Baseball novels from top to bottom

The Hardball Cooperative, a blog written by ten fans and students of the game, hosts a symposium on the best and worst baseball novels of all time. Mark Harris’s Southpaw, my own choice, was nominated twice for the top spot, while The Natural, published just one year earlier, was named both best and worst. Tim Morris, a scholarly authority on baseball fiction, recommends Eric Rolfe Greenberg’s 1983 historical novel The Celebrant and makes a fine case for it. Excuse me while I hurry over to Abebooks.com.

Update: The nonfiction selections were announced today (Wednesday, July 8).

Update, II: Lots of comments over at the Baseball Think Factory on the Hardball Cooperative symposium. One of us symposiasts, according to a commentator, is a Primate. If none of the others has dibs on it, I get to be the Primate.