In the summer of 1967 Claes Oldenburg, the artist famed for soft sculpture, and the poet Jonathan Williams were artists in residence at the Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies (now the Aspen Institute) in Colorado. Williams then asked Oldenburg to make a soft-sculpture baseball bat for a game of softball (naturally) between the musicians of the Aspen Orchestra on one side versus the artists and writers on the other; as director of the Aspen Writers’ Workshop, I supplied the writers and poets.
When it came to my turn up at bat, I swung at the ball and failed to hit it, because the bat folded in half in mid-swing: three strikes and I was out. This happened to most of us, and provided a hilarious afternoon.
