A middle-aged accountant invents a dice-controlled baseball world.

A middle-aged accountant presides passionately over a fantasy baseball league in a “flagrantly funny” novel from the award-winning author of Huck Out West (The New York Times). J. Henry Waugh is not particularly happy in his job, but after the workday he can go home to the ballgame. With each toss of the dice, the balls and strikes, hits and runs are decided—and the tabletop players, and the individual personalities he perceives in them, seem more real and immerse him more deeply. But when a promising rookie pitcher pitches a perfect game, filling Henry with pride and excitement—and soon afterward is killed by a beanball (an “Extraordinary Occurrence” according to the probability chart)—Henry is shattered, and his life is affected in unimaginable ways, in this blackly comic and philosophical novel that veers wildly between fantasy and reality and delves into the notions of chance and power. “[A] baseball novel which isn’t really altogether about baseball . . . funny surprises, sad moments, and catchy ideas.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “One of the most original and exciting writers around. Every new book from him is great news.” —McSweeney’s “Not to read it because you don’t like baseball is like not reading Balzac because you don’t like boardinghouses.” —The New York Times Book Review

At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment--to oneself and to others.

The president of New York University offers a love letter to America’s most beloved sport and a tribute to its underlying spirituality. For more than a decade, John Sexton has taught a wildly popular New York University course about two seemingly very different things: religion and baseball. Yet Sexton argues that one is actually a pathway to the other. Baseball as a Road to God is about touching that something that lies beyond logical understanding. Sexton illuminates the surprisingly large number of mutual concepts shared between baseball and religion: faith, doubt, conversion, miracles, and even sacredness among many others. Structured like a game and filled with riveting accounts of baseball’s most historic moments, Baseball as Road to God will enthrall baseball fans whatever their religious beliefs may be. In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, Sexton elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game, or even a national pastime: It can be a road to enlightenment.

Preeminent baseball analyst Bill James and ESPN.com baseball columnist Rob Neyer compile information on pitches and their origins, nearly two thousand pitchers, and more in this comprehensive guide. Pitchers, the pitches they throw, and how they throw them—they’re the stuff of constant scrutiny, but there's never been anything like a comprehensive source for such information…until now. Bill James and Rob Neyer spent over a decade compiling the centerpiece of this book, the Pitcher Census, which lists specific information for nearly two thousand pitchers, ranging throughout the history of professional baseball. Their guide also includes a dictionary describing virtually every known pitch, biographies of great pitchers who have been overlooked, and top ten lists for fastballs, spitballs, and everything in between. James and Neyer also weigh in on the debate over pitcher abuse and durability, offer a formula for predicting the Cy Young Award winner, and reveal James’s Pitcher Codes. Learn about the origins and development of baseball’s most important pitches and more knuckleballers and submariners than you ever thought existed! Baseball’s action always starts with the pitchers. Begin to understand them and join in on entertaining debates while having a great deal of fun with the history of the game that captivates so many with this one-of-a-kind guide.