The Universal Baseball Association, Inc. J. Henry Waugh, Prop.

By: Robert Coover

Published by New York Review Books, 2026-03-10

Considered one of the best baseball novels of all time, this black comedy about a discontented businessman's obsession with a fantasy baseball league of his own creation is "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" meets William Gaddis meets John Updike's Rabbit, Run.

J. Henry Waugh is an unhappy accountant, a frequent patron of his local watering hole, and a fan of country music. He’s also the sole proprietor of the Universal Baseball Association, currently entering its fifty-sixth season. Waugh is getting a little weary of his game—a game of dice, numbers, names, and other forms of accountancy—when a rookie pitcher, Damon Rutherford, comes around to restore his faith in the meaning of it all. But then tragedy strikes in this comic novel, a roll of the dice that imperils the whole association, which can only be redeemed by another tragedy—one set into motion by its heretofore unmoved mover, Mr. J. Henry Waugh.

Robert Coover’s second book is not so much about baseball as it’s played on the diamond as about the game that we play in our heads. The protagonist Coover creates is an all-American escapist à la Walter Mitty, out of touch with the world around him, but he is, besides that, and like the novelist, a creator and destroyer of worlds.

A box of nested narratives and stylistic tour-de-force, The Universal Baseball Association is an exploration of various national pastimes—not least among them a capacity for denial so limitless it can only be called optimism.