"The centerpiece in W. P. Kinsella's intriguing and sometimes perplexing new novel is a baseball game between the world champion Chicago Cubs and a band of amateur all-stars that begins either on July 4, 1908, or in a crack in time. The game lasts 2,614 innings and was scheduled as the start of an exhibition double-header. The 2,614-inning figure is correct. The second game of the double-header was canceled. The cast numbers real characters from the old Cubs, including their so-called peerless leader, Frank Chance. President Theodore Roosevelt makes a cameo appearance and strikes out, waving a big stick. Leonardo da Vinci descends on the field, near the hamlet of Big Inning, Iowa, and reveals that it was he, not Abner Doubleday, who invented the game and sketched out the flawless dimensions of a baseball diamond."LA Times
Kinsella's Iowa Baseball Confederacy a rich tale of fantasy, obsession
"Baseball lends itself to obsession. From young boys spending every dime of their allowance money on trading cards to grown men spending every spare moment crunching numbers in a pursuit of the perfect metric, the game's hold runs deep. Gideon Clarke's fixation is more specific than most. Convinced that the Chicago Cubs visited his hometown in 1908 for an epic exhibition game against a collection of all-stars from a competent but relatively obscure circuit known as the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, he devotes his life to unearthing the evidence to prove the game took place. No hint of the contest can be found in any old newspaper. His communications with the survivors of the players involved prove fruitless. Even the Cubs' own files, which Clarke accesses by pulling off an elaborate ruse, contain nothing."
Bailey's Baseball Book Reviews
amazon: The Iowa Baseball Confederacy: A Novel
No comments:
Post a Comment