Damon Rutherford
 

Any fans out there?

The young perfect game pitcher whose career was shortened by a beanball that killed him in his next outing. Sorry, he doesn't have a card that I know of.

Damon Rutherford
 

I would hope he doesn’t! As he’s a fictional character..

Au contraire, mon frere, there was a contest to create the best Damon Rutherford baseball card.

No cards from me, but here's the book.

An unusual and very entertaining novel. One of the few books that I've repurchased. I gave away my original copy and a few years later I had the urge to read it again so I nabbed a copy via Amazon.

Best American novel of the 20th Century, alongside Heller's Catch-22.

Sidd Finch lives!

Yes, he does.

Cliff, i was unaware of the cards or the contest.

That cover is not the same as both of mine which are both different

Bob, I too have read the book two or three times and have also repurchased it at least once. I also lent my first copy to an acquaintance and it was never returned.

Butch, that may be a stretch. It is worth rereading though. It touches so many levels other than baseball, you are bound to get more out of it the second time around. As a life long sim table gamer though, I do understand your bias.

I'm not sure I have mentioned it in one of our periodic baseball book threads, but I thought it needed a thread of its own.

If you Google Damon Rutherford, a number of real Damon Rutherfords exist, so he is not only fictional. The last chapter, long after Mr. Waugh's passing, is about the fictional characters still playing ball 100 years later.

Thanks for all the comments so far. If you have never heard of it, you should look for it, although not readily available (the only reprint, i believe, was published in 1971).

I imagine the book was issued with different covers over the years...mine is from the 1968 hardcover edition.

Dr Frank, our edition (trade paper) looks different, too, and we had it auto'd in person by Prof Coover.
Heckuva nice guy, as friendly and humble in our brief interaction with him as he is insightful and erudite.
We wish we'd been able to take some of his classes.
"YMMV," but we don't think our regard for it is much of a stretch. Yeah, tabletop baseball is the launching pad
for the plot, but as you suggest, what it's "about" is so, so much more than that -- baseball itself and baseball
history, but far beyond that, isolation versus connection, fantasy versus reality, obedience versus free will,
labour versus management, order versus chaos, creator versus creation, life versus afterlife, man versus god,
sanity versus insanity... and more... all delivered in such clean, concise, yet beautiful, perfectly paced prose.

Thank you Frank and all.
I have not had the pleasure; just ordered the book.
Ever since "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" by Kinsella; I have been longing for these special types of work.

Ben

"I love baseball history backstory; especially when it involves cards."