University of Virginia Library

Baseball God

Christian History, Game Of Chance

Ed.

By James

Robert Coover, like William
Gass, explores cosmic themes with
a frightening earnestness In The
Universal Baseball Association, Inc.,
J. Henry Waugh, Prop. The novel
treats in a semi-allegorical way the
origin and nature of religion. It says
something about our view of
history and where man and god
stands in relation to it.

J. Henry Waugh is a lonely
middle-aged accountant with an
inventive mind given to an interest
in mechanical laws and elaborate
system of chance and probability
who has invented a dice game that
is like baseball. He "play" the game
in his spare time, and develops a
long history of players and records.
Time for the players is not Mr.
Waugh's time. He can go through
several seasons of baseball schedules
in a week. As the book progresses,
however, the game takes control of
Mr. Waugh and reality and illusion
become undifferentiated.

In the history of Mr. Waugh's
baseball league, things went well in
the beginning. But a period of
dullness sets in and to combat it he
brings forth Damon Rutherford, an
"All-American," a player Mr.
Waugh warmly identifies with, a
Christ who will all and keep
the game exciting. Through an
Extraordinary Occurrence, however,
Mr. Rutherford is killed by the
dice. Mr. Waugh refuses to cheat, to
throw the dice against that isn't the
game.

Quit The Game

The game deteriorates after Mr.
Rutherford's death and Mr.
Waugh's life begins to fall apart. He
wonders.

So what were his possible
strategies? He could quit
the game. Burn it. But what
would that do to him? Odd
thing about an operation like
this league: once you set it in
motion, you were yourself
somehow launched into the
same orbit; there was growth
in the making of it, development
but there was also a
defining of the outer edges.
Moreover, the urge to annihilate
- he'd felt it before - somehow alien to
him, and he didn't trust it.
And yet: what else could he
do?

Baseball mass

The final chapter finds the
players re-enacting the death of Mr.
Rutherford, having a kind of
baseball mass, playing out the game
that has no meaning for Mr. Waugh
any more. He is still there, shaking
the dice, but the joy is gone; the
future has become as unknowable
as the past.

Questions History

Like Vonnegut, Exley, Gass and
others, Mr. Coover questions history
in this novel, but it is a
Christian history which is questioned.
The re-enacting of Mr.
Rutherford's senseless death is
meaningless for both the players
and their Master-Waugh. The
players stand around and speculate,
"I'm afraid, Gringo, that God exists
and he is a nut." History cannot be
relived, only recreated. The game
continues, but even Mr. Waugh is
undecided as to its future: perhaps
he should find a different hobby.
This one hasn't been too successful,
people have simply misunderstood.

Great-Dice-Thrower

Though the Great-Dice-Thrower
may be disinterested and disillusioned,
we must still play the
game: "I don't know if there's
really a record-keeper up there or
not, Paunch. But even if there
weren't, I think we'd have to play
the game as though there were."
Once the fallacy of history can be
destroyed and seen through, the
present becomes relevant and meaningful:
"...it's all irrelevant, it
doesn't even matter that he's going
to die, all that counts is that he is
here and here's the Man and here's
the boys and there's the crowd, the
sun, the noise." The imagination
and the life it produces, both real
and illusionary, is beautiful; the
earth is a pretty fine place to be if
you stop looking for signs and
simply live, "Damon holds the
baseball up ...it is hard and white
and alive in sun. He laughs. It's
beautiful, that ball."

***

The Universal Baseball Association,
Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., Robert
Coover, Random House, 1968;
Signet Books (paperback), $0.75.