"The Seventh Game" is a novel about an aging pitcher on the mound for the last game of a world series (probably the last game of his career), and of the life he has lived up until this particular October afternoon. Mr. Kahn commits enough writerly sins to send himself back to the minors. The book is littered with borrowings, from his own work (he tosses compliments at friends he encountered and evokes the places he visited on his summer's research for "A Season in the Sun"), from other baseball books (most notably, and regrettably, those by hacks of the 40's and 50's) and even from Tom Wolfe…. (pp. 11, 21)

But worse than the attributable borrowings are the clichés so firmly grounded in bad baseball literature that they are beyond tracing. He gives us predictably venal owners, dishonest agents, subliterate players (save, of course, for the [Nathaniel] Hawthorne-reading...