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The Iowa Baseball Confederacy
Bearing W.P. Kinsella's trademark combination of "sweet-natured prose and a richly imagined world" (Philadelphia Inquirer), The Iowa Baseball Confederacy tells the story of Gideon Clark, a man on a quest. He is out to prove to the world that the indomitable Chicago Cubs traveled to Iowa in the summer of 1908 for an exhibition game against an amateur league, the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. But a simple game somehow turned into a titanic battle of more than two thousand innings, and Gideon Clark struggles to set the record straight on this infamous game that no one else believes ever happened.
310 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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About the author
W.P. Kinsella
56 books233 followersWilliam Patrick Kinsella, OC, OBC was a Canadian novelist and short story writer. His work has often concerned baseball and Canada's First Nations and other Canadian issues.
William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.
Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.
In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.
William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, Lieberman in Love, was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.
Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in a long hiatus in his fiction-writing career until the publication of the novel, Butterfly Winter. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Near the end of his life he lived in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara (d. 2012), and occasionally wrote articles for various newspapers.
In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
W.P. Kinsella elected to die on September 16, 2016 with the assistance of a physician.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 184 reviews
December 2, 2016
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by W. P. Kinsella is a group selection in the baseball book group for December 2016. Filled with magical imagery and historical anecdotes about both baseball and American history, the novel reflects Kinsella's love for the game. Using baseball as a metaphor to express time immemorial, Kinsella pens a fun read enjoyed by baseball fans everywhere.
Gideon Clarke of Onamata, Iowa has been carrying the secret of the Iowa Baseball Confederacy since his father passed it onto him upon his own passing. According to his father's lore, the Major League champion Chicago Cubs visited Big Inning, Iowa to play a double header against the Confederacy all-stars on July 4, 1908. Yet, the history has been erased to all but Gideon, and in 1978, he is determined to prove that his father's lifelong quest was not for naught. With help from his close friend Stan Rogalski and neighbors John and Marylyle Baron, Clarke sets out to verify the existence of the Iowa Baseball Confederacy once and for all.
Onamata, named for an Indian princess who once roamed the Iowa countryside, contains cracks in the time continuum. Along the Baseball Spur which runs between Iowa City and Onamata, Gideon and Stan are zapped back in time to July 3, 1908 and play a pivotal role in the game that is about to take place. Instanteously, their clothing, money, and mannerisms are changed from the norms of 1978 to those of 1908. If the book had not been published first, I would have thought that Kinsella took some of ideas from the classic 1980s film Back to the Future, which also alters the time continuum. Because I am familiar with the film, some of the time travel elements seemed forced to me, even though the story is a fun read.
Kinsella employs even higher levels of magical realism in the form of Indian warrior Drifting Away who moves the heavens in order to determine the outcome of the game. He creates memorable characters in both past and present to show that Onamata is not a normal town, and that time slows as long as there is a baseball game to be played. From Gideon's present day wife Sunny who is mysterious as smoke to Elder Womple of the Church of Time Immemorial to Missy Baron who becomes a central point of the novel, Kinsella's cast of characters is unforgettable. Even Theodore Roosevelt and Leonardo DiVinci make cameo appearances to demonstrate how widespread the love of baseball is, especially in small towns.
Growing up, Field of Dreams based on Kinsella's Shoeless Joe is a movie I held dear to my heart. In its core, the message is that baseball makes up the fabric of the United States. Even though The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is a charming book in its own right, it is not at Shoeless Joe's level for me. It seems that Kinsella almost inserted too much magical realism and attempted to do too much in his novel whereas a simpler plot would have sufficed to tell his message. W. P. Kinsella passed away this year, and his love of baseball was evident in all of his writing. He will be sorely missed by baseball fans and book lovers, myself included. I look forward to reading other novels he left for us, and hope they measure close to Shoeless Joe standards. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is a fun baseball read in its own right, perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon in the offseason, for which I rate 3.75 stars.
Gideon Clarke of Onamata, Iowa has been carrying the secret of the Iowa Baseball Confederacy since his father passed it onto him upon his own passing. According to his father's lore, the Major League champion Chicago Cubs visited Big Inning, Iowa to play a double header against the Confederacy all-stars on July 4, 1908. Yet, the history has been erased to all but Gideon, and in 1978, he is determined to prove that his father's lifelong quest was not for naught. With help from his close friend Stan Rogalski and neighbors John and Marylyle Baron, Clarke sets out to verify the existence of the Iowa Baseball Confederacy once and for all.
Onamata, named for an Indian princess who once roamed the Iowa countryside, contains cracks in the time continuum. Along the Baseball Spur which runs between Iowa City and Onamata, Gideon and Stan are zapped back in time to July 3, 1908 and play a pivotal role in the game that is about to take place. Instanteously, their clothing, money, and mannerisms are changed from the norms of 1978 to those of 1908. If the book had not been published first, I would have thought that Kinsella took some of ideas from the classic 1980s film Back to the Future, which also alters the time continuum. Because I am familiar with the film, some of the time travel elements seemed forced to me, even though the story is a fun read.
Kinsella employs even higher levels of magical realism in the form of Indian warrior Drifting Away who moves the heavens in order to determine the outcome of the game. He creates memorable characters in both past and present to show that Onamata is not a normal town, and that time slows as long as there is a baseball game to be played. From Gideon's present day wife Sunny who is mysterious as smoke to Elder Womple of the Church of Time Immemorial to Missy Baron who becomes a central point of the novel, Kinsella's cast of characters is unforgettable. Even Theodore Roosevelt and Leonardo DiVinci make cameo appearances to demonstrate how widespread the love of baseball is, especially in small towns.
Growing up, Field of Dreams based on Kinsella's Shoeless Joe is a movie I held dear to my heart. In its core, the message is that baseball makes up the fabric of the United States. Even though The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is a charming book in its own right, it is not at Shoeless Joe's level for me. It seems that Kinsella almost inserted too much magical realism and attempted to do too much in his novel whereas a simpler plot would have sufficed to tell his message. W. P. Kinsella passed away this year, and his love of baseball was evident in all of his writing. He will be sorely missed by baseball fans and book lovers, myself included. I look forward to reading other novels he left for us, and hope they measure close to Shoeless Joe standards. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is a fun baseball read in its own right, perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon in the offseason, for which I rate 3.75 stars.
August 8, 2022
Kinsella is the Gabriel Garcia Marquez of baseball. The way he weaves words together to frame the national pastime and the American heartland in magical realism is beautiful.
August 19, 2020
This is a fascinating novel. Stylistically it’s unique and reads like a dream — anachronistic with heavy doses of magic realism. There are no antagonists nor villains in this story. There is a cataclysmic flood that happens during a 2,000 inning baseball game that adds some drama. The characters, beyond the protagonist, are not well developed — similar to Kinsella’s more famous novel ‘Shoeless Joe’ where baseball ghosts also converge on a ball field in central Iowa .
The only real conflict in the novel comes, in a Kafkaesque manner, from Gideon’s inability to convince anyone that the Iowa Baseball Confederacy was a real team. After a life time of Gideon and his father before him trying to convince baseball executives in Chicago that this Iowa team was a part of history, the anachronistic game against the real Chicago Cubs plays out across the final chapters.
There are many unquestionably beautiful passages in this book. On numerous occasions, I returned to visions of W.P. Kinsella sitting at an old desk typing up his manuscript — a la Dalton Trumbo or Ernest Hemingway. It has a blue-collar workmanship to it. Kinsella has a story to tell and wants to bring you along for the ride.
4.5 stars. While not a lengthy novel at 300 pages, it would have been perfect with a hundred fewer pages. And that 2,000 inning baseball game, yes you read that right, could have been pared down too!
The only real conflict in the novel comes, in a Kafkaesque manner, from Gideon’s inability to convince anyone that the Iowa Baseball Confederacy was a real team. After a life time of Gideon and his father before him trying to convince baseball executives in Chicago that this Iowa team was a part of history, the anachronistic game against the real Chicago Cubs plays out across the final chapters.
There are many unquestionably beautiful passages in this book. On numerous occasions, I returned to visions of W.P. Kinsella sitting at an old desk typing up his manuscript — a la Dalton Trumbo or Ernest Hemingway. It has a blue-collar workmanship to it. Kinsella has a story to tell and wants to bring you along for the ride.
4.5 stars. While not a lengthy novel at 300 pages, it would have been perfect with a hundred fewer pages. And that 2,000 inning baseball game, yes you read that right, could have been pared down too!
December 8, 2016
"I won't be moved". If this novel is typical of magical realism, I won't be moved to read another example. While the plot had the making of a good story in the mold of Darryl Brock's "If I never get back", the fantasy and mysticism of Kinsella's book falls flat. It is repetitious and even a baseball fanatic such as I can not deal with a 2,000 inning game. Maybe it is beyond my intelligence level or my ability to appreciate magical realism, but for whatever reason, it doesn't work for me.
April 7, 2011
W.P Kinsella is not your normal author. He's Canadian, and likes to write about baseball. But it's baseball with a twist. As a metaphor for life, and with some magic woven into it. If you think "Field of Dreams" you are close. It was based on another of his books.
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is my favorite of the Kinsella books I've read. It has a deep and intricate weave of characters and events. At the same time it has some quirky episodes that will pop into your head when you least expect it. Like the doctor examining a patient by shouting questions and answers back and forth that pops into my head every time I see a baseball field. You will know what I mean when you read it.
I have read the book at least three times, but it's probably more like five. Every time with great enjoyment, and with awe for the way W.P. Kinsella paints the story in front of your eyes. Actually, writing this review makes me want to read the book again.
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is my favorite of the Kinsella books I've read. It has a deep and intricate weave of characters and events. At the same time it has some quirky episodes that will pop into your head when you least expect it. Like the doctor examining a patient by shouting questions and answers back and forth that pops into my head every time I see a baseball field. You will know what I mean when you read it.
I have read the book at least three times, but it's probably more like five. Every time with great enjoyment, and with awe for the way W.P. Kinsella paints the story in front of your eyes. Actually, writing this review makes me want to read the book again.
June 21, 2018
I read this book 20 years ago and found it to be a major disappointment this time around. I was interested in the time travel aspects of the book, but the actual story of what happens when the narrator is transported back to 1908 is too fanciful for belief - heck it stretches the boundaries of mystical realism. Of the time travel baseball books that I have read, this one really is the weakest. I think that is all I need to say about this book.
February 13, 2013
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.
No setback, however, can shake his determination or dampen his near-religious fervor. At one point the protagonist of W.P. Kinsella's The Iowa Baseball Confederacy claims to feel like a prophet. Puppet, however, might be the more accurate descriptor.
His crusade was first waged by his father, Matthew Clarke, who like Gideon came into the knowledge of the Confederacy suddenly and completely, an encyclopedia of names and figures implanted in his brain by a lightning strike the night he met the girl of his dreams. Despite a complete lack of supporting evidence, Matthew submits his narrative of the league in the form of a thesis that is roundly rejected as fantasy by the University of Iowa's Department of History, which recommends he instead consider publishing it as fiction.
Gideon inherits the monomania at age 16, when his father is killed by a foul ball. Suddenly the ramblings of his eccentric dad make sense. Unable to find proof of a game that allegedly went on for weeks, he turns his focus to the larger-than-life Indian warrior, Drifting Away, who is so prominent in Matthew's account of the Confederacy.
Drifting Away was there when the land was cleared to make a baseball field on the outskirts of the town once known as Big Inning but later renamed Onamata, in honor of Drifting Away's wife. He was also present the night Matthew was struck by lightning, in essence receiving his call to enlist in the Indian's battle to be reunited with Onamata's spirit. It is Drifting Away's obsession that kindles that of both father and son Clarke. He toys with their hearts as well, infatuating them with mysterious women who drift in and out of their lives so painfully they spend half their time pining for the wives they can't keep home.
Carrying nothing but his trumpet, Gideon slips through a crack in time-confirming another of his father's wild theories-traveling from 1978 with childhood friend and minor league lifer Stan Rogalski and arriving exactly 70 years earlier, the night before the Cubs come to town. Mistaken for an albino because of his long, white hair, he's adopted by the Confederacy as a good-luck charm and forced to sit on the team's bench as they battle day after day in the pouring rain, somehow matching whatever runs Frank Chance's Chicago club scores, locally renowned hurler Arsenic O'Reilly keeping pace with Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown inning after inning.
When play is suspended the first night, Gideon encounters a young woman named Sarah who looks so much like his wife, Sunny, that he can't help but fall instantly for her. Even when Drifting Away threatens his life, he refuses to give her up, meeting with her night after night when darkness forces the teams to retire until sunup. The game, and the rain, endure through the arrival of famed umpire Bill Klem, visits from President Theodore Roosevelt and Leonardo da Vinci (who claims to have invented baseball in 1506), the deaths of the Cubs' nasty midget mascot Little Walter and numerous players, and the entrance into the lineup of a moving statue called the Black Angel of Death (who winds up hitting .300 for the Confederacy). Torn between his desire to flee with Sarah and his need to know how the game concludes, Gideon winds up staying for the duration as 40 days of rain wash the entire town of Big Inning away. Curiosity finally satisfied, he returns home lonelier and emptier than his father ever was.
"Name me a more perfect game!" Matthew Clarke had been fond of saying to his son. "Name me a game with more possibilities for magic, wizardry, voodoo, hoodoo, enchantment, obsession, possession."
Only such a game could spawn such a book, filled with all of that and so much more that you may need to read it twice to even begin piecing together all the clues and fathom half of what Kinsella has layered into this far-reaching novel. Seemingly offhand comments early in the book take on significance that can only be understood later. Even after two readings, I want to sit down with Kinsella, as Gideon did with Drifting Away, and pepper him with questions about how this universe is really connected.
It's a bit like watching Lost. There's time travel, religious overtones, unknown hands manipulating an often inhospitable environment-all that's missing is a smoke monster. But just like Lost, you don't need to understand every last thing to marvel at the inventive storytelling. That's not to say, however, that you won't become obsessed enough to keep on digging.
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.
No setback, however, can shake his determination or dampen his near-religious fervor. At one point the protagonist of W.P. Kinsella's The Iowa Baseball Confederacy claims to feel like a prophet. Puppet, however, might be the more accurate descriptor.
His crusade was first waged by his father, Matthew Clarke, who like Gideon came into the knowledge of the Confederacy suddenly and completely, an encyclopedia of names and figures implanted in his brain by a lightning strike the night he met the girl of his dreams. Despite a complete lack of supporting evidence, Matthew submits his narrative of the league in the form of a thesis that is roundly rejected as fantasy by the University of Iowa's Department of History, which recommends he instead consider publishing it as fiction.
Gideon inherits the monomania at age 16, when his father is killed by a foul ball. Suddenly the ramblings of his eccentric dad make sense. Unable to find proof of a game that allegedly went on for weeks, he turns his focus to the larger-than-life Indian warrior, Drifting Away, who is so prominent in Matthew's account of the Confederacy.
Drifting Away was there when the land was cleared to make a baseball field on the outskirts of the town once known as Big Inning but later renamed Onamata, in honor of Drifting Away's wife. He was also present the night Matthew was struck by lightning, in essence receiving his call to enlist in the Indian's battle to be reunited with Onamata's spirit. It is Drifting Away's obsession that kindles that of both father and son Clarke. He toys with their hearts as well, infatuating them with mysterious women who drift in and out of their lives so painfully they spend half their time pining for the wives they can't keep home.
Carrying nothing but his trumpet, Gideon slips through a crack in time-confirming another of his father's wild theories-traveling from 1978 with childhood friend and minor league lifer Stan Rogalski and arriving exactly 70 years earlier, the night before the Cubs come to town. Mistaken for an albino because of his long, white hair, he's adopted by the Confederacy as a good-luck charm and forced to sit on the team's bench as they battle day after day in the pouring rain, somehow matching whatever runs Frank Chance's Chicago club scores, locally renowned hurler Arsenic O'Reilly keeping pace with Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown inning after inning.
When play is suspended the first night, Gideon encounters a young woman named Sarah who looks so much like his wife, Sunny, that he can't help but fall instantly for her. Even when Drifting Away threatens his life, he refuses to give her up, meeting with her night after night when darkness forces the teams to retire until sunup. The game, and the rain, endure through the arrival of famed umpire Bill Klem, visits from President Theodore Roosevelt and Leonardo da Vinci (who claims to have invented baseball in 1506), the deaths of the Cubs' nasty midget mascot Little Walter and numerous players, and the entrance into the lineup of a moving statue called the Black Angel of Death (who winds up hitting .300 for the Confederacy). Torn between his desire to flee with Sarah and his need to know how the game concludes, Gideon winds up staying for the duration as 40 days of rain wash the entire town of Big Inning away. Curiosity finally satisfied, he returns home lonelier and emptier than his father ever was.
"Name me a more perfect game!" Matthew Clarke had been fond of saying to his son. "Name me a game with more possibilities for magic, wizardry, voodoo, hoodoo, enchantment, obsession, possession."
Only such a game could spawn such a book, filled with all of that and so much more that you may need to read it twice to even begin piecing together all the clues and fathom half of what Kinsella has layered into this far-reaching novel. Seemingly offhand comments early in the book take on significance that can only be understood later. Even after two readings, I want to sit down with Kinsella, as Gideon did with Drifting Away, and pepper him with questions about how this universe is really connected.
It's a bit like watching Lost. There's time travel, religious overtones, unknown hands manipulating an often inhospitable environment-all that's missing is a smoke monster. But just like Lost, you don't need to understand every last thing to marvel at the inventive storytelling. That's not to say, however, that you won't become obsessed enough to keep on digging.
March 11, 2012
It took me a long time to warm up to this story - at first it just seemed creepy and sad. I was also disappointed to discover that it was straight-up magical fantasy, though I wouldn't have minded had I known that going in. I enjoyed the baseball parts. I was utterly confused by the ending - not a clue what that was.
October 31, 2025
W.P. Kinsella has written a magical timeless tale of baseball and dreams realized, promise fulfilled and unfulfilled, love lost and found, tragedy, devotion, the power of innocence and myth to make and unmake the world, and the thread of humanity that unites them all.
The book opens with Gideon Clarke letting us know that he has inherited his father’s legacy: the absolute, unflinching certainty that a baseball game of mythic proportions was played in 1908 between the Chicago Cubs and the Iowa Baseball Confederacy in his home town of Big Inning, before it was called Onamata—a game and a Confederacy no one else seems to remember. More strangely, no one remembers that their home town was once named Big Inning before an apocalyptic flood of ‘08. How to explain this apparent state of universal amnesia? “It is a fact,” his father repeats to young Gideon endlessly “that there are cracks in time—weaknesses—fissures, if you like—in the gauzy dreamland that separates the past from the present. Time is out of kilter here in Johnson County; that’s my conclusion,” his father explains. “but if something is out of kilter, there’s no reason it can’t be fixed. And when it’s fixed I’ll be proven right.” “there are some of us who see and hear more than they were ever meant to” Gideon writes. “My father was one of those. As am I.”
Through his youth, his father’s obsession with proving the historicity of the exhibition game and the Confederacy that conceived of it is merely the prating of an adult to a young child, a litany that can be accepted uncritically when one is young but which becomes embarrassing as a child comes of age as a young man. However, he is there when his dad is killed by a fast ball sent over the visitor’s dugout, and in that instant his father’s entire compendium of history, folklore, knowledge of the Confederacy, the great Flood that washed Big Inning away, and the strange game, played out over an amazing number of innings and 40 days, is deposited part and parcel into his consciousness and Gideon embarks on the quixotic mission of proving it all true!!
This book is impregnated through and through with Kinsella’s devotion to baseball, a game that is so much a part of the fabric of what it means to grow up in America. It is love pure and simple for the cosmic idea of play for the joy of play itself, for the artistry of motion and dimensions and cycles of the past, present, and future that intersect and play out their parts on a stage that is eternal.
The book opens with Gideon Clarke letting us know that he has inherited his father’s legacy: the absolute, unflinching certainty that a baseball game of mythic proportions was played in 1908 between the Chicago Cubs and the Iowa Baseball Confederacy in his home town of Big Inning, before it was called Onamata—a game and a Confederacy no one else seems to remember. More strangely, no one remembers that their home town was once named Big Inning before an apocalyptic flood of ‘08. How to explain this apparent state of universal amnesia? “It is a fact,” his father repeats to young Gideon endlessly “that there are cracks in time—weaknesses—fissures, if you like—in the gauzy dreamland that separates the past from the present. Time is out of kilter here in Johnson County; that’s my conclusion,” his father explains. “but if something is out of kilter, there’s no reason it can’t be fixed. And when it’s fixed I’ll be proven right.” “there are some of us who see and hear more than they were ever meant to” Gideon writes. “My father was one of those. As am I.”
Through his youth, his father’s obsession with proving the historicity of the exhibition game and the Confederacy that conceived of it is merely the prating of an adult to a young child, a litany that can be accepted uncritically when one is young but which becomes embarrassing as a child comes of age as a young man. However, he is there when his dad is killed by a fast ball sent over the visitor’s dugout, and in that instant his father’s entire compendium of history, folklore, knowledge of the Confederacy, the great Flood that washed Big Inning away, and the strange game, played out over an amazing number of innings and 40 days, is deposited part and parcel into his consciousness and Gideon embarks on the quixotic mission of proving it all true!!
This book is impregnated through and through with Kinsella’s devotion to baseball, a game that is so much a part of the fabric of what it means to grow up in America. It is love pure and simple for the cosmic idea of play for the joy of play itself, for the artistry of motion and dimensions and cycles of the past, present, and future that intersect and play out their parts on a stage that is eternal.
August 27, 2009
Lets see. Where to begin...
There are levels of suspending reality which separate some works of fiction from others. There is the level of Harry Potter, in which we have to believe that magic exists, there is the level of Chronicles of Narnia in which we have to believe in portals to other worlds, and there are pretty simple suspensions of reality like Forrest Gump, in which we have to believe that one "special" man could accomplish all of those incredible things.
Then there is the complete suspension of all concepts of what is/is not possible. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy contains something called the infinite improbability drive; as we approach infinite improbability, random stuff, like spaceships turning into flower pots, become possible.
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy starts out in the somewhat benign level of fantasy, something along the lines of WP Kinsella's best-known work, Shoeless Joe (the basis for the movie, Field of Dreams). In the latter, we are only asked to believe in a hereafter, appearances to mortals of people from the great beyond, and a little bit of time travel. Ditto for the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. Theres magic in the air and time travel is possible. Not normal, but also not infinitely improbable.
With about 100 pages left in the book, all semblance of benign, mystical fantasy gives way to no-holds-barred randomness. Lightning strikes players, Leonardo Da Vinci appears in 1908 Iowa, A statue of an angel comes to life and plays baseball, pitchers throw 2000 innings in 40 days, and a mystical 300 year old Indian who torments the main character and who himself is tormented by the spirits of his grandfathers hits a game-winning homerun using the root of a tree.
Throw in an appearance by Teddy Roosevelt, towns washing away, and a church whose members live life 12 hours ahead (or is it behind?) of everyone else, and The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is just simply too weird to qualify for the "magical story" exemption to the laws of reality.
There are levels of suspending reality which separate some works of fiction from others. There is the level of Harry Potter, in which we have to believe that magic exists, there is the level of Chronicles of Narnia in which we have to believe in portals to other worlds, and there are pretty simple suspensions of reality like Forrest Gump, in which we have to believe that one "special" man could accomplish all of those incredible things.
Then there is the complete suspension of all concepts of what is/is not possible. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy contains something called the infinite improbability drive; as we approach infinite improbability, random stuff, like spaceships turning into flower pots, become possible.
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy starts out in the somewhat benign level of fantasy, something along the lines of WP Kinsella's best-known work, Shoeless Joe (the basis for the movie, Field of Dreams). In the latter, we are only asked to believe in a hereafter, appearances to mortals of people from the great beyond, and a little bit of time travel. Ditto for the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. Theres magic in the air and time travel is possible. Not normal, but also not infinitely improbable.
With about 100 pages left in the book, all semblance of benign, mystical fantasy gives way to no-holds-barred randomness. Lightning strikes players, Leonardo Da Vinci appears in 1908 Iowa, A statue of an angel comes to life and plays baseball, pitchers throw 2000 innings in 40 days, and a mystical 300 year old Indian who torments the main character and who himself is tormented by the spirits of his grandfathers hits a game-winning homerun using the root of a tree.
Throw in an appearance by Teddy Roosevelt, towns washing away, and a church whose members live life 12 hours ahead (or is it behind?) of everyone else, and The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is just simply too weird to qualify for the "magical story" exemption to the laws of reality.
March 10, 2018
Dear reader, please read this wonderful tribute to Americana (even though it was written by a Canadian). It is one of my three favorite books ever and I can't find anyone I know who has read it...
I read it for at least the fourth time in 2016, in honor of W. P. Kinsella's passing, as well as the fact that the Cubs played the Indians in the World Series - because that's what happens in this book, a decidedly superior work to Kinsella's more famous Shoeless Joe (a.k.a., Field of Dreams). Lyrical and magical, salty and profound, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy sees in the early days of baseball a genuine contribution to human civilization, and weaves a wondrous baseball tall tale with a magic realist version of Native American legend.
When his father is tragically killed by a foul ball at a Brewers game, the hero finds himself suddenly the possessor of a brain full of statistics and facts about a short-lived amateur league in Iowa in the first decade of the 20th century, that took on the reigning World Champion 1908 Cubs, of Tinker to Evers to Chance and Three-Finger Brown. No one else remembers, acknowledges, or cares to talk about such a league or such an exhibition. Our hero is given the privilege of traveling back in time to witness the League first hand and learn why its existence has been expunged from human memory. But he soon makes an enemy of Drifting Away, who has his own reasons for interfering in the game...
At this point, I remember everything that happens but I still love it every time. I only wish I could read it for the first time again...
I read it for at least the fourth time in 2016, in honor of W. P. Kinsella's passing, as well as the fact that the Cubs played the Indians in the World Series - because that's what happens in this book, a decidedly superior work to Kinsella's more famous Shoeless Joe (a.k.a., Field of Dreams). Lyrical and magical, salty and profound, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy sees in the early days of baseball a genuine contribution to human civilization, and weaves a wondrous baseball tall tale with a magic realist version of Native American legend.
When his father is tragically killed by a foul ball at a Brewers game, the hero finds himself suddenly the possessor of a brain full of statistics and facts about a short-lived amateur league in Iowa in the first decade of the 20th century, that took on the reigning World Champion 1908 Cubs, of Tinker to Evers to Chance and Three-Finger Brown. No one else remembers, acknowledges, or cares to talk about such a league or such an exhibition. Our hero is given the privilege of traveling back in time to witness the League first hand and learn why its existence has been expunged from human memory. But he soon makes an enemy of Drifting Away, who has his own reasons for interfering in the game...
At this point, I remember everything that happens but I still love it every time. I only wish I could read it for the first time again...
November 4, 2015
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy was about baseball and took place in Iowa, both pros in my world. However, it also involved a lot of magic and science fiction bullshit, which is a definite con.
The story follows a man whose father has passed on a bunch of information about this supposed baseball league that existed and beat the 1908 Chicago Cubs (one of the best baseball teams in history). The problem is that no one but this man and his father believe it exists. The son ends up losing his wife and family, so obsessed is he with proving that the league existed.
Eventually he travels through this wrinkle in time, with his best friend, and they end up in Big Inning, Iowa, in 1908. He's finally able to see "The Game," yet finds that he must sacrifice an awful lot in order to do so.
This book was pleasant to read, though there wasn't much character development. I had the impression that it was written for a young adult audience, though I believe that had more to do with the author's ability, and not his intentions.
In summation : I enjoyed reading this book, despite the fact that I normally dislike magic/SciFi and am typically anti non-character driven stories. There are about a million people I would recommend it to, though I think you'd have to be a Cubs fan, or at least a baseball fan, to really enjoy it.
The story follows a man whose father has passed on a bunch of information about this supposed baseball league that existed and beat the 1908 Chicago Cubs (one of the best baseball teams in history). The problem is that no one but this man and his father believe it exists. The son ends up losing his wife and family, so obsessed is he with proving that the league existed.
Eventually he travels through this wrinkle in time, with his best friend, and they end up in Big Inning, Iowa, in 1908. He's finally able to see "The Game," yet finds that he must sacrifice an awful lot in order to do so.
This book was pleasant to read, though there wasn't much character development. I had the impression that it was written for a young adult audience, though I believe that had more to do with the author's ability, and not his intentions.
In summation : I enjoyed reading this book, despite the fact that I normally dislike magic/SciFi and am typically anti non-character driven stories. There are about a million people I would recommend it to, though I think you'd have to be a Cubs fan, or at least a baseball fan, to really enjoy it.
April 10, 2014
Can anything capture the essence of life the way baseball does? Kinsella captures the essence of baseball here. There is no clock, extra innings can go on as long as needed (minus interference from Bud Selig). Timeless is what best describes baseball, or perhaps magical... I'll leave it up for debate as any good baseball aficionado would do. If you are into the stuff of legends, this book is for you.
July 31, 2013
In Kinsella's own words, the book was "mystical, musical babble" with way too much mystical and babble for my taste. I am a huge baseball fan, and loved "Field of Dreams" but would not personally recommend this one. I'm pretty sure I don't even understand how the book ends (which is frustrating after laboring through), but that could just be a personal problem!
November 1, 2020
I first read "Shoeless Joe" (the basis for "Field of Dreams") probably close to five or six years ago and, when I saw this title listed as W.P. Kinsella's other major novel, wanted to find it. I only tracked down my copy at a used bookstore about a year ago, and never got around to reading it until just a couple of days ago (right on the eve of Halloween and on Halloween day, finishing it last night). Seems all kinds of appropriate to have read this over that holiday, in retrospect.
"The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" is the story of the world's longest baseball game (an exhibition between the 1908 Chicago Cubs and a collection of "all-stars" from an Iowa baseball league) and the repercussions of messing with time and time travel. The protagonist, Gideon Clarke, is "gifted" with the memory of the league, including stats and player names, when his father dies from a line drive at a Milwaukee Braves game in the early Sixties. Gideon, who has white hair but isn't an albino (this comes up in the novel a lot), obsesses over whether the fated game between the "Iowa Baseball Confederacy" and the Cubs, slated for the Fourth of July in 1908, actually took place or not. Continuing his father's quest, Gideon eventually finds a portal through time to travel back to the day of the game, and as it unfolds over countless innings and forty days and nights, he realizes that there's far more at stake here than a baseball game.
Kinsella's work, based on my readings of only two of his works, seems to center not so much on baseball as obsessiveness and the ways it can be normalized by obsessing over sports. In a world where ESPN is a 24-7 resource for all things sports, this makes perfect sense. His protagonists are haunted by their fathers (in the case of the protagonist in "Shoeless Joe," by the way in which he and his father ended their relationship on bad terms; here, it's the protagonist cursed by his father's obsession and unable to carry on his own life, with a transient wife who never can stay with him before taking to the road again). In many ways, this is a better book than "Shoeless Joe," though that book is also pretty freaking good (and "Field of Dreams" is an okay movie). This book is perhaps more experimental (granted, there's no J.D. Salinger deciding to become one with the players in the field of dreams, but it does feature a cameo by Teddy Roosevelt trying and failing to hit off the ace pitcher of the Iowa team). It's also got a lot of mythology to it, whether in Biblical flooding or Native American spirituality. I can see why Hollywood never tried to make a movie of this one (if they did and I'm just ignorant of it, my apologies).
This is a profound, fun, and entertaining read, beginning to end, and the ways in which Kinsella plays with time travel are fun for someone who grew up with the "Back to the Future" movies as contemporary cinema. I would say seek this out if you're a fan of baseball literature, or just plain great literature. I doubt you'll be disappointed in the time you invest in this.
"The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" is the story of the world's longest baseball game (an exhibition between the 1908 Chicago Cubs and a collection of "all-stars" from an Iowa baseball league) and the repercussions of messing with time and time travel. The protagonist, Gideon Clarke, is "gifted" with the memory of the league, including stats and player names, when his father dies from a line drive at a Milwaukee Braves game in the early Sixties. Gideon, who has white hair but isn't an albino (this comes up in the novel a lot), obsesses over whether the fated game between the "Iowa Baseball Confederacy" and the Cubs, slated for the Fourth of July in 1908, actually took place or not. Continuing his father's quest, Gideon eventually finds a portal through time to travel back to the day of the game, and as it unfolds over countless innings and forty days and nights, he realizes that there's far more at stake here than a baseball game.
Kinsella's work, based on my readings of only two of his works, seems to center not so much on baseball as obsessiveness and the ways it can be normalized by obsessing over sports. In a world where ESPN is a 24-7 resource for all things sports, this makes perfect sense. His protagonists are haunted by their fathers (in the case of the protagonist in "Shoeless Joe," by the way in which he and his father ended their relationship on bad terms; here, it's the protagonist cursed by his father's obsession and unable to carry on his own life, with a transient wife who never can stay with him before taking to the road again). In many ways, this is a better book than "Shoeless Joe," though that book is also pretty freaking good (and "Field of Dreams" is an okay movie). This book is perhaps more experimental (granted, there's no J.D. Salinger deciding to become one with the players in the field of dreams, but it does feature a cameo by Teddy Roosevelt trying and failing to hit off the ace pitcher of the Iowa team). It's also got a lot of mythology to it, whether in Biblical flooding or Native American spirituality. I can see why Hollywood never tried to make a movie of this one (if they did and I'm just ignorant of it, my apologies).
This is a profound, fun, and entertaining read, beginning to end, and the ways in which Kinsella plays with time travel are fun for someone who grew up with the "Back to the Future" movies as contemporary cinema. I would say seek this out if you're a fan of baseball literature, or just plain great literature. I doubt you'll be disappointed in the time you invest in this.
February 8, 2017
As Jackie Robinson once said, “ The way I figured it, I was even with baseball and baseball with me. The game had done much for me, and I had done much for it.” This quote explains how the sport of baseball can change someone’s life. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by W.P. Kinsella is a novel that illustrates the journey of life through the magic of time travel and the game of baseball itself. One man by the name of Gideon Clark is on a mission to solve baseball past passed down from his father. Through the literature W.P Kinsella combines the ideas of magic, love, friendship, time, and baseball all into one to describe what life is really about, following lifetime dreams and finding where your place is in the world.
The start to this novel entails the story of Gideon’s father and how he came to love the game of baseball from the generations of family baseball. Some main characters of this story include Gideon and his best friend whom he time travels with named Stan to prove baseball past. For years Clark has been trying to prove what his father’s life goal that the Chicago Cubs played a baseball game over two thousand innings against the Iowa Baseball Confederacy in the summer of 1908. Gideon and Stan time travel to the period of baseball where the game was held in Iowa only to come across some conflicts. Some conflicts in this novel include when and where they will go back to their hometown and Gideon struggles with love, who and what to chose. Both characters find out how baseball, love, friendship and the aspect of magic changes one’s life.
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy was a novel with a good storyline to begin with, but the story dragged along the way. W.P. Kinsella definitely had positive intentions with this novel to start with because of the overall idea, baseball and the aspect of magical fiction. The characters were also very easy to relate to because of their daily struggles through life, but some parts and specifics slowed the novel down at moments. Some of these moments include the beginning of the storyline where it was difficult to follow if the author was explaining Gideon’s life or his father’s. Kinsella could have enhanced the more exciting moments to this novel such as the parts of the time travel and the game itself rather than these moments that were confusing and slowed the novel for the reader.
Furthermore, this W.P. Kinsella novel, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy illustrates life through baseball similar to another piece of literature. “Field of Dreams” also by Kinsella is a story about baseball and also of the fantasy-sports film category. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy can appeal to many different types of people. One example could be if you are a huge baseball fan, or someone that enjoys magical fiction this book is a perfect read. On the contrary, if one does not enjoy sports or the aspect of fiction in novels this book might not be as enjoyable. W.P.’s baseball novel can be liked by many, but more specifically people who enjoy stories with sports influences.
Throughout the duration of this novel baseball is the key focus by the Canadian author. Which is also mixed with many other features such as magic to fuse key events incorporated throughout the storyline. This story can be enjoyable if one has an interest in the game of baseball, magic, and friendship. W.P. Kinsella combines the ideas of baseball and magic into a wonderful novel that is a sure read for sports fans.
The start to this novel entails the story of Gideon’s father and how he came to love the game of baseball from the generations of family baseball. Some main characters of this story include Gideon and his best friend whom he time travels with named Stan to prove baseball past. For years Clark has been trying to prove what his father’s life goal that the Chicago Cubs played a baseball game over two thousand innings against the Iowa Baseball Confederacy in the summer of 1908. Gideon and Stan time travel to the period of baseball where the game was held in Iowa only to come across some conflicts. Some conflicts in this novel include when and where they will go back to their hometown and Gideon struggles with love, who and what to chose. Both characters find out how baseball, love, friendship and the aspect of magic changes one’s life.
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy was a novel with a good storyline to begin with, but the story dragged along the way. W.P. Kinsella definitely had positive intentions with this novel to start with because of the overall idea, baseball and the aspect of magical fiction. The characters were also very easy to relate to because of their daily struggles through life, but some parts and specifics slowed the novel down at moments. Some of these moments include the beginning of the storyline where it was difficult to follow if the author was explaining Gideon’s life or his father’s. Kinsella could have enhanced the more exciting moments to this novel such as the parts of the time travel and the game itself rather than these moments that were confusing and slowed the novel for the reader.
Furthermore, this W.P. Kinsella novel, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy illustrates life through baseball similar to another piece of literature. “Field of Dreams” also by Kinsella is a story about baseball and also of the fantasy-sports film category. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy can appeal to many different types of people. One example could be if you are a huge baseball fan, or someone that enjoys magical fiction this book is a perfect read. On the contrary, if one does not enjoy sports or the aspect of fiction in novels this book might not be as enjoyable. W.P.’s baseball novel can be liked by many, but more specifically people who enjoy stories with sports influences.
Throughout the duration of this novel baseball is the key focus by the Canadian author. Which is also mixed with many other features such as magic to fuse key events incorporated throughout the storyline. This story can be enjoyable if one has an interest in the game of baseball, magic, and friendship. W.P. Kinsella combines the ideas of baseball and magic into a wonderful novel that is a sure read for sports fans.
August 14, 2018
I was hoping for more baseball, and less Doctor Who from this book... I was a little disappointed. It reminded me of typical sci fi anthology piece that starts from a mostly realistic place, then end up in magically enhanced baseball players, mobile statues, and a time travelling Leonardo Da Vinci.
The main characters are all mostly sad people who you feel bad for and achieve no happiness but for brief moments. On the plus side, the writing is very good, and you really feel like you're there in this random baseball field in the middle of Iowa, and can picture this insane game going on... I feel like the game itself would make an absolutely fantastic Looney Tunes episode if you substituted a few of the main characters.
One thing that really bugged me is that the game was on the 4th of July. IN a book of magical Indians and cracks in time, the idea that a turn of the century baseball team would give up their traditional 4th of July double header was perhaps the most unrealistic item of all... you'd think Kinsella would know that! I kept waiting for an explaination, but none was to be had. Between that and the utter lack of resolution for the main character, I can't really see giving more than 2 stars.
The main characters are all mostly sad people who you feel bad for and achieve no happiness but for brief moments. On the plus side, the writing is very good, and you really feel like you're there in this random baseball field in the middle of Iowa, and can picture this insane game going on... I feel like the game itself would make an absolutely fantastic Looney Tunes episode if you substituted a few of the main characters.
One thing that really bugged me is that the game was on the 4th of July. IN a book of magical Indians and cracks in time, the idea that a turn of the century baseball team would give up their traditional 4th of July double header was perhaps the most unrealistic item of all... you'd think Kinsella would know that! I kept waiting for an explaination, but none was to be had. Between that and the utter lack of resolution for the main character, I can't really see giving more than 2 stars.
June 26, 2018
Light-hearted read with subtle messages about obsessions one may have, the past we wish for, and the present we don't always appreciate.
Kinsella is a clever writer who weaves together lore and legend about Iowa, the Chicago Cubs, and Native Americans into a time travel story that's hard to put down.
Book club selection read with my local library.
Kinsella is a clever writer who weaves together lore and legend about Iowa, the Chicago Cubs, and Native Americans into a time travel story that's hard to put down.
Book club selection read with my local library.
December 31, 2023
Hidden gem of a book from the author that inspired the movie Field of Dreams. Trippy book about time travel and baseball. Both things I love with all my heart. A book I’d recommend for anyone from my grandpa to my little brother would enjoy this book.
August 18, 2020
*4.5 stars*
Read
October 7, 2024Absolutely lovely. Kinsella writes about the magic of baseball like no other.
As reviewer Dan write, "Kinsella is the Gabriel Garcia Marquez of baseball." I couldn't agree more.
As reviewer Dan write, "Kinsella is the Gabriel Garcia Marquez of baseball." I couldn't agree more.
October 28, 2025
3.5 stars
I really loved the writing and descriptions, but obviously I don’t agree with a lot of what the author wrote. There are some very strange parts of the book and I felt a little uncomfortable at points. Otherwise, I enjoyed the magical realism and I could see what W.P Kinesella was getting at.
I really loved the writing and descriptions, but obviously I don’t agree with a lot of what the author wrote. There are some very strange parts of the book and I felt a little uncomfortable at points. Otherwise, I enjoyed the magical realism and I could see what W.P Kinesella was getting at.
September 9, 2009
This is the first book of Kinsella's work I have read. Being that I am a big baseball fan, and that "Field of Dreams" (based on Kinsella's novel "Shoeless Joe") is one of my favorite movies, it's kind of sad that it took me so long to get around to this.
For a rundown on the book, I use the review from Publishers Weekly via Amazon.Com:
OK, so I didn’t remember all of the above description before reading it. I had bought the book over four years ago. The part I didn’t remember was Gideon and Stan going back in time. However, that didn’t spoil me on this book at all. As a matter of fact, I think this is a great book in general, let alone “baseball” book.
What makes this more then a baseball story is the characters and what they go through. There is love. There is despair. There is unbalanced relationships. There is close relationships. There is no real happy ending. But a very satisfying ending, at least to me. There are oddities of all sorts. And we are not just talking about the fantastical elements of the story.
The fantastical idea: the disappearance of an entire baseball league is not new to fiction. One of my favorite books, “The Great American Novel” by Philip Roth also deals with this. But it’s a conspiracy that erases the third major league. But this story is more then the league disappearing, it’s an entire game, an epic game, being erased. There is a monumental struggle of spiritual proportions that leads to the disappearances.
One of the things that I liked best was how it was all handled. Most fictional stories, and movies for that matter, that tackle sports (no pun intended) usually have some element that you really wouldn’t see happen in the real world. What makes this story so well written and plotted is the idea to go beyond that. Kinsella not only did something that you wouldn’t see happen, but he exploded the idea to make the whole thing seem absurd. Not only did the strange happen, the impossible did, too. How he wrote it though made it magical, much like what happens to Gideon and Stan, the Iowa Baseball Confederacy All-Stars, the Chicago Cubs, and the rest of the city of Big Inning, Iowa. It is well beyond what could happen, yet is worked so incredibly well.
Great characters sometimes do strange things, not being able to cope with the outcome of events, maybe even just sit back and take it in, and do things that aren’t going to make them a hero. It seemed to me that this book was filled with those kind of characters. Many might disagree with me, but it was that magic again that made them all endearing. There was something that was real about them, even if I don’t think that Frank Chance would really yell as much as he did in the book. Even Teddy Roosevelt was wonderfully done by Kinsella (this now being the THIRD book of fiction I have read where Teddy’s a character, even if really, really minor in this book, only present for three pages).
I think some of my love for the book comes for my love of the game of baseball. I really enjoy stories of baseball, and especially those from those eras that were well before I was born. Even with it’s fantastical moments that would be unbelievable, this story still captured my heart. And more importantly, I think it captured the soul of the game. That’s really saying something since the story captures a lot more then just the game.
For a rundown on the book, I use the review from Publishers Weekly via Amazon.Com:
On the day he met his true love, a carnival performer named Darling Maudie, Matthew Clarke was literally struck by lightning and magically imbued with the knowledge that in 1908 the Chicago Cubs had traveled to Onamata, Iowa, to play a seemingly endless game against an all-star amateur team, the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. He spends the rest of his life trying to prove this fact to the world, even writing a dissertation on it, but no one else remembers the Confederacy or the game. When Matthew commits an imaginative suicide (by allowing himself to be hit by a stray line drive), his son Gideon, the hero of this tale, inherits his father’s obsession. With the help of an old family friend who has a glimmer of memory of the game, Gideon and a friend, Stan, travel back through time to 1908, to witness the event and to learn about the mysterious forces that caused a memory lapse in those who witnessed it.
OK, so I didn’t remember all of the above description before reading it. I had bought the book over four years ago. The part I didn’t remember was Gideon and Stan going back in time. However, that didn’t spoil me on this book at all. As a matter of fact, I think this is a great book in general, let alone “baseball” book.
What makes this more then a baseball story is the characters and what they go through. There is love. There is despair. There is unbalanced relationships. There is close relationships. There is no real happy ending. But a very satisfying ending, at least to me. There are oddities of all sorts. And we are not just talking about the fantastical elements of the story.
The fantastical idea: the disappearance of an entire baseball league is not new to fiction. One of my favorite books, “The Great American Novel” by Philip Roth also deals with this. But it’s a conspiracy that erases the third major league. But this story is more then the league disappearing, it’s an entire game, an epic game, being erased. There is a monumental struggle of spiritual proportions that leads to the disappearances.
One of the things that I liked best was how it was all handled. Most fictional stories, and movies for that matter, that tackle sports (no pun intended) usually have some element that you really wouldn’t see happen in the real world. What makes this story so well written and plotted is the idea to go beyond that. Kinsella not only did something that you wouldn’t see happen, but he exploded the idea to make the whole thing seem absurd. Not only did the strange happen, the impossible did, too. How he wrote it though made it magical, much like what happens to Gideon and Stan, the Iowa Baseball Confederacy All-Stars, the Chicago Cubs, and the rest of the city of Big Inning, Iowa. It is well beyond what could happen, yet is worked so incredibly well.
Great characters sometimes do strange things, not being able to cope with the outcome of events, maybe even just sit back and take it in, and do things that aren’t going to make them a hero. It seemed to me that this book was filled with those kind of characters. Many might disagree with me, but it was that magic again that made them all endearing. There was something that was real about them, even if I don’t think that Frank Chance would really yell as much as he did in the book. Even Teddy Roosevelt was wonderfully done by Kinsella (this now being the THIRD book of fiction I have read where Teddy’s a character, even if really, really minor in this book, only present for three pages).
I think some of my love for the book comes for my love of the game of baseball. I really enjoy stories of baseball, and especially those from those eras that were well before I was born. Even with it’s fantastical moments that would be unbelievable, this story still captured my heart. And more importantly, I think it captured the soul of the game. That’s really saying something since the story captures a lot more then just the game.
March 22, 2025
I have 3 main gripes with this book: the beginning, the middle, and the end.
This reads like reading a secondhand retelling of an article of a review of a book about nothing. He spends the first third of the book narrating as the main character who is recounting stories his father told him. Kinsella clearly gets way too wrapped up in this, as the narrator vividly depicting his parents having sex. There’s even a half-admission of this, as the narrator tries to make a comment like “it might seem odd that I’m telling this story in that much detail…”. Yeah man, it really is. No caveats, no mitigating factors. Just super odd.
He also uses such grotesque language when depicting the sex that I worry for his sanity and the safety of his partner(s). He talks more about “nipples like hard candy in my mouth” and “damp sheets” and “the first time I saw her I needed her nipples in my mouth” than anyone should be comfortable with. Again, with the narrator describing his parents. Why would he even know these things, let alone romanticize them? Disgusting.
He also has a line at one point when describing a woman to the effect of “she could’ve been 14 or 34, it wouldn’t have mattered.” It actually really matters, WP. I wish that was the only time he mentioned the youth of the women he describes.
Those are just my early gripes. The premise of the novel is that he and his dad magically know every detail about a baseball league called the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. They know that the all-stars of this league played a 40-day baseball game against the Cubs. Yet when he goes back in time (yeah, I’m serious, that’s the plot), he acts like he’s seeing all of this for the first time.
It gets worse. A few players die. One is presumed dead because he runs over the horizon chasing a fly ball and is never found again. A statue plays right field. Like, just straight up takes the field in right, hits .300, and inexplicably makes an error.
Sidebar: if you’re going to make a magical statue play an outfield position, why wouldn’t you go all the way and make it infallible? You’re really gonna make it average? You’re going to give it flaws and just kinda make it one of the players?
Anyway, it gets worse again. Leonardo Da Vinci shows up in a hot air balloon. He claims to have invented baseball, and talks about how perfect the proportions are. Then he just leaves.
Teddy Roosevelt shows up to make the Cubs go back to Chicago, but then takes an at bat and strikes out. No other mention of him after that.
When the game ends on a walk off, pinch hit home run by a 15-foot tall Native American named Drifting Away, the torrential flooding stops, and Drifting Away walks off with the Statue who was playing right field. Apparently that was his wife.
Everything goes back to normal after that. The narrator sees the girl he fell in love with, who might be 15, and she runs to him. Boom, hit by a car, dead.
He goes back to modern day, 1978, and he finds his wife (Who has a tendency to desert him for months at a time) he knows he has to save her, then she gets hit by a car and evaporates.
The themes are complex (if I’m putting it charitably) and inconsistent. There’s no real conclusion, no explanation for why this random mythical Native American and him are at odds, why some people randomly remember this and some don’t, if this was a dream then why does real time pass, how he got his best friend stan to go along with it… none of it makes sense, and it doesn’t have the backbone of decent prose to stand it up and make it respectable.
I would applaud the effort, but I have no idea what he’s even trying to do here. I’ll never have the time back that I spent on this book.
This reads like reading a secondhand retelling of an article of a review of a book about nothing. He spends the first third of the book narrating as the main character who is recounting stories his father told him. Kinsella clearly gets way too wrapped up in this, as the narrator vividly depicting his parents having sex. There’s even a half-admission of this, as the narrator tries to make a comment like “it might seem odd that I’m telling this story in that much detail…”. Yeah man, it really is. No caveats, no mitigating factors. Just super odd.
He also uses such grotesque language when depicting the sex that I worry for his sanity and the safety of his partner(s). He talks more about “nipples like hard candy in my mouth” and “damp sheets” and “the first time I saw her I needed her nipples in my mouth” than anyone should be comfortable with. Again, with the narrator describing his parents. Why would he even know these things, let alone romanticize them? Disgusting.
He also has a line at one point when describing a woman to the effect of “she could’ve been 14 or 34, it wouldn’t have mattered.” It actually really matters, WP. I wish that was the only time he mentioned the youth of the women he describes.
Those are just my early gripes. The premise of the novel is that he and his dad magically know every detail about a baseball league called the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. They know that the all-stars of this league played a 40-day baseball game against the Cubs. Yet when he goes back in time (yeah, I’m serious, that’s the plot), he acts like he’s seeing all of this for the first time.
It gets worse. A few players die. One is presumed dead because he runs over the horizon chasing a fly ball and is never found again. A statue plays right field. Like, just straight up takes the field in right, hits .300, and inexplicably makes an error.
Sidebar: if you’re going to make a magical statue play an outfield position, why wouldn’t you go all the way and make it infallible? You’re really gonna make it average? You’re going to give it flaws and just kinda make it one of the players?
Anyway, it gets worse again. Leonardo Da Vinci shows up in a hot air balloon. He claims to have invented baseball, and talks about how perfect the proportions are. Then he just leaves.
Teddy Roosevelt shows up to make the Cubs go back to Chicago, but then takes an at bat and strikes out. No other mention of him after that.
When the game ends on a walk off, pinch hit home run by a 15-foot tall Native American named Drifting Away, the torrential flooding stops, and Drifting Away walks off with the Statue who was playing right field. Apparently that was his wife.
Everything goes back to normal after that. The narrator sees the girl he fell in love with, who might be 15, and she runs to him. Boom, hit by a car, dead.
He goes back to modern day, 1978, and he finds his wife (Who has a tendency to desert him for months at a time) he knows he has to save her, then she gets hit by a car and evaporates.
The themes are complex (if I’m putting it charitably) and inconsistent. There’s no real conclusion, no explanation for why this random mythical Native American and him are at odds, why some people randomly remember this and some don’t, if this was a dream then why does real time pass, how he got his best friend stan to go along with it… none of it makes sense, and it doesn’t have the backbone of decent prose to stand it up and make it respectable.
I would applaud the effort, but I have no idea what he’s even trying to do here. I’ll never have the time back that I spent on this book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 16, 2016
Basically this is a baseball fantasy by the author who's Shoeless Joe became the movie, Field of Dreams (which I liked very much). Like Field of dreams, this deals with an obsession, both a father and, later on, his son, trying to find out proof of a fabled month long baseball game between the 1906 Chicago Cubs (remember Tinker to Evers to Chance) and an all-star team of minor leaguers from the Iowa Baseball Federation. However, as much as father and son believe in this game, there is no proof of either the Iowa Baseball Federation or the game. This obsession rules both of their lives and affects their relationships. The second half of the book deals with the game; this is the fantasy, as the author and his friend are able to transit from the present to the past to watch and take part in the game. I liked the writing style, but overall, was kind of disappointed with this story. The never-ending game became a bit of a never-ending story. I'm glad I read, but it wasn't as good as I had hoped. Unfortunate.
September 18, 2010
Holy cats, where to start? The "I'm not albino, I'm just really pale and have shoulder-length white hair and blue eyes!" protagonist? The grating "My special divine knowledge is right but everyone thinks I'm crazy!" plot? The utter flatness of the female characters, all of whom are either sex objects or sexless mother figures? The actual mystical Indian whose "power vision" is of a game of baseball? I would like to believe that Gideon Clarke is a parody, but Kinsella is so damn earnest that there's just no way to give him that much credit. And of course the whole thing is about fridging women, so... awesome! In short, save yourself the trouble. Baseball fanboys of this sort are just as tiresome as they come.
April 11, 2015
I really enjoyed this.
An open ended mystical story recommended by a friend because I enjoy baseball and American Indians.
The story is interesting. It becomes somewhat repetitive but the characters are fascinating.
The theme is one I can relate to: OCD that leads to habits that may remove you from more simple things. The simple things like family may get sacrificed.
Mystical time travel reveals the depth of a mans obsession with a little known baseball team. Is the obsession worth it. Did that team really exist. What does a mystical Indian have to do with it.
An open ended mystical story recommended by a friend because I enjoy baseball and American Indians.
The story is interesting. It becomes somewhat repetitive but the characters are fascinating.
The theme is one I can relate to: OCD that leads to habits that may remove you from more simple things. The simple things like family may get sacrificed.
Mystical time travel reveals the depth of a mans obsession with a little known baseball team. Is the obsession worth it. Did that team really exist. What does a mystical Indian have to do with it.
February 8, 2008
One of the strangest books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. It really gets out there pretty close to the bizarre range. Still it's a compelling and intriguing work with intelligent and unusual characters. More than one read for me already and I'll try it again I'm sure. It's a book that's simply fun to read.
July 17, 2017
This is the only novel I've read more than twice (not counting Potter but that's reading to children as well) and I simply enjoy its story. I recommend this more highly than Kinsella's better-known "Shoeless Joe" and put it on par with Roth's "The Great American Novel."
March 17, 2017
My second experience added a fourth star. The work is reflective without being ponderous, poetic while still being pithy in places. It is about human characters as well as the types they symbolize.
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