Does this plot ring a bell? If so, please advise title and/or author...I had it on a hard drive years ago that went south and is unrecoverable. Young man of seriously mixed ancestry develops a baseball pitch that is next to un-hittable. After success in baseball, he joins Catholic church and maybe becomes Pope. There is an element of high tech electronics in the church and there is an organization whose members volunteer to serve the prison sentences of convicted criminals, allowing the criminals to be released. Very much in the magical realism genre. Title might resonate with "The Last RoundUp" or "The Final (something)". Probably written sometime in the late 1960s to early 1980s.
The only thing I can think of was the April 1st fools story in Sports Illustrated, by George Plimpton, where someone named Syd supposedly learned “the art of the pitch” in Tibet. The Mets set up a tent in training camp to go along with the joke.
Only person with that kind of imagination was Philip K Dick.
Oh, well...thanks for engaging the question. This novel was worthy of a comparison to PKD...or Pynchon. If I ever manage to locate it again, I'll let you know, as you'd probably enjoy it. Pretty sure it was a one-off, akin to A Canticle for Liebowitz.
It's great to see Marchell Abrahams's work reaching a wider audience. She's phenomenal!
Glad you know of her! We so enjoyed chatting with her. And she is very funny too. Thanks!
Cool. Looking forward to the next one!
I love these slice of life stories. Infinitely more interesting and educational than any number of 80 paragraph long political screeds on Substack.
Thank you for reading. In general I shy from writing about myself, but it was so long ago it feels like someone else. Much appreciated.
Does this plot ring a bell? If so, please advise title and/or author...I had it on a hard drive years ago that went south and is unrecoverable. Young man of seriously mixed ancestry develops a baseball pitch that is next to un-hittable. After success in baseball, he joins Catholic church and maybe becomes Pope. There is an element of high tech electronics in the church and there is an organization whose members volunteer to serve the prison sentences of convicted criminals, allowing the criminals to be released. Very much in the magical realism genre. Title might resonate with "The Last RoundUp" or "The Final (something)". Probably written sometime in the late 1960s to early 1980s.
The only thing I can think of was the April 1st fools story in Sports Illustrated, by George Plimpton, where someone named Syd supposedly learned “the art of the pitch” in Tibet. The Mets set up a tent in training camp to go along with the joke.
Only person with that kind of imagination was Philip K Dick.
Oh, well...thanks for engaging the question. This novel was worthy of a comparison to PKD...or Pynchon. If I ever manage to locate it again, I'll let you know, as you'd probably enjoy it. Pretty sure it was a one-off, akin to A Canticle for Liebowitz.