SAVED GAMES AND SACRIFICES: RELIGION IN BASEBALL LITERATURE

Abstract

This Capstone Project explores the tie between religion and baseball in American baseball literature. The fusion of baseball and religion in baseball literature demonstrates that the sacred play of baseball does not simply offer nirvana on a freshly-tended field, but a complex interplay of the transcendence of play, the corruption of idolatry, and the redeeming power of faith. This project specifically explores W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe, Douglass Wallop's The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, and Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. Throughout the discussion of religion and baseball in these novels, special focus is placed on Johan Huizinga and David Baily Harned's definitions of transcendent play. Each novel portrays transcendent play differently and demonstrates that, as with any religion, American baseball is subject to vice and separation from the sacred play-spirit.