Extra Innings

Where is the truth about baseball to be found? In nostalgic stories of the timeless bond woven between fathers and sons on the ball field? Or in stinging expose about manipulative owners, abusive coaches, and greedy players? Beginning with a mostly truthful essay about an exhausted university department chair who believes a visit to Cooperstown can save his soul and ending with the story of a delusional university professor who loses his mind because he takes baseball - and baseball writing - too seriously, "Extra Innings" tackles the question of how writing about baseball has shaped our understanding and misunderstanding of the national pastime. In a series of astute reflections on baseball histories, biographies, personal reminiscences, and fiction, Richard Peterson explores how baseball writers have generated and sometimes challenged the narrative myths of the sport and its players. He looks at the shifting balance of romance and fact in standard baseball histories, from the early (Albert G. Spaulding and Alfred H. Spink) to the more recent (David Quentin Voigt, Charles Alexander, and others). He offers a lively discussion of baseball fiction - from the tall tales of W.P. Kinsella and Ring Lardner to moral romances such as Bernard Malamud's "The Natural" - and assesses the realism of postmodern baseball writing. He discusses the influence of Jackie Robinson on the serious baseball novel and the reluctance of baseball fiction to treat race issues realistically. He also surveys baseball's fleeting appearances in the literary canon (for example, a passing mention in "The Great Gatsby" of the 1919 world series fix) and suggests a "top nine" reading list for the baseball aficionado. Slicing away the myths and distortions of baseball's bizarre history, "Extra Innings" travels the course from the sport's rowdy early days to its contentious present. Somewhere between baseball as business and baseball as religion lies the truth of a game that remains, despite its tarnish, regenerative and redemptive.