Read Online The Great American Novel by Philip Roth - Free Book Online Page A

baseball history, Heinie Groh’s “bottle bat,” Ed Delehanty’s “Big Betsy,” Luke Gofannon’s “Magic Wand,” and those bats of his that Ty Cobb would hone with a steer bone hour upon hour, much as Queequeg, Tashtego, and Dagoo would care lovingly for their harpoons; if then you were to write a chapter on the history of the baseball glove, recounting how the gloves of fielder, first-baseman, and catcher have evolved from the days when the game was played bare-handed, first into something resembling an ordinary dress glove, then into the “heavily-padded mitten,” of the 1890’s, the small webbed glove of the twenties, and finally in our own era of giantism, into the bushel-basket; if you were to describe the process by which Rawlings manufactures baseball shoes out of kangaroo hide, commencing with the birth of a single fleet-footed kangaroo in the wilds of Western Australia and following it through to its first stolen base in the majors; if you were to recount the evolutionary history of the All-Star game, beanballs, broadcasting, the canvas base, the catcher’s mask, chewing tobacco, contracts, doubleheaders, double plays, fans, farm systems, fixes, foul balls, gate receipts, home runs, home plate, ladies day, minor leagues, night games, picture cards, player organizations, salaries, scandals, stadiums, the strike zone, sportscasters, sportswriters, Sunday ball, trading, travel, the World Series, and umpires, you would not in the end have a compendium of American baseball any more thorough than the one that Herman Melville has assembled in Moby Dick on the American enterprise of catching the whale. I would not be surprised to learn that his book ran first as a series in Mechanix Illustrated, if such existed in Melville’s day, so clear and methodical is he in elucidating just what it took in the way of bats, balls, and gloves to set yourself up for chasing the pennant in those leagues. Today some clever publisher would probably bring out Moby Dick as one of those “How To Do It” books, providing he left off the catastrophic conclusion, or appended it under the title, “And How Not To.”
    Only today who cares about how to catch a whale in the old-fashioned, time-honored, and traditional way? Or about anything “traditional” for that matter? Today they just drop bombs down the spouts to blow the blubber out, or haul the leviathans in with a hook, belly-up, those who’ve been dumb enough to drink from the chamberpot that once was Melville’s “wild and distant sea.” How’s that for a horror, Brother Melville? Not only is your indestructible Moby Dick now an inch from extinction but so is the vast salt sea itself. The sea is no longer a fit place for habitation—just ask the tunas in the cans. Two-thirds of the globe, the Mother of us all, and according to today’s paper, the place is poisoned. Yes, even the fish have been given their eviction notice, and must pack up their scales and go fannon—which is just baseball’s way of saying get lost. Only there is no elsewhere as far as I can see for these aquatic vertebrates to go fann or fin in. The fate that befell the Ruppert Mundys has now befallen the fish, and who, dear dispensable fans, is to follow?
    Let me prophesy. What began in ’46 with the obliteration of the Patriot League will not end until the planet itself has gone the way of the Tri-City Tycoons, the Tri-City Greenbacks, the Kakoola Reapers, the Terra Incognita Rustlers, the Asylum Keepers, the Aceldama Butchers, the Ruppert Mundys, and me; until each and every one of you is gone like the sperm whale and the great Luke Gofannon, gone without leaving a trace! Only read your daily paper, fans—every day news of another stream, another town, another species biting the dust. Wait, very soon now whole continents will be canceled out like stamps. Whonk, Africa! Whonk, Asia! Whonk, Europa!