The Universal Baseball Association, J Henry Waugh Prop. (1968)
262pp, Fiction
Notes
2025-04-16
An interesting book on all sorts of levels. It has things to say about our relationship to sport, work, games, chance, and eventually religion, as well as specifically being of interest to those of us interested in dice and tables.
That said, I expect I would have got more from this if I'd had the slightest idea of how baseball works (I discovered the 20 page glossary at the back only after I'd finished the book), normally this would be a problem for a book that consists 75% by volume of descriptions of (imaginary) baseball matches, but the writing here is great, more than enough to carry me through.
The few depictions of women are er... a little troubling to put it mildly, and I suspect this is a part of why Coover's reputation has not persisted. But still, it's a shame this is out of print, I think it probably deserves an audience despite its flaws.