It Happened in Wisconsin

There's nothing like a good baseball book to chase away the winter blues. Unfortunately, Ken Moraff's It Happened in Wisconsin is not that. It's not really a baseball book, though baseball players are the characters. It's more of a political allegory--how to reconcile idealistic leftist beliefs with the real world.

The novel is set in the '30s. The Racine Robins are a D-League team that barnstorms the country, from Binghamton to Topeka, with Major League-quality players. But they aren't interested in the trappings of fame. They are committed socialists, red jockstrap players, so to speak, who turn over the proceeds of their games to the poor and to labor organizations. They are so egalitarian that they don't have a manager.

"We knew how it worked on other teams. The star slugger had special privileges, the pitching ace had a private hotel room. They might even pay certain players a larger salary--as if a batting average had anything to do with a man's needs, or the needs of his family. Can you imagine? What reason could there be to divide men like that? To sort them into grades, one more privileged than the next." This is the unnamed narrator of the book, the team's pitcher, and it's kind of a ridiculous statement. Where else but sports is a meritocracy more natural, where results can be measured? Clearly professional sports and socialism can't exist side by side, but I'm not sure if Moraff knows that or is just having a joke.

The team gets snowed in a hotel in Wisconsin. The very name of the place--the John D. Rockefeller, makes them bristle. They meet a businessman, Spencer, who says he is a fan, but is something like a metaphor for the serpent in the garden of Eden. He buys them dinner, but picks away at their beliefs, telling them they should be earning more money, so they can give the money away. He also tells them that there is such a thing as fate, but the most radical member of the team, the catcher, Ozzie, points out that that is the argument of the bosses--it's fate that some are poor and some are rich, and believing so keeps the poor people down.

Eventually Mike, the narrator's best friend, is wooed by Spencer's talk and his nubile young daughter, and succumbs to the lure and signs with the New York Yankees, the epitome of what the Robins think is wrong with the world. But this reminds the narrator, who is reminiscing while living in a nursing home, about how he let his ideals let the woman of his dreams get away. Did he do the right thing?

This is occasionally an interesting book, but overly didactic and not really for baseball fans, as it doesn't feature any actual playing of baseball. I'm as lefty as the next guy, but even I can understand how people who have more talent and more responsibility should earn more than people who don't. However, the core message of the book: "The team has to come first. Doesn't it?" is a good one, until the team must come second to the individual.

It Happened in Wisconsin is a noble effort, but an unsatisfactory one.