The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by W. P. Kinsella
"The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" by W. P. Kinsella is a novel that weaves together the themes of baseball, memory, and the mystical. The story centers on Gideon Clarke, whose passion for baseball is inherited from his father. He becomes obsessed with proving the existence of a legendary game played in 1908, where the Chicago Cubs faced off against the Iowa Baseball Confederacy—a fictional amateur league—in a marathon contest that lasted over 2,000 innings under incessant rain. Despite the lack of any official record of this game, Clarke is determined to validate this extraordinary event, viewing it as a pivotal moment in baseball history. The narrative invites readers to explore deeper philosophical themes, such as love, sacrifice, and the interplay of reality and myth. Kinsella's work is characterized by its lyrical prose and humor, making it as much about the human experience and time travel as it is about America's beloved pastime. The book offers a blend of nostalgia and fantasy, capturing the essence of what baseball represents in American culture.
On this Page
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by W. P. Kinsella
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1986
Type of work: Novel
The Work
The Iowa Baseball Confederacy again has baseball as its dominant motif. This time, though, Kinsella injects even more elements of magic and mystery, as the reader learns that to be obsessed with baseball is to achieve a sort of mystical state. The narrator here, Gideon Clarke, whose love of baseball was passed down to him by his father, not only is obsessed with a mysterious and mythical baseball event, but also is ultimately given access to a magical realm. Clarke, like his father before him, is out to prove to the world that the Chicago Cubs traveled to Onamata, Iowa, in the summer of 1908 for an exhibition game against the all-stars of the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, an amateur league. The game, which the Cubs figured would not be much of a game at all, lasted in excess of two thousand innings and was played in an almost constant downpour. Since the game appears in no record books, the offices of the Cubs (and pretty much everyone else) have written Clarke off as insane. No one seems to acknowledge the game or even the confederacy. However, Clarke is convinced that the game was played. He believes so strongly, in fact, in the existence of the confederacy and the marathon game they played against the Cubs that he devotes his entire life to setting the record straight.
Kinsella is also concerned here with the rapprochement of fixed forces like love and sadness, sacrifice and anger, and hunger and faith. The book is not only full of lyrical descriptions of America’s national pastime and not solely concerned with the magical game between the Cubs and the Confederacy, but it is, like much of Kinsella’s work, also lighthearted and funny, a book as much about time travel as it is about baseball, as much about human communion as it is about magic. It is a poignant and heartfelt work.
Bibliography
Asinof, Eliot. “Did Leonardo Invent the Home Run?” The New York Times, April 20, 1986, p. 15.
Batten, Jack. “Diamonds Are for Evers.” Books in Canada 15 (August/September, 1986): 20.
Cochran, Robert W. “A Second Cool Papa: Hemingway to Kinsella and Hays.” Arete: The Journal of Sport Literature 4, no. 2 (Spring, 1987): 27-40.
Flagg, Fannie. “Will Truckbox Al Make the Team?” The New York Times Book Review, July 12, 1992, 33.
Kaufmann, James. “The World According to Silas Ermineskin.” The Christian Science Monitor, September 21, 1984, p. 22.
Kinsella, W. P., and Ann Knight. “Baseball Like It Oughta Be.” American Film 14, no. 7 (May, 1989): 76.
Lecker, Robert, et al., eds. Canadian Writers and Their Works: Sandra Birdsell, Timothy Findley, W. P. Kinsella, and David Adams Richards. Toronto: ECW Press, 1996.
Okrent, Daniel. “Imaginary Baseball.” The New York Times, July 25, 1982, p. 10.
Pellow, C. Kenneth. “Shoeless Joe in Film and Fiction.” Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature 9, no. 1 (Fall, 1991): 17-23.
Sayers, Valerie. “If He Wrote It, They Will Read.” The New York Times Book Review, December 19, 1993, 14.