Forever We Play

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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It's been a few years since I've been able to watch a game, but at one point I was a semi-serious baseball fan. So when given the opportunity to read a novella where baseball is a religion, I had to try it. Especially when I'm told it's a satire.

Now, I've known a few people for whom sports are a religion (see Fever Pitch – book or movie), but nothing like this. In a nutshell, Heaven is overcrowded and so entry has to be limited. Upon death, people have to pick a team and they will remain in Purgatory until that team wins the World Series. It's more complicated and convoluted than that, but there's the essence.

Naturally, there are a lot of Cubs fans in Purgatory.

Also, there's a thin-ly disguised Devil running around (actually, I didn't realize it was a disguise for a while – that's how thin it was). He's plotting and planning and stirring up trouble.

There's a lot of goofiness, jokes that land, jokes that just don't, a convoluted plot involving the last Cubs' series win, a strange mix of various religions, and an attempt at a love story or two. I don't think anything was as developed as it should've been to really tell a winning story – the characters were sketchy, the plot details too vague, and many of the jokes didn't have enough meat to them to really get the point across. Everything came close to working, but not much did.

In the end, I enjoyed this. But man, it was a mess. A mess with a heart and wit, don't get me wrong.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this from the author in exchange for this post.