“I propose to [write] about [a fantasy league on Easter], although I am aware that this is a rash adventure. Faerie is a perilous land.”
- JRR Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, p. 3, somewhat edited
I began this effort, appropriately, at sunrise, not thinking a Zoom sunrise service made much sense. In a few minutes my grandsons will be in the house, and at 11:00 we will have North Valley Friends’ Easter service playing on Zoom, but I suspect this year Easter will be observed mostly as background to time with family which has been so hard to come by for the last year.
So into this EFL update I will pour some of my longing for Easter, enhanced by two things.
First, this week as I chauffeured Jonathan Kuttab around, I had the pleasure of getting to know him pretty well. He kept talking about Easter, and his uncontained delight that it was coming soon. A Palestinian born in about 1954, he has been a refugee his entire life, engaged in a non-violent struggle to have a homeland. Easter is the center point in his year, the core promise of his faith, the fount of hope abundant enough to get him through another year of his thus-far-fruitless lifetime of labor.
I cannot downplay Easter after spending so many hours with Jonathan Kuttab.
Second, this is a fantasy league. JRR Tolkien defines fantasy – which he also refers to as “faerie” stories — as secondary creation, whole worlds that we make up but that, at their best, are true. Not factually true, but morally and spiritually so.
When done well, we do not have to suspend disbelief to enter into fantasy stories. “What really happens,” Tolkien tells us, “is that the story-maker… makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world.” (Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, p. 37).
After this paragraph, Tolkien offers as his very first example… cricket fandom! Not baseball, but Tolkien was an Englishman through no fault of his own. He was not even much of a cricket fan. He had to suspend disbelief to endure watching a match. But he saw true cricket fans as having entered into a subcreated Secondary World, where the laws of cricket are True and meaningful things happen.
Tolkien glimpsed this long before the first fantasy league.
But what has cricket (or Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf and Sauron) to do with Easter? First, “fairy stories were plainly not primarily concerned with possibility, but with desirability… I desired dragons with a profound desire.” A good fantasy story creates a place we long to see, or at least to believe in.
Fantasy stories serve three true purposes, according to Tolkien. The first is recovery of sight, of the ability to see things as they are. We tend to treat the things around us as ours, and in so doing lose sight of much of their reality. Fantasy “may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds.”
The second is escape, the chance to lift our eyes from the weary, sordid world provoking in us “Disgust, Anger, Condemnation and Revolt.” Fantasy can help us envision a universe that has a long arc bending toward yet-unseen justice.
The third purpose, according to Tolkien, is the “Consolation of the Happy Ending” – the eucatastrophe, the sudden joyous turn, the miraculous grace. “It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”
Tolkien believed that this glimpse of Joy was a glimpse of “underlying reality”, including the “greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe.”
“The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essences of fairy-stories… The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true… To reject it leads to either sadness or wrath.”
Happy Easter.
| TEAM | W | L | PCT. | GB | RS | RA | |
| Haviland Dragons | 3 | 0 | 0.896 | — | 20.1 | 6.8 | |
| Portland Rosebuds | 2 | 1 | 0.672 | 0.7 | 17.4 | 12.1 | |
|
1 | 1 | 0.709 | 0.8 | 15.3 | 9.8 | |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 1 | 1 | 0.705 | 0.8 | 12.2 | 7.9 | |
| D.C. Balk | 1 | 1 | 0.686 | 0.8 | 9.7 | 6.5 | |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 1 | 1 | 0.663 | 0.9 | 11.4 | 8.1 | |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 1 | 1 | 0.442 | 1.3 | 17 | 19.1 | |
| Kaline Drive | 1 | 2 | 0.422 | 1.4 | 8.9 | 10.4 | |
| Bellingham Cascades | 1 | 1 | 0.418 | 1.4 | 6.4 | 7.5 | |
| Cottage Cheese | 0 | 2 | 0.078 | 2 | 5.7 | 19.6 | |
| Peshastin Pears | 0 | 3 | 0.089 | 2.4 | 7.8 | 25.1 |
Haviland: W, 6 – 2. (29 PA, .296, .321, .593; 2.3 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA). No wonder Tolkien desired dragons with a profound desire. I am not panicking yet, but we don’t want to get to a point where we desire dyscatastrophe for the Dragons, now, do we? So maybe Realmuto should cool it with the 2 for 4s with a double, or Gary Sanchez should go back to not hitting homers. And that’s just the catchers!
Portland: L, (-3) – 4. (41 PA, .167, .244, .194; 5.7 ip, 2 er, 3.16 ERA). I kind of thought the Rosebuds would have trouble maintaining the Dragons’ blistering pace. Corey Seager keeps tearing things up — 3 for 4 with a double, now batting .667, .750, .833 on the season. But th rest of the team went 3 for 32.
Pittsburgh: “L”, 6 – 6. (34 PA, .300 ,.382, .400; 16 ip, 8 er, 4.50 ERA). Six Pittsburgh pitchers pitching puts pitching penalties in the past, pretty much. Muncy, Moustakas and Robert all had two hits to help the Alleghenys start breaking up the Johnson monopoly on the leaderboard.
Old Detroit: “L”, 4 – 2. (35 PA, .188, .257, .375; 18.3 ip, 7 er, 3.44 ERA). This result will not hold up. Mike Minor is saddled with only 2 runs allowed in the Baseball Reference stats, when he in reality surrendered 4. This is a clear error by BR, enough to drop the W’s two places in the standings, and makes me kind of nervous about its reliability. Still, the other stats are correct, including the one about Ke’Bryan Hayes injuring himself after walking in his only plate appearance. Why oh why couldn’t Tolkien have desired wolverines with a profound desire?
DC: W, 6 – (-6). (28 PA, .227, .393, .409; 15 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA). Speaking of eucatastrophes: how about 15 shutout innings from 4 pitchers? Musgrove went 6 scoreless with three hits. Berrios went 6 scoreless with 0 hits and 12 strikeouts! As inconsistent as it is with proper Easter spirit, I am envious.
Flint Hill: L, 4 – 5. (42 PA, .250,, .357, .278; no pitching). One man’s catastrophe is a league’s eucatastrophe sometimes. I think the remedy is a change of perspective, which the Top Tornado can achieve if he thinks of the league as a whole. After all, Tolkien says renunciation is heroic, the gift of the hobbits to all of Middle-earth.
Canberra: L, 10 – 13. (25 PA, .364, .400, .409; 8.3 ip, 10 er, 10.84 ERA). None of the ‘Roos four pitchers performed very well, all giving up at least as many runs as innings pitcher, and two of them triple chulking (McHugh: 1 ip, 3 er; Thompson: 1/3 ip, 1 er). On the other hand, every Kangaroo got a hit except that laggard Mike Trout. On the other hand, Trout did get the ‘Roos lone walk. On the other hand, the team only got one extra base. On the other hand, it was by David Dahl, whom the rest of the league essentially ignored. So many other hands, I’m a little dizzy. Where does this leave the Cannies?
Kaline: L, 1 – 4. (43 PA, .158, .233, .158; 2.3 ip, 1 er, 3.91 ERA). Aaron Judge went 2 for 5, but they were both singles. I bet that doesn’t happen very often. But it was good it happened here, because the rest of the team went 4 for 33.
Bellingham: “W”, 4 – 4. (42 PA, .256, .310, .333; 16.7 ip, 7 er, 3.77 ERA). Hanser Alberto, low key but greatly admired by some of us, led the Cascade offense with 2 doubles and a single in 4 plate appearances. Three starting pitchers all did fine to give Bellingham a nice “win”.
Cottage: L, 4 – 11. (28 PA, .308, .357, .615; 2 ip, 3 er, 13.50 ERA. Cottage needs to amass more pitching. Only three pitchers have appeared so far, according to the team stat page. Free the Cheese! Get some bodies on the mound so those pitching penalties stop pinching! On the other hand, Zach McKinstry had a eucatastrophic inside the park home run when the Dragons’ DFA’d Raimel Tapia couldn’t quite catch the ball, as shown in the featured image atop this post, and slung it back into the park without realizing it.)
Peshastin: L, 3 – 8. (25 PA, .130, .200, .391; 1.3 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA). The Pears have seen six pitchers, but only one of them (Flaherty on Opening Day) lasted more than 4 innings, and he surrendered 5 earned runs. The combination of poor pitching and still substantial penalties are grinding the Pears in the cellar. Mitch Haniger was a bright spot, going 2 for 4 with a double.
|
AL East |
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| TEAM | W | L | PCT. | GB |
| Baltimore Orioles | 2 | 0 | 0 | — |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 2 | 1 | 0.667 | 0.5 |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 1 | 1 | 0.705 | 0.6 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 1 | 1 | 0.663 | 0.7 |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | 1 |
| New York Yankees | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | 1 |
| Boston Red Sox | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
|
NL East |
||||
| TEAM | W | L | PCT. | GB |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 2 | 0 | 0 | — |
| D.C. Balk | 1 | 1 | 0.686 | 0.6 |
| Washington Nationals | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| New York Mets | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 1 | 1 | 0.442 | 1.1 |
| Miami Marlins | 1 | 2 | 0.333 | 1.5 |
| Atlanta Braves | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
|
AL Central |
||||
| TEAM | W | L | PCT. | GB |
| Detroit Tigers | 2 | 0 | 0 | — |
| Kansas City Royals | 2 | 0 | 0 | — |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 1 | 1 | 0.709 | 0.6 |
| Minnesota Twins | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | 1 |
| Bellingham Cascades | 1 | 1 | 0.418 | 1.2 |
| Chicago White Sox | 1 | 2 | 0.333 | 1.5 |
| Cleveland Indians | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
|
NL Central |
||||
| TEAM | W | L | PCT. | GB |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | — |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | — |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | — |
| Chicago Cubs | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | — |
| Cincinnati Reds | 1 | 1 | 0.5 | — |
| Cottage Cheese | 0 | 2 | 0.078 | 0.8 |
|
AL West |
||||
| TEAM | W | L | PCT. | GB |
| Houston Astros | 3 | 0 | 0 | — |
| Haviland Dragons | 3 | 0 | 0.896 | 0.3 |
| Seattle Mariners | 2 | 1 | 0.667 | 1 |
| Los Angeles Angels | 2 | 1 | 0.667 | 1 |
| Kaline Drive | 1 | 2 | 0.422 | 1.7 |
| Texas Rangers | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2.5 |
| Oakland A’s | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
|
NL West |
||||
| TEAM | W | L | PCT. | GB |
| San Diego Padres | 3 | 0 | 0 | — |
| Portland Rosebuds | 2 | 1 | 0.672 | 1 |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 2 | 1 | 0.667 | 1 |
| San Francisco Giants | 1 | 2 | 0.333 | 2 |
| Colorado Rockies | 1 | 2 | 0.333 | 2 |
| Peshastin Pears | 0 | 3 | 0.089 | 2.7 |
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 |