysts, each welcomed a daughter into the world last week.

On the same day.

At the same Dallas-area hospital.

Delivered by the same doctor after labor was induced.

Rhonda Aikman gave birth Friday to Jordan Ashley, and Diane Johnston gave birth to Evan Elizabeth.

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Significant rally: If Jennifer Capriati can make a comeback, maybe the NASDAQ can too.

Capriati, who won the Australian and French opens this year after flaming out following her teenaged rise to stardom, is scheduled to join NASDAQ CEO Hardwick Simmons to preside over the market’s opening this morning.

Capriati is seeded a career-best second in the U.S. Open, which begins today in New York.

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Trivia answer: Bernard Malamud, who was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for “The Fixer” in 1967.

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And finally: A South Carolina man had two holes-in-one on the same day this month at Old Carolina Golf Club near Hilton Head Island.

Golf Digest estimates the odds of Dave Crosbee’s feat in the same round at 67 million to 1.

“It’s taken a while to sink in,” Crosbee said .

His two aces, however, found their way to the cup quickly.