Robert Coover’s first novel, The Origin of the Brunists (1966), was highly enough regarded to win the William Faulkner Foundation First Novel Award in 1966. The critical (and popular) acclaim for The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. showed that Coover was not a writer with only one story to tell but one who followed his first success with a greater one.

To shorten the novel’s title to The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., as is usually done, misplaces its intention: This is a story about J. Henry Waugh, a man who discovers the delights and the dangers of Fancy.