Exciting Performance At Exhibit to be Unveiled

In January 2021: “Men in Tribal Situations” a simulation of the rise and fall of man, by Sascha Rubenfeld.

Vivian Mauve,

Sascha Rubenfeld, on having his plan foiled

One day I got a call from an old friend of mine named Sascha Rubenfeld. We had originally been friends during my time at UMass Amherst, where he studied acting and art history. We met in a contemporary art class and eventually became good enough friends that for a few summers he’d invite me to his parents summer cottage in Lily Cove. Lily Cove is a little village on a microscopic peninsula near Newburyport with a population of about 500. It was the usual summer shenanigans, we’d dement ourselves excessively, go to parties, swim, watch our friends play in bands at the bar, or go to watch games at the official Lily Cove Men’s Slow Pitch Softball Beer League field nicknamed ‘The Treedome’

I didn’t think much of The Treedome on my first impression. It was an unkempt, gravelly, crabgrass ridden baseball pitch where tall trees lurched high and bent towards the angle of the sun's zenith. This, in turn, cast a ring like shadow or ‘dome’ around its outskirts, which gave the field it’s moniker. The field’s dimensions did not adhere to any standards to which any organization would put into place. The basepaths ran only about thirty five feet in length, which, for any player standing above 4’11”, could be traversed with an easy jog in no time at all (which in turn called for an experienced infield). Not only that, but right field was also suspiciously short. This was a dream for left-handed batters, as anything in the woods was an automatic double. Conveserley, and unfortunately, for right handed batters such as myself, left field extended a quarter of a mile into a tiny algae covered playground. The playground was covered in the green and invasive kudzu vine that curled itself around the disused blue plastic obstacles and slides and swings. Regardless of it’s disuse, the shade from the lurching trees left it in constant shadow, which in turn made it a popular spot for watchers on hot summer days. Despite the field’s unkempt quality and it’s sweltering heat, the games are usually always a fun time. Though, perhaps it was only because the alcohol flowed like a vast river and the field hung in a constant haze of cannabis smoke. Regardless, everyone seemed to have a good time.

I myself hadn’t thought about the Lily Cove Men’s Slow Pitch Softball League since I had last visited in the summer of 2017. Yet, somehow through the grapevine, Sascha had learned that I moved and lived only forty-five minutes away. He wanted me, despite my quite dubious credentials, to be involved in his “magnum opus” which was an unspecified ‘creative project’ that he had been working on for a ‘while.’ He said that we should have a beer at ‘The Treedome’ like the good old days of years past to discuss it and I agreed.

So I met Sascha at The Treedome. It was a day or two before the opening ‘Sunday Funday’ (as they called it) of the 2020 Lily Cove Men’s Slow Pitch Softball League season, and he wanted to discuss the scope of this project and what he intended my role to be.

“Well,” he said pulling out and cracking open a tall can of Miller Lite, “I joined the team a few summers back, The Rebels,” he coughed, “Well I mean, The team is officially called ‘The Rebels,’ but, slowly but surely I have transformed the team into ‘The Rebels Against Winning.’” He stopped and took a sip from his drink.“The point is we always lose. The point is to lose. But it has to stay convincing,” he took a long drink before looking me squarely in the eyes. It was then that Sascha relayed to me that he was in the midst of a hostile takeover of the team, and that that was the essence of his whole project.

‘The Rebels Against Winning’ originally stemmed from a series of loose associations with the team’s founder and de-jure team captain, Jared Flower. Jared was an unassuming but well-meaning sports lover who also founded the team in 2018.

The problem with Jared Flower was, despite his best attempts at crafting a functioning and winning ball team, his efforts had fallen hilariously flat. The Rebels record coming into the 2020 season was 1-25. Sascha had played in every game. Perhaps because of their continuous losing streak, and the other team’s reaction to their continued misfortune, Sacha put into effect a carefully crafted performance art piece he called “Men in Tribal Situations.” He believed this would ultimately humiliate the other team for years, and possibly millenniums to come. He wanted me to be involved in the final act of his plan.

ADespite my aforementioned dubious credentials, I was asked to play the media aspect. The end result became this article, which details how this subversive act was carried out on an unsuspecting crowd, and what their reactions were to its unveiling.

According to Sascha, The first part plan was to slowly replace the members of the team with a series of carefully chosen and fairly duplicitous actors who were especially handpicked due their unwavering dedication to the craft of underground character acting. According to Sascha, the most important positions to guarantee losses were the pitcher, right field, and first base. All of these actors were to be called by codenames. The first player Sascha selected was, according to his dossier, a short-order cook at a health food restaurant who was nicknamed “Benny Two-Shoes.” He and Sascha had met in their elementary school Actor’s Guild and had also played little league together, where Benny was a star pitcher and also an incredible actor. Not having a regular pitcher, Jared took Benny onto the team with open arms. The next step was replacing the right fielder, which took more work than anticipated. The first right fielder Sascha attempted to bring on was a tiny 19 year old aspiring Marine named “Tom.” The problem with Tom is that he was just too obviously bad, and Jared had him replaced with a series of his own picks before Sascha could find a suitable replacement in a West Point graduate called “Tony Timbale.” (Tom and Tony’s military background was totally coincidental). Sascha had met Tony while watching a performance called “Gay: The Musical” in a bar in Buffalo, New York, only to find out he was part of a travelling acting commune called the ‘Insatiable Marlins’ and actually lived in a housing complex Beverly, MA. Out of all Sascha’s actors, Tony was the most interesting. He had totally shed his true personality more so than any of the others, and delved fully into the character he had created for himself. He became a gruff, woman-loving fisherman with a penchant for swinging his fists at the slightest sign of disrespect. He even brought an old friend to stand in as his long term girlfriend, Margaret “Maggie” Hill. The two lived together only for the sake of the act and became mainstays of the Rebel family. The final position, first base, was played by Sascha himself. This was, though probably oblivious to Sascsha himself, an obviously bad choice. It even became too obvious for the original plan to work. Jared Flower would eventually replace him due to continuous fielding errors, and Sacscha became relegated to the designated hitter position, filling in at first base whenever his final first base actor, codenamed “Big Sexy,” a friend of he and Benny’s, could not be rustled out of bed. Big Sexy was a hugely tall man who stood at 6’7” and weighed close to 300 pounds. Due to his height, in Jared’s eyes, it just made more sense to have him on first base than to have Sascha on first base. Big Sexy managed to play a convincingly good but seriously bad first baseman, which relieved Jared and the other de-facto captains, as his intentions were obviously unknown to them. The second part of the plan was to hone their craft. Sascha, and the other actors practiced regularly behind his parent’s summer cottage, a lovely field overlooking a rocky terrace, where they increased their skill in learning how and when to make mistakes, while also learning how to also make themselves look more convincing. Sascha’s father, Peter, was a big help in coordinating and coaching these sessions, as he had relevant credentials in acting. His resume includes his work as an extra in The Sandlot (1993) and a speaking role in Caddyshack (1980). Peter was a nice guy who read audiobooks for a living and knew the ropes of acting. These practice sessions lasted from June to October for two years until the final part of the plan was to take place starting the third Rebels season in 2020.

The final part of the plan, as previously stated, was the media aspect. To include a ‘journalist’ as part of the team to examine how this plan worked, and to record it sensationally to some publication to drum up publicity for the unveiling of the exhibit which was slated to take place in January 2021 at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem MA.

Sascha had me join in as the second baseman. The original second baseman, Jared’s in law Eddie, had apparently ‘deliberately’ broken both of his legs in a freak accident involving a forklift, several tons of grocery merchandise and at least one hundred and twenty eight 526 pound iron I rods, which came crashing down behind a Stop and Shop warehouse. Apparently, at some point I had drunkenly stated that I played second base in little league and the Babe Ruth League, thus, this plus my dubious media credentials, landed me the job.

My experience on the team and acting in its performance did not feel much different than being on any losing team, as I had experienced in the teams I had participated in during my youth. However, the difference between my youth experience and now was that we purposely and convincingly lost in an extremely graceful manner.

On opening day we faced a group of excessively drunk hooligans who called themselves “Pass the Bunt.” Pass the Bunt played a dirty game, frequently bending the rules with little to no reaction from the umpire, who according to one source “made the game interesting with purposely bad calls”₁. One example of this exhibitionism occured when I myself was tackled by a 400lb player as he heaved himself towards second base. Remaining in character, and resulting from the obliqueness of the umpire’s decision, Tony sprinted in from right field and pummeled the umpire himself, Kevin Mancini, with a brutal uppercut to the jaw. This was a particularly troublesome act of violence, as the umpire had suffered a brain aneurysm within the past year. The entire debacle cost the team 3 runs. Luckily Kevin was fine, but The Rebels went on to lose the game 6-1.

Many teams acted in this manner. Perhaps because of the drinking, or, as Sascha was trying to prove in his hypothesis for “Men in Tribal Situations,” ‘purposeful machoness.’ Sascha defined purposeful machoness as “demonstrating purposefully disrespecting actions and dialogue in order to attempt to demoralize and emasculate the adversarial team for no other reason than bad faith.” This phrase would be an important term for his “Men in Tribal Situations” upcoming exhibit at the PEM.

By the ninth game of the season, Big Sexy had once again, (being the fourth or fifth time) failed to be roused out of bed, and Sascha was summoned from the bench to replace him on first base. It did not turn out very well. As a result, be it because of the drinking, the oppressive heat, or the fact that it was 10am, Sascha made 6 errors, and in a fit of anger from Jared Flower, ended up being fired from the team after the game. He relayed to us that we should continue to play. Sascha had been kicked out before the final game of the season and he wouldn’t be on the field to see his performance completed. The Rebels were to face a team known as “Little Jimmy’s Bar Hands,” who had a record of 2-7 on the season, the second worst ahead of us. In an extremely strange turn of events, The Rebels accidentally won the game 1-0 when Benny Two-Shoes, awake from the night before and begging for sleep, threw a no-hitter under the influence of psilocybin mushrooms. Incredibly enough, the debacle did not end there. Following the end of the game, Benny approached the bench of Little Jimmy’s and explained to them, as he knew it, the entire philosophy of Sascha’s plan. The revelation was met with a brief silence, during which I took the advantage to run to my car to get my notebook. I wrote down some things from the Little Jimmy’s guys, but I found only one thing they said had any merit towards the article.

“Their games looked totally normal. I couldn’t even tell they were trying to lose on purpose.”

For more articles by Vivian Mauve, click here. To get in touch with this writer, email mauve.vivian@surrealtimes.net.

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