The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. W. Kinsella P.

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       The Iowa Baseball Confederacy

      BY W. P. KINSELLA

      The Friday Project An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014

      Copyright © W. P. Kinsella 1986

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014

      Portions of this novel appeared in a slightly different form in Descant, Saturday Night, New Quarterly, Arete, and Buzzard’s Luck, and in the short story collections The Thrill of the Grass (Penguin Books, 1984). Several excerpts were broadcast on CBC Radio and the MacNiel/Lehrer NewsHour.

      W. P. Kinsella asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      FIRST EDITION

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780007497508

      Ebook Edition © July 2014 ISBN: 9780007591299

      Version: 2014-08-07

      Contents

       Title Page

      Copyright

      I: The Warm-up

      1

      2

      3

      4

      5

      

      II: The Game

      6

      7

      8

      9

      10

      11

      12

      13

      

      III: The Post-game Show

      14

      

      Also by the W.P. Kinsella

       About the Publisher

       I The Warm-up

      Nothing bleeds quite like devotion.

       —Gary Kissick

       1

      My name is Gideon Clarke, and, like my father before me, I have on more than one occasion been physically ejected from the corporate offices of the Chicago Cubs Baseball Club, which are located at Wrigley Field, 1060 West Addison, in Chicago.

      My father’s unfortunate dealings with the Chicago Cubs began with his making polite requests for information concerning the 1908 baseball season: player records, box scores, nothing out of the ordinary. At first, the Cubs’ public relations people were most cooperative. I have their letters. However, the information they provided was not what my father wanted to hear. His letters became more pointed, critical, accusatory, downright insulting to the point of incoherence. The final letter from the Chicago Cubs Baseball Club – their stationery has a small picture of Wrigley Field at the top – is dated October 7, 1945, and states clearly: ‘We consider the matter closed and would appreciate it if you did not contact us again.’

      After that letter my father began to make personal visits to the Cubs’ corporate offices.

      My father’s quest began in 1943. I was born in 1945 and grew up in a home where the atmosphere was one of vague unease. I sensed my father was a troubled man. The general anxiety and discomfort that permeated the air also affected my mother and my sister, Enola Gay.

      My father’s problem was this: he was in possession of information concerning the Chicago Cubs, our home town of Onamata, Iowa, and a baseball league known as the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, information that he knew to be true and accurate but that no one else in the world would acknowledge. He knew history books were untrue, that baseball records were falsified, that people of otherwise unblemished character told him bold-faced lies when he inquired about their knowledge of, and involvement with, the Iowa Baseball Confederacy.

      As a child, though I sympathized with my father, I never fully understood the significance of his obsession. As the Indians say, one cannot walk in another man’s moccasins. I was never able to conceive what he suffered, until, upon his death, when I was sixteen, I received his legacy, which was not money, or property, or jewels (though I was not financially bereft), but what I can only liken to a brain transplant. For upon my father’s passing, I inherited not only all the information he alone had been a party to, but also his obsession to prove to the world that what he knew was right and true.

      His example taught me well, for no matter how futile his efforts seemed, he would not be moved from his goals, just as I shall not be moved from mine. I will pursue the elusive dream of the Iowa Baseball Confederacy until it is admitted that the Chicago Cubs traveled to Iowa in the summer of 1908 and engaged in a baseball game against the Iowa Baseball Confederacy All-Stars.

      As there are stages in grieving, in aging, in acceptance of illness, so there seem to be stages in the development of the inherited obsession of which I speak. I began my investigation by making the same polite written inquiries to the Chicago Cubs and other sources who should have known of the Confederacy, and ended with the same personal confrontations and shouted accusations, which resulted in my being firmly escorted from the Cubs’ offices.

      Two years ago, I learned, by eavesdropping on a conversation in the box next to mine at Wrigley Field, that the Cubs were in the process of hiring a junior public relations person. I applied for the job; in fact, I submitted a twelve-page letter of application, outlining some of the facts I knew about the Chicago Cubs, past and present. The personnel department didn’t even have the courtesy to acknowledge my application. However, by phoning the Cubs’ offices on various pretexts, I was able to learn that the person hired was to begin work the following Wednesday. I also learned that the executives held business meetings on Monday mornings.

      I showed up on Monday, dressed in a rented three-piece suit, looking as eager, expectant, thrilled, and breathless as I anticipated the new employee would feel.

      ‘Hi! I’m supposed to start work this morning,’ I said, smiling brightly. For the occasion I had had my