Criticism and Scholarship
On Baseball Fiction
Below is a highly selective bibliography of scholarly work and commentary on baseball fiction and film. Only specialized studies are listed, and the checklist has an academic bias; book reviews and general work on sport literature are excluded.
- Ahearn, Kerry. "'Et in arcadia excrementum': Pastoral, kitsch, and Philip Roth's The Great American Novel," Aethlon 11.1 (Fall 1993): 1-14.
- Aitken, Brian. "Baseball as sacred doorway in the writing of W. P. Kinsella," Aethlon 8.1 (Fall 1990): 61-75.
- Anderson, Andrew. "In the Tradition of Chip, Horatio, and the Hardy Boys: Lessons for Life in Old Baseball Cards – Dan Gutman's … & Me Novels," in Carino (2006), 16-25.
- Angelius, Judith Wood. "The man behind the catcher's mask: A closer look at Robert Coover's Universal Baseball Association," The Denver Quarterly 12.1 (1977): 165-174.
- Ardolino, Frank R. "The Americanization of the Gods: Onomastics, math, and history in Philip Roth's The Great American Novel," Arete 3.1 (Fall 1985): 37-60.
- Ardolino, Frank. "Playing in the Bush League: The Rookie and the Baseball Presidency," NINE 12.1 (2003): 1-24.
- Ardolino, Frank R. "Tearing up the pea patch at Ebbets Field: Rickey, Robinson, and Rhubarb," Aethlon 10.1 (Fall 1992): 133-143.
- Avery, Todd. "'The Girls in Europe Is Nuts over Ball Players': Ring Lardner and Virginia Woolf," NINE 13.2 (2005): 31-53 .
- Beach, Charles Franklyn. "Joyful vs. joyless religion in W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe," Aethlon 16.1 (Fall 1998): 85-94.
- Berman, Neil. "Coover's Universal Baseball Association: Play as personalized myth," Modern Fiction Studies 24 (1978): 209-222. Repr. in Playful Fictions and Fictional Players (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1981): 87-102.
- Bishop, Will. Pinstripe Nation: The New York Yankees in American Culture. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2018.
- Blair, Chere. "'I would have been happy just to catch while the father pitched': The Father-Son Game of Catch in Young Adult Literature," Aethlon 26.1 (Fall 2008 / Winter 2009): 189-214.
- Byerman, Keith. "America's Passed Time: Baseball and Race in August Wilson's Fences," in Carino (2003), 94-100.
- Candelaria, Cordelia. Seeking the Perfect Game: Baseball in American Literature. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.
- Carino, Peter. "Mark Twain, Westward Expansion, Immigrant Unrest: Baseball and American Growing Pains in Darryl Brock's If I Never Get Back," NINE 9.1 (2000).
- Carino, Peter. "History as Myth in Bernard Malamud's The Natural," NINE 14.1 (Fall 2005): 67-77.
- Carino, Peter, ed. Baseball/Literature/Culture: Essays, 1995-2001. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003.
- Carino, Peter, ed. Baseball/Literature/Culture: Essays, 2004-2005. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006.
- Carvill, Caroline. "The Dixie Association: Where Jefferson Davis and Martin Luther King Intersect," in Carino (2003), 41-50.
- Cohan, Noah. "Baseball Fan Behavior as Postmodern Praxis in Don DeLillo's Underworld," Aethlon 32.2 (Spring/Summer 2015): 37-56.
- Colbran, Louise. "Playing at being men: baseball and masculinity in Michael Chabon's Summerland," Aethlon 25.1 (Fall 2007 / Winter 2008): 145-166.
- Crepeau, Richard C. "Not the Cincinnati Reds: Anti-communism in recent baseball literature," Arete 1.1 (1983): 87-97. [Roth]
- Crepeau, Richard C. "Coover's grand slam." Aethlon 7.1 (1989): 113-120.
- Dagavarian, Debra A.. Saying It Ain't So: American Values as Revealed in Children's Baseball Stories 1880-1950. New York: Peter Lang, 1987.
- DiPiero, Thomas. "Angels in the (Out)Field of Vision," Camera Obscura 40-41 (May 1997): 200-225.
- Dodge, Tom. "Zipp and Bump—bliss in left field: An achrondroplastic interpretation of Malamud's The Natural," Arete 2.1 (Fall 1984): 75-77.
- Duvall, John N. "Baseball as aesthetic ideology: Cold War history, race, and Delillo's "Pafko at the Wall," Modern Fiction Studies 41.2 (1995) 285-313.
- Evans, Ronald V. "Malamud's The Natural," The Explicator 48.3 (1990): 224-225.
- Febles, Jorge. "Dying Players: Ramírez's 'El centerfielder' and Dybek's 'Death of the Rightfielder," Confluencia 12.1 (Fall 1996): 156-167.
- Folsom, Ed. "The manly and healthy game: Walt Whitman and the development of American baseball," Arete 2.1 (Fall 1984): 43-62.
- Grella, George. "The baseball moment in American film," Aethlon 14.2 (Spring 1997): 7-16.
- Harris, Mark. "Horatio at the bat, or why such a lengthy embryonic period for the serious baseball novel?" Aethlon 5.2 (Spring 1988): 1-11.
- Hye, Allen E. Religion in Modern Baseball Fiction. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004.
- Kates, Ronald. "Rings Born of Impulse: Gift-Exchange Economies in Eric Rolfe Greenberg's The Celebrant," NINE 17.2 (Spring 2009): 58-69.
- Kates, Ronald. "Teaching Baseball, Teaching Race: Richard Fuller's A Soldier's Play and August Wilson's Fences," in Carino (2003), 101-110.
- Keats, Patrick. "Hall of Famer Ed Delehanty: A source for Malamud's The Natural," American Literature 62.1 (1990): 102-104.
- Kirk, Connie Ann. "Writing Their Way Home: American Writers and Baseball," in Edward J. Rielly, ed., Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 2003): 173-181.
- Klinkowitz, Jerry. "Philip Roth's anti-baseball novel," Western Humanities Review 47.1 (1993): 30-40.
- Koishihara Miho. "Athletic Bodies and Sport Literature for Young Adults in Japan," Aethlon 25.2 (2008): 143-154. [Asano]
- Lauricella, John A. "The Black Sox Signature Baseball in The Great Gatsby," Aethlon 10.1 (Fall 1992): 83-98.
- Lord, Timothy C. "Hegel, Marx, and Shoeless Joe: Religious ideology in Kinsella's baseball fantasy," Aethlon 10.1 (Fall 1992): 43-51.
- MacDonald, Christine Urban. "Circles in the Corn: Native American Spirituality in Kinsella's Shoeless Joe," Aethlon 23.2 (Spring 2006): 103-121.
- McGimpsey, David. Imagining Baseball: America's Pastime and Popular Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
- Meyer, Robert E.. Fear Strikes Out at the Father: Jimmy Piersall on Film," in Carino (2006), 61-73.
- Morris, Timothy. Making the Team: The Cultural Work of Baseball Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.
- Morrow, Don. "Projections, archetypes and femininity: The anima in Bull Durham," Aethlon 10.1 (Fall 1992): 61-70.
- Morrow, Don. "Dreams and dreaming and the Father in W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe," Aethlon 19.2 (Spring 2002): 43-52.
- Mount, Nicholas J. "'Are the green fields gone?: Pastoralism in the baseball novel," Aethlon 11.1 (Fall 1993): 61-77.
- Natov, Roni. "Living in two cultures: Bette Bao Lord's stories of Chinese-American experience," The Lion and the Unicorn 11.1 (1987): 38-46.
- O'Connor, Gerry. "Bernard Malamud's The Natural: 'The worst that ever was in the game,'" Arete 3.2 (1986): 37-42.
- Peterson, Richard. "Only fairy tales: The baseball short story from Lardner to Kinsella," Aethlon 14.2 (Spring 1997): 63-70.
- Petty, John W.. "It's Only Natural: Sex and Baseball in Bernard Malamud's The Natural," in Carino (2006), 35-45.
- Reising, R.W. "Bob.". "From the Big Top to the Big Leagues: Burt Lancaster's Baseball Odysseys (Oddities?)," Journal of Popular Culture 38.3 (2005): 552-563.
- Rutter, Emily Ruth. Invisible Ball of Dreams: Literary Representations of Baseball behind the Color Line. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018.
- Rutter, Emily R. "'Straighten Up and Fly Right': A Contrafactual Reading of Percival Everett's Suder and Bernard Malamud's The Natural," Aethlon 32.1 (Fall 2014 / Winter 2015): 43-57.
- Saunders, James Robert.. "'I done seen a hundred niggers play baseball better than Jackie Robinson': Troy Maxson's Plea in August Wilson's Fences," in Carino (2006), 46-52.
- Schiavone, Michele. "The Presence of John R. Tunis's The Kid from Tomkinsville in Malamud's The Natural and Roth's American Pastoral," Aethlon 21.2 (Spring 2004): 79-85.
- Schraufnagel, Noel. The Baseball Novel: A History and Annotated Bibliography of Adult Fiction. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008.
- Shackelford, Renae Nadine.. "'I might just be able to steal second': Fences' Baseball Metaphor as August Wilson's Commentary on African American Life," in Carino (2006), 53-60.
- Shelffo, Andrew. "'Wait 'Til Next Year': The Red Sox, T. Coraghessan Boyle, and a Year in New England," Aethlon 21.2 (Spring 2004): 15-23.
- Smith, Patrick A. "Constructing contemporary Utopias: Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association and the games we play," Aethlon 16.1 (Fall 1998): 13-21.
- Solomon, Eric. "Jews, baseball, and the American novel," Arete 1.2 (Spring 1984): 43-66.
- Solomon, Eric. "'The bullpen of her mind': Women's baseball fiction and Sylvia Tennenbaum's Rachel, the Rabbi's Wife," Arete 3.1 (1985): 19-31.
- Solomon, Eric. "Early baseball fiction: The case for Zane Grey," Aethlon 14.2 (Spring 1997): 111-118.
- Strecker, Trey. "'A World without Grays': Innocence and Experience in Eric Rolfe Greenberg's The Celebrant," NINE 11.2 (2003): 103-109 .
- Sudan, Rajani. "Technophallia," Camera Obscura 40-41 (May 1997): 104-129. [Angels]
- Sullivan, Kathleen. Women Characters in Baseball Literature: A Critical Study. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005.
- Surgal, Jon. "Mark Harris and the handwriting on the ball," Aethlon 13.2 (Spring 1996): 79-97.
- Tootle, Jim. "Bill Veeck and James Thurber: The Literary Origins of the Midget Pinch Hitter," NINE 10.2 (2002): 110-119.
- Turner, Frederick W., III. "Myth inside and out: Malamud's The Natural," Novel 1.2 (1968): 133-139.
- Vosevich, Kathi A. "The use of color in The Natural," Journal of Popular Literature 5.1 (1991): 71-79.
- Wasserman, Earl R. "The Natural: Malamud's World Ceres," Centennial Review 9 (1965).
- Webb, Joe. "The Diagnostician and the National Pastime: Baseball as Metaphor in Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt," Aethlon 26.1 (Fall 2008 / Winter 2009): 171-185.
- Westbrook, Deeanne. Ground Rules: Baseball and Myth. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
- Westbrook, Deeanne. "God, Gambling, and the Game," in Carino (2003), 9-21. [Coover, Willard]
- Wineapple, Brenda. "Robert Coover's playing fields," The Iowa Review 10.3 (1979): 66-74.
