The Universal Baseball Association, Inc.
Categories: Sports , Fiction
I like baseball, but not nearly as much as the protagonist of Robert Coover's novel The Univeral Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. The character's name is Henry Waugh, and he is not just a typical rabid Major League Baseball fan. He has taken baseball fanaticism to new heights. In fact, real life Major League Baseball isn't what he is concerned with, but a completely imagined league that is played as a game with dice. And if even this doesn't sound too out of the ordinary, Henry's game is fabricated to such a degree that a whole universe has been created around every possible aspect of the experience. For example, entire generations of players and seasons have already taken place and are established in his mind and all players past and present have fully realized personalities and histories that come to bear on the game itself.
By profession, Henry is an accountant, which seems to lend itself to having an interest in a game that relies heavily on statistics and recordkeeping. Besides his job and his world of baseball, Henry does lead a marginal life outside of these two existences. He has a favorite delicatessen, frequents "Pete's Bar", and even has an occasional girlfriend. But these real life social interactions always seem to be colored by Henry's ever-present obsession. For instance, an imagined player's comments might be interjected during the course of a "real" conversation, or his mind may be completely absorbed in some fantasy inter-league trade deal throughout these episodes. And as the book progresses, the lines between the realities of his life and his imagined game continue to be increasingly blurred.
A significant event occurs during a particular game that contributes to this further delusional state between Henry's "game mind" and his actual life. In a freak series of highly unlikely rolls of the dice, a monumental event happens to Henry's favorite player that casts a darkness around the events throughout the rest of the book. As depressing (or maybe boring) as this all sounds, Coover's style and tone is consistently comical, always engaged in a kind of hyper-play-by-play of all the moments of "high baseball drama". In fact, the outrageous inventiveness and detail that Coover manages to weave around all of the specific pitches, plays, innings, games, and player personas makes this a funny and remarkably fascinating read.
