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Published on 7/25/08
Published on 7/24/08
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Nearly every guy goes through a Kerouac phase in college—a copy of On the Road on his nightstand and a pack of Gauloises in his breast pocket. But If those would-be Beats visit “Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac on the Road” at the NYPL’s Humanities & Social Sciences Library this fall, they’ll realize they’ve been simpatico with the Dharma Bum since grade school. Among the manuscripts, journals and personal effects curator Isaac Gewirtz has culled from the library’s archives is a series of handmade cards and other memorabilia from a fantasy baseball game Kerouac made when he was nine years old.
Despite his reputation for introspection, Kerouac was a consummate athlete as a young man—star of his high-school track team, football player at Columbia University and, briefly, sportswriter for the Sun in his hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts.
That passion for sports extended into imaginary realms—fantasy horse racing, track and field, and football games. But Kerouac’s version of our national pastime was the most elaborate: Hits, runs and outs were determined through an intricate statistical model (possibly aided by the use of dice), with results meticulously recorded in a series of spiral notebooks. Players, umpires, managers and owners were given detailed biographies and might pop up in a broadsheet Kerouac created specifically for the game. Notably, he placed a black Cuban shortstop, “El Negro,” on the fictional Philadelphia Pontiacs three years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier for real in 1947.
It’s hard to say whether this fanciful diversion was merely an escape for the young Kerouac—deeply traumatized by the death of his older brother Gerard—or an early example of his talent for multifaceted storytelling. Regardless, his love of the game was no passing fancy. “We know that he played at least up until a few years before his death,” says Gewirtz. “But there’s no suggestion he shared it with any of the Beat writers—he was probably embarrassed about it. Of course, none of them probably had any interest in playing sports, either.
“Beatific Soul” opens at the NYPL Humanities & Social Sciences Library Nov 9.
