The Great American Novel

Now that whaling is banned and the Mississippi is a tourist attraction, the subject for anything resembling The Great American Novel could only be baseball. And the author could only be Philip Roth, who in this ribald, wickedly satiric book tells the story of the Ruppert Mundys, the only homeless baseball team in American history.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral--a richly imagined novel featuring America's only homeless big-league baseball team in history delivers "shameless comic extravagance.... Roth gleefully exploits our readiness to let baseball stand for America itself" (The New York Times).

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 home run sober. If you've never heard of them--or of the homeless baseball team the Ruppert Mundys--it's because of the Communist plot, and the capitalist scandal, that expunged the entire Patriot League from baseball memory.

In this ribald, wickedly satiric novel, Roth turns baseball's status as national pastime and myth into an occasion for unfettered picaresque farce, replete with heroism and perfidy, ebullient wordplay and a cast of characters that includes the House Un-American Activities Committee.