Free The Great American Novel by Philip Roth

a million American boys and their weapons across the Atlantic to liberate Europe from the tyrant Hitler. In the years to come (the local fans were told), schoolchildren in France, in Belgium, in Holland, in far-off Denmark and Norway would be asked in their history classes to find the city of Port Ruppert, New Jersey, on the map of the world and to mark it with a star; and among English-speaking peoples, Port Ruppert would be honored forever after—along with Runnymede in England, where the Magna Charta had been signed by King John, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where John Hancock had affixed his signature to the Declaration of Independence—as a Birth-Place of Freedom … Then there was the psychological lift that Mundy Park would afford the young draftees departing the ballfield for the battlefront. To spend their last weeks on American soil as “the home team” in the stadium made famous by the incomparable Mundys of ’28, ’29, and ’30, could not but provide “a shot in the arm” to the morale of these American soldiers, most of whom had been hero-worshipping schoolkids back when the Mundys, powered by the immortal Luke Gofannon, had won three hundred and thirty-five games in three seasons, and three consecutive World Series without losing a single game. Yes, what the hallowed playing fields of Eton had been to the British officers of long, long ago, Mundy Park would be to G.I. Joe of World War Two.
    As it turned out, bracing sentiments such as these, passionately pronounced from a flag-draped platform in downtown Port Ruppert by notables ranging from Secretary of War Stimson and Governor Edison to the Mayor of Port Ruppert, Boss Stuvwxyz, did work to quash the outcry that the Mundy management and the U.S. government had feared from a citizenry renowned for its devotion to “the Rupe-its” (as the team was called in the local patois). Why, feeling for the Mundys ran so high in that town, that according to Bob Hope, one young fellow called up by the Port Ruppert draft board had written “the Mundys” where the questionnaire had asked his religion; as the comedian told the servicemen at the hundreds of Army bases he toured that year, there was another fellow back there, who when asked his occupation by the recruiting sergeant, replied with a straight face, “A Rupe-it roota and a plumma.” The soldiers roared—as audiences would if a comic said no more than, “There was this baseball fan in Port Ruppert—” but Hope had only to add, “Seriously now, the whole nation is really indebted to those people out there—” for the soldiers and sailors to be up on their feet, whistling through their teeth in tribute to the East Coast metropolis whose fans and public officials had bid farewell to their beloved ball club in order to make the world safe for democracy.
    As if the Mundys’ fans had anything to say about it, one way or another! As if Boss Stuvwxyz would object to consigning the ball club to Hell, so long as his pockets had been lined with gold!
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    The rationale offered “Rupe-it rootas” by the press and the powers-that-be did not begin to answer General Oakhart’s objections to the fate that had befallen the Mundys. What infuriated the General wasn’t simply that a decision of such magnitude had been reached behind his back—as though he whose division had broken through the Hindenburg Line in the fall of 1918 was in actuality an agent of the Huns!—but that by this extraordinary maneuver, severe damage had been inflicted upon the reputation of the league of which he was president. As it was, having been sullied by scandal in the early thirties and plagued ever since by falling attendance, the Patriot League could no longer safely rely upon its prestigious past in the competition for the better ball players, managers, and umpires. This new inroad into league morale and