Robert Coover's Classic Baseball Novel Back in Print

One of the great baseball novels of all time - Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association, Inc. J. Henry Waugh, Proprieter - is back in print, in a new edition published this week by The Overlook Press.

Robert Coover, one of the most admired writers of our generation, is the author of many novels, most recently Noir, and has also written short story collections and plays. His work has won the William Faulkner Award and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award.

Matt Weiland's recent essay, "A Veteran Baseball Novel Comes off the Bench," in The New York Times Book Review (August 26), pays homage to Coover's amazing, and prescient, 1968 novel:

"Right from the start the book nearly matches On the Road for sheer electricity . . . Coover made baseball on the page seem three-dimensional, exulting in what he called the game's 'almost perfect balance between offense and defense.' He captured what Philip Roth, in a 1973 New York Times essay on baseball, called 'its longueurs and thrills, its spaciousness, its suspensefulness, its heroics, its nuances, its lingo, its 'characters,' its peculiarly hypnotic tedium'. . . The genius of the novel is in how Coover revels in the sun-bright vitality of the world Waugh has created, full of drink and lust and dirty limericks and doubles down the line -- and yet brings Waugh face to face with its darkest truths."

Calling All Baseball Fans & Readers of THE MAN WITH TWO ARMS!

Have you ever had the feeling of disappointment when you finish a book and realize that you have absolutely no one with whom to discuss it? All you want to do is dissect and discuss the plot, characters, and ending--but to do so with any of your friends would spoil the book for them.

When you work in publishing, this happens more frequently than you might think--we read a lot of advance copies or manuscripts of books, and have to wait for the book to hit shelves (and then for your friends to get around to reading it!) we can sit down and properly analyze with others. We can imagine it happens to book reviewers--the first wave of readers of most books--as well.

And Spitball Magazine's Mark Schraf is having this problem with our wonderful baseball book The Man With Two Arms. The book came out in the spring, but as baseball season heats up, now is the perfect time to find yourself engrossed, as Mark was, in the funny and poignant novel about an ambidextrous pitcher. Read his full review here, and check out below for excerpts. If you're a baseball fan and haven't picked this book up yet, it makes a perfect read as teams claw their way into the playoffs come August and September. Enjoy!

Perhaps the greatest compliment a writer can be paid is to have his reader still thinking about his book months after the first reading. That is definitely the case with me and Billy Lombardo's novel, The Man With Two Arms, a sophisticated book with a deceptively simple title. In no other sport would true ambidexterity be so extraordinary (the only one I can think of that might come close is tennis, but the advantage isn’t nearly as pronounced), and it thus identifies Lombardo’s sparkling debut novel as unquestionably a baseball book. But it also establishes a primary theme as well: What is the true worth of athletic prowess, and just how unhealthy is hero worship for both the fan and the hero? After all, a ballplayer, no matter how great, is still just a man, isn’t he?

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Lombardo’s writing style isn’t as flashy as, say Brendan Boyd’s in Blue Ruin, but it doesn’t have to be. He captures the inner dialog of a father who wants desperately to give his only son the very best possible chance to succeed in the game he so passionately loves. The game descriptions and conversation are both spot on. Characterization is strong, with no cardboard characters to be found, save for Danny’s first professional manager in the minors. (Although, to be fair, a worn out baseball lifer would most likely be gruff and profane.) The author deftly allows Danny’s thoughts, speech, actions, and reactions to grow in sophistication throughout the 20 year span of the story, so that the character and his dilemma are fully realized.

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Much of this novel’s thematic richness can’t be discussed in a book review, simply because this would give all the special secrets away that are so rewarding to discover and contemplate as you turn the last pages. So I have a plan: Read The Man with Two Arms, and let me know what you think. I’m dying to talk to somebody about this book!

Billy Lombardo's New Novel THE MAN WITH TWO ARMS Reviewed in Chicago Tribune

Book critic and author Alan Cheuse takes a look at The Man With Two Arms in the Chicago Tribune: "The man of the title, really a young man from Chicagoland, has two golden arms. His name is Danny Granville and his baseball-crazed father Henry raises him from infancy to play ball—and specifically to pitch both left-handed and right-handed. With “coach’s thoughts” in his head and Astroturf in his basement, Henry cultivates a champion, a “switch-pitcher” who grows up to become a beautifully trained athlete with a great talent for baseball. Through high school and college we watch Denny grow, and when he hits the majors—playing for the Cubs—his first season looks as though it’s going to be a triumph.

Lombardo sets his sights on writing a lovely homage to the game, and to what is undoubtedly modern America’s finest literary tribute to the baseball since Bernard Malamud’s novel "The Natural." Danny himself is something like a natural himself, with his game-obsessed father doing everything he can to enhance his son’s natural abilities. From the boy’s first year on the father directs him “steadily and scientifically toward balance…” As Danny’s art student girl-friend Bridget discovers when she gets him to undress in preparation for posing for her that early propensity for balance has produced in the ball-player an anatomical symmetry close to perfection.

Because of this, it seems perfectly appropriate that Danny begins his major league career by pitching several games as close to perfect as it gets when the pitcher bows out in a late inning. Denny sets an eighty pitch limit for each of his performances, whether right-handed or left. If he has any flaw it isn’t as a player, but as the care-taker of a great talent who eventually wants to try and experiment with his gift.

Baseball is a difficult game to predict. Novels are easier to figure, because the enjoyment at the higher levels comes from being confronted by questions about why things happen in life rather than just the suspense of waiting for them to happen. You won’t want to second-guess the author of this delightful new work of fiction. Lombardo’s one of a kind novel about a one of a kind ball player becomes as engrossing as a perfect game going into the late innings. If you’re in the stands, you don’t want to look away from the field, let alone leave the stadium early. Those who love to read about this great pastime will have the same feeling when reading about Danny Granville, on and off the field."