Gil Gamesh, the only pitcher who ever literally tried to kill the umpire. The ex-con first baseman John Baal, “The Babe Ruth of the Big House,” who never hit a homerun sober. If you’ve never heard of them — or of the Ruppert Mundy’s, the only homeless big-league ball team in American history — it’s because of the Communist plot and the capitalist scandal that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory. Philip Roth's richly imagined satiric narrative, The Great American Novel , turns baseball's status as national pastime and myth into an unfettered farce featuring heroism and perfidy, lively wordplay and a cast of characters that includes the House Un-American Activities Committee "Roth is better than he's ever been before....The prose is electric." - The Atlantic