The Baseball Novel

This annotated bibliography covers approximately 400 novels published from 1838 through 2007. A substantial introduction to the history and development of the genre precedes the chronologically arranged entries, which provide bibliographic details and extensive annotations on plot, themes, and compositional strengths and weaknesses. Mainstream novels by writers such as Hemingway, Wolfe, Roth, and DeLillo are included.
Appendices provide historical overviews for the primary baseball subgenres, including mystery, fantasy, and science-fiction; lists for novels that foreground issues of race or ethnicity (or both, as in Winegardner’s Vera Cruz Blues), gender (Gilbert’s A League of Their Own), and class (Hay’s The Dixie Association); and the author’s rankings of great baseball novels overall and by subgenre.

Retired college English professor Noel Schraufnagel lives in Columbus, Georgia. He is also the author of From Apology to Protest: The Black American Novel.

Noel Schraufnagel
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 254
Bibliographic Info: appendices, index
Copyright Date: 2008
pISBN: 978-0-7864-3557-9
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1075-7
Imprint: McFarland

Preface      1

I. The History of the Baseball Novel      3
II. The Novels, Year by Year      35

Appendix A: Mystery Novels      209
Appendix B: Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels      215
Appendix C: Novels That Explore Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Class      220
Appendix D: Best Baseball Novels by Year      225
Appendix E: Chronological List of Titles      227
Index      239

“well-researched”—ARBA; “The richness of Schraufnagel’s treatment lies not just in its checklist, but in the exceptionally thorough annotations that accompany each entry. … I expect to return to The Baseball Novel continuously as I teach and study sport fiction for…years to come.”—Tim Morris, author of Making the Team: The Cultural Work of Baseball Fiction.