This article by Daniel Roberts originally appeared on September 8, 2017, in the Paris Review.
Robert Coover’s oft-forgotten 1968 baseball novel, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., opens in the middle of a game: “Bottom half of the seventh, Brock’s boy had made it through another inning unscratched, one! two! three! Twenty-one down and just six outs to go!” Brock is Brock Rutherford, retired star pitcher, and Brock’s “boy” is his son, the rookie pitcher Damon Rutherford.
But Brock doesn’t exist, Damon doesn’t exist, and the game isn’t real. It’s being played out with dice and a pencil by Coover’s protagonist, Henry Waugh, alone in his kitchen.
The Universal Baseball Association is a novel about fantasy baseball, though the word “fantasy” never once appears in the book.
