In W. P. Kinsella's sports novel Shoeless Joe, Ray Kinsella's visit with his twin brother's girlfriend Gypsy does not serve merely as a digression from the economic dilemma in which Ray finds himself. While at the carnival with which Gypsy travels, Ray tours the “strange babies” sideshow, where the careful reader is able to encounter a microcosm of the novel's action. It is in the ill-kept trailer that Ray notices “about a dozen glass containers,” each containing a faded black-and-white photograph of a deformed fetus (175). These photographs provide a specific reference to Ray's mythical powers exhibited throughout the text.

Prior to this visit, Ray resurrected eight ballplayers who died scandalously in the fetal stages of their dreams. These eight members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox had been banished from organized baseball for fixing games during the world series. Until they became phantom ballplayers on Ray's magical field in Iowa, they were never permitted to realize their ballplaying potential. Eight of the photographs Ray regards at the carnival are accounted for by these eight ex-professionals. Four others maimed in the infancy of their desires and likewise brought back to life to quench their ballplaying passions need yet be accounted for in order to explain the dozen pictures to which Kinsella refers.

Two of these remaining four are literally resurrected from the dead to effect their ballplaying ambitions. One is Archie “Moonlight” Graham, an ex-New York Giant whose one half-inning professional baseball career expired before he realized the opportunity to bat. Graham is granted his dearest wish—to hit against major leaguers—at Ray's enchanted ballpark.

Another character returned to life is Ray Kinsella's dad, a frustrated minor league catcher who returns to encounter baseball at the major league level on Ray's field. As a now youthful father, he is also able to experience a camaraderie with his sons before, as Ray explains it, he is “worn down by life” (196). Graham and Ray's father make ten.

The deformed two who complete the dozen are symbolically granted new existences. Eddie Scissons has been a charlatan for decades, falsely claiming to have played professional baseball with the Chicago Cubs. However, after viewing himself actually participating in a game on Ray's field against major leaguers, he dies contentedly, having at last been able to certify his heretofore fraudulent ties to professional baseball.

Kinsella completes the dozen with J. D. Salinger. Salinger refuses to publish and completely forsakes any literary undertakings, but his enthusiasm for writing is renewed at Ray's diamond. At the culmination of the novel, the ghost players select Salinger to accompany them into the cornfield, into a world beyond reality, where he promises to revive his dormant career and fulfill his duty as a writer (222).

The choice of twelve old black-and-white pictures of deformed fetuses by Kinsella parallels Ray's resurrection of the eight banished players; the fulfillment of the frustrated major-league dreams of Scissons, Graham, and Ray's dad; and the reawakening of J. D. Salinger to his calling. Ray's carnival visit to the strange babies sideshow presents the attentive reader a keystone to Ray's restorative activities.

Work Cited

Kinsella, W. P. Shoeless Joe. New York: Ballantine Books, 1982.