In this comprehensive study of baseball in American literature, Candelaria looks primarily at novels to explore how writers have used this quintessential American symbol and to examine what the metaphors and images of the fictional universe of baseball have to tell us about ourselves. Her analysis includes both juvenile and adult sports fiction and other types of literary works that draw significantly on baseball imagery. Candelaria offers a probing analysis of the progression from allegory and romanticism in the earliest baseball fiction to the realism, irony, and solipsism of contemporary...