The Forgotten 1944 Artists & Writers Game

The annual Artist & Writers softball game takes place at 2 p.m. Saturday August 16 in East Hampton. Princes, Presidents, athletes, Abstract Expressionists, Pulitzer Prize winning authors, movie stars and Wall Street tycoons have played. Little has been known about the early years of this annual charity event – until now. Last week, rummaging around in the dusty attic of the East Hampton library, it was my good fortune to stumble upon a spiral bound notebook in which an anonymous writer, using pen and ink, described the second Artist-Writers game played here in 1944. We present it below. – Dan Rattiner

“I was glad to see Marilyn Monroe at the game, there to cheer on her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller. Miller for the most part, just could be seen staring off into space the whole time there at first base, apparently thinking of some plot or character development for his next project. Singer Bing Crosby who came out that summer to play for the Artists, smacked a hard single off Arthur Miller’s ankle in his first time up. This was in the second inning. Bob Hope cracked a joke about Miller hopping around after that. Miller and Monroe were living in a cottage in Amagansett that year.

“In the bottom of the second, the game was delayed for twenty minutes by an air raid siren. There was a war on, after all and everybody had to repair to the nearby Jungle Pete’s Bar for a while, until the danger passed.

“In the fifth inning, Marilyn Monroe came up to bat as a pinch hitter. The score was tied 4 to 4. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia lobbed two easy pitches to her and she missed both. She then swung and missed the third, but gossip columnist Walter Winchell, who was narrating the game from behind the backstop, said “oh, give her two more strikes,” and so LaGuardia gave her a fourth and a fifth. Everybody wanted to see her run. And she finally did, hitting strike six as a short hop to Bud Abbott at shortstop who threw her out at first base which was covered by Lou Costello.

“Jackson Pollock, who was living up in the Springs with his wife Lee Krasner with all the bills being paid by gallery owner Peggy Gugenheim in New York City, arrived at the game drunk. He was supposed to be a starter for the Artists, but he just wandered around for a while unable to find home plate and finally he fell down and went to sleep in the grass for the duration.

“A home run was hit in the seventh by Albert Einstein, who came down from Southold to attend the game. He was living in a summer house on Nassau Point at that time. He was in as a pinch hitter and just slammed it over the fence. “It was just a lucky shot,” he told war correspondent Edward R. Morrow, who had come in from the front in Normandy for the day just to cover the story.

“Ted Williams, the bad-tempered Boston Red Sox centerfielder was there, but it was just to sign autographs. “I could beat these bums with one hand,” he said, and that was probably true.

“Adolph Hitler had been invited but he never showed up. An aide arrived to say he was busy. It was a shame because the idea of the Artist Writers Game was that you leave your guns and troubles at the door when you come to play, and he sure had a lot of guns and troubles at that time.

“Woodie Guthrie, the folk singer hit a triple, driving in two, in the top of the ninth, to open the lead for the Writers to 7 to 4. Also in the top of the ninth, Albert Einstein came up to hit again, and this time he twisted away from the first pitch but it hit him in the side of the head anyway. He waved people away saying he was all right. But then he struck out.

“‘I finally got the brainstorm I wanted that solved the Unified Field Theory I have been working on,’ he told a local reporter from Dan’s Papers afterwards, ‘but now dammit, I forgot it.’

“Then he rubbed where he got hit.

“The big excitement of the day, however, came in the bottom of the ninth when the Artists came up for their last chance. Erroll Flynn, the actor, hit a solid double to left off pitcher-salesman Willie Loman, who some were tipped off that he’d paid to come and play. Then 14-year-old Andy Warhol, who was with his parents renting a bungalow on the beach in Montauk, walked. And then the next batter, farmer Dick Hendrickson Sr. also walked, loading them up.

“Managing the writers at that time was Harold Ross, the founder of the New Yorker, and he trotted out and sent Willie Loman off to the showers and then called in Bob Feller, the son of a farmer in Southampton home for the summer from college – and reputedly possessed of a blazing fastball, to put out the fire.

“In response, the manager of the artist’s team, dance choreographer Jerome Robbins, brought heavyweight champion Joe Louis to the plate.

“Louis had been staying with some fellow African Americans who had a home in Sag Harbor — this was in the heyday of segregation – and everyone had to wait for him to be brought over.

“Bob Feller blazed his first pitch in which Louis swung for and missed – and then umpire President Franklin D. Roosevelt – out here for a little R and R with his Secretary of State Harry Hopkins – threw Bob Feller out of the game for pitching so fast in what was supposed to be a slow-pitch contest.

“The writer’s new pitcher was called in – Jimmy Durante, the schnozz nosed comic – and he did a big wind up and pitched this great arc of a pitch, high up into the sky, which a big Osprey flying by caught in his talons and flew off with.

“The President then called off the game on account of strange behavior, said he had to run because Eisenhower was on the telephone and he had to find a place nearby that had a phone booth to take the call.

“On the books, this game ended Writers 7, Artists 4 but for many years there were those who believed that the Artists could have won it there in the bottom of the ninth if only the President had allowed the game to continue.

“As a result of this controversy, Lief Hope, the longtime promoter of the game placed an asterisk (*) next to this score in all the record books to indicate the contentious nature of this dispute and the unusual outcome.

“Late that night, George Plimpton awarded the jereboam of champagne at Jungle Pete’s to writer Ernest Hemingway of the Writers team, for the accidental winning bunt he hit in the top of the eighth to get on base – breaking a three-year drought of never having gotten a hit.”