It would be a pity if the baseball buffs were put off by the mythology, or the mythology rooters dismayed by the baseball. Coover has in fact written a fine baseball novel, the best I can remember in an admittedly thin field, and based obviously on a study of the texts. The best of both worlds, in my opinion. Take away the big metaphor in the middle, and the book still stands up. Conversely, not to read it because you don't like baseball is like not reading Balzac because you don't like boarding houses.
Baseball provides as good a frame for dramatic encounter as any.
The bat and ball are excuses. Baseball also involves a real subculture, a tradition, a political history that were, in some sense, preordained, when the first diamond was laid out, that are implicit in the distance between bases, and that continue to make ballparks seem like unfrocked churches, places where even the boredom is of a finer quality. That the players and fans might be shadows in the mind of a Crazy Accountant up there is not only believable but curiously attractive. Mr. Coover's admirable novel adds to our stock of benign legends.