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The Iowa Baseball Confederacy

3.81 of 5 stars 3.81 · rating details · 918 ratings · 68 reviews

Bearing W.P. Kinsella's trademark combination of "sweet-natured prose and a richly imagined world" (Philadelphia Inquirer), The Iowa Baseball Confederacy tells the story of Gideon Clark, a man on a quest. He is out to prove to the world that the indomitable Chicago Cubs traveled to Iowa in the summer of 1908 for an exhibition game against an amateur league, the Iowa Baseba...more

Paperback, 310 pages

Published March 14th 2003 by Mariner Books

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Oct 11, 2011 James Swenson rated it 4 of 5 stars

I just reread this book, wondering whether or not this time, if I paid very careful attention, I'd come to understand what really happened. Forlorn hope!

I guess that W.P. Kinsella is best known for Shoeless Joe, on which the movie Field of Dreams was based. If you know that film, the blend of baseball nostalgia with magical realism in Iowa Baseball Confederacy will feel familiar, in a good way.

Here, the neighbors consider our protagonist eccentric because of his obsession with the titular small-...more

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Aug 28, 2010 Agnes Mack rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Iowa Baseball Confederacy was about baseball and took place in Iowa, both pros in my world. However, it also involved a lot of magic and science fiction bullshit, which is a definite con.

The story follows a man whose father has passed on a bunch of information about this supposed baseball league that existed and beat the 1908 Chicago Cubs (one of the best baseball teams in history). The problem is that no one but this man and his father believe it exists. The son ends up losing his wife and...more

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Apr 07, 2011 Henrik Brameus rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Henrik by: Claes Brameus

Shelves: favorites

W.P Kinsella is not your normal author. He's Canadian, and likes to write about baseball. But it's baseball with a twist. As a metaphor for life, and with some magic woven into it. If you think "Field of Dreams" you are close. It was based on another of his books.

The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is my favorite of the Kinsella books I've read. It has a deep and intricate weave of characters and events. At the same time it has some quirky episodes that will pop into your head when you least expect it...more

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Oct 11, 2012 Carla rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a delightful little book, one of the most enjoyable I have read in quite some time. Gideon Clarke has spent his entire life, as did his father before him, trying to prove the existence of the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, a baseball league that existed in 1908. He knows all of the facts and statistics concerning the players and the league, including the knowledge that the Chicago Cubs played the Confereracy All-Stars in an exhibition game that was played in the pouring rain, and lasted for...more

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Dec 02, 2011 Josh Duggan rated it 3 of 5 stars

My apologies for the false promises I made when I said that I would be able to turn more of my focus to this blog. There are extenuating circumstances, I assure you.

Regardless, here I am.

Now, for those of you not even remotely familiar with the genre of fantasy baseball fiction (and I mean fantasy in the literary genre sense of the word, not the fantasy sports sense of the word), W.P. Kinsella is the man who wrote the novel Shoeless Joe--which one of my favorite sports films Field of Dreams was...more

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Feb 12, 2013 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: baseball

Baseball lends itself to obsession. From young boys spending every dime of their allowance money on trading cards to grown men spending every spare moment crunching numbers in a pursuit of the perfect metric, the game's hold runs deep.

Gideon Clarke's fixation is more specific than most. Convinced that the Chicago Cubs visited his hometown in 1908 for an epic exhibition game against a collection of all-stars from a competent but relatively obscure circuit known as the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, h...more Baseball lends itself to obsession. From young boys spending every dime of their allowance money on trading cards to grown men spending every spare moment crunching numbers in a pursuit of the perfect metric, the game's hold runs deep.

Gideon Clarke's fixation is more specific than most. Convinced that the Chicago Cubs visited his hometown in 1908 for an epic exhibition game against a collection of all-stars from a competent but relatively obscure circuit known as the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, he devotes his life to unearthing the evidence to prove the game took place. No hint of the contest can be found in any old newspaper. His communications with the survivors of the players involved prove fruitless. Even the Cubs' own files, which Clarke accesses by pulling off an elaborate ruse, contain nothing.

No setback, however, can shake his determination or dampen his near-religious fervor. At one point the protagonist of W.P. Kinsella's The Iowa Baseball Confederacy claims to feel like a prophet. Puppet, however, might be the more accurate descriptor.

His crusade was first waged by his father, Matthew Clarke, who like Gideon came into the knowledge of the Confederacy suddenly and completely, an encyclopedia of names and figures implanted in his brain by a lightning strike the night he met the girl of his dreams. Despite a complete lack of supporting evidence, Matthew submits his narrative of the league in the form of a thesis that is roundly rejected as fantasy by the University of Iowa's Department of History, which recommends he instead consider publishing it as fiction.

Gideon inherits the monomania at age 16, when his father is killed by a foul ball. Suddenly the ramblings of his eccentric dad make sense. Unable to find proof of a game that allegedly went on for weeks, he turns his focus to the larger-than-life Indian warrior, Drifting Away, who is so prominent in Matthew's account of the Confederacy.

Drifting Away was there when the land was cleared to make a baseball field on the outskirts of the town once known as Big Inning but later renamed Onamata, in honor of Drifting Away's wife. He was also present the night Matthew was struck by lightning, in essence receiving his call to enlist in the Indian's battle to be reunited with Onamata's spirit. It is Drifting Away's obsession that kindles that of both father and son Clarke. He toys with their hearts as well, infatuating them with mysterious women who drift in and out of their lives so painfully they spend half their time pining for the wives they can't keep home.

Carrying nothing but his trumpet, Gideon slips through a crack in time-confirming another of his father's wild theories-traveling from 1978 with childhood friend and minor league lifer Stan Rogalski and arriving exactly 70 years earlier, the night before the Cubs come to town. Mistaken for an albino because of his long, white hair, he's adopted by the Confederacy as a good-luck charm and forced to sit on the team's bench as they battle day after day in the pouring rain, somehow matching whatever runs Frank Chance's Chicago club scores, locally renowned hurler Arsenic O'Reilly keeping pace with Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown inning after inning.

When play is suspended the first night, Gideon encounters a young woman named Sarah who looks so much like his wife, Sunny, that he can't help but fall instantly for her. Even when Drifting Away threatens his life, he refuses to give her up, meeting with her night after night when darkness forces the teams to retire until sunup. The game, and the rain, endure through the arrival of famed umpire Bill Klem, visits from President Theodore Roosevelt and Leonardo da Vinci (who claims to have invented baseball in 1506), the deaths of the Cubs' nasty midget mascot Little Walter and numerous players, and the entrance into the lineup of a moving statue called the Black Angel of Death (who winds up hitting .300 for the Confederacy). Torn between his desire to flee with Sarah and his need to know how the game concludes, Gideon winds up staying for the duration as 40 days of rain wash the entire town of Big Inning away. Curiosity finally satisfied, he returns home lonelier and emptier than his father ever was.

"Name me a more perfect game!" Matthew Clarke had been fond of saying to his son. "Name me a game with more possibilities for magic, wizardry, voodoo, hoodoo, enchantment, obsession, possession."

Only such a game could spawn such a book, filled with all of that and so much more that you may need to read it twice to even begin piecing together all the clues and fathom half of what Kinsella has layered into this far-reaching novel. Seemingly offhand comments early in the book take on significance that can only be understood later. Even after two readings, I want to sit down with Kinsella, as Gideon did with Drifting Away, and pepper him with questions about how this universe is really connected.

It's a bit like watching Lost. There's time travel, religious overtones, unknown hands manipulating an often inhospitable environment-all that's missing is a smoke monster. But just like Lost, you don't need to understand every last thing to marvel at the inventive storytelling. That's not to say, however, that you won't become obsessed enough to keep on digging.(less)

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Sep 18, 2010 Esther rated it 1 of 5 stars

Holy cats, where to start? The "I'm not albino, I'm just really pale and have shoulder-length white hair and blue eyes!" protagonist? The grating "My special divine knowledge is right but everyone thinks I'm crazy!" plot? The utter flatness of the female characters, all of whom are either sex objects or sexless mother figures? The actual mystical Indian whose "power vision" is of a game of baseball? I would like to believe that Gideon Clarke is a parody, but Kinsella is so damn earnest that ther...more

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Sep 22, 2011 S Pat rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I purchased this book based on the movie Field of Dreams. So, it's not exactly what the movie was based on - that was Shoeless Joe. I couldn't afford Shoeless Joe, so I bought this one instead. Same author AND it's about baseball... so, it'll drive me to tears and reduce me to some quivering emotional mass. So, not really... however, the book does offer up some magical realism in slow pitch softball form. The depiction of a 2,000 inning game are glorious... it truly is a game that has not change...more

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Dec 10, 2009 Dan Porter rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: baseball

Kinsella is the Gabriel Garcia Marquez of baseball. The way he weaves words together to frame the national pastime and the American heartland in magical realism is beautiful.

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Sep 09, 2009 Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: in-my-library

This is the first book of Kinsella's work I have read. Being that I am a big baseball fan, and that "Field of Dreams" (based on Kinsella's novel "Shoeless Joe") is one of my favorite movies, it's kind of sad that it took me so long to get around to this.

For a rundown on the book, I use the review from Publishers Weekly via Amazon.Com:

On the day he met his true love, a carnival performer named Darling Maudie, Matthew Clarke was literally struck by lightning and magically imbued with the knowledg

...more This is the first book of Kinsella's work I have read. Being that I am a big baseball fan, and that "Field of Dreams" (based on Kinsella's novel "Shoeless Joe") is one of my favorite movies, it's kind of sad that it took me so long to get around to this.

For a rundown on the book, I use the review from Publishers Weekly via Amazon.Com:

On the day he met his true love, a carnival performer named Darling Maudie, Matthew Clarke was literally struck by lightning and magically imbued with the knowledge that in 1908 the Chicago Cubs had traveled to Onamata, Iowa, to play a seemingly endless game against an all-star amateur team, the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. He spends the rest of his life trying to prove this fact to the world, even writing a dissertation on it, but no one else remembers the Confederacy or the game. When Matthew commits an imaginative suicide (by allowing himself to be hit by a stray line drive), his son Gideon, the hero of this tale, inherits his father’s obsession. With the help of an old family friend who has a glimmer of memory of the game, Gideon and a friend, Stan, travel back through time to 1908, to witness the event and to learn about the mysterious forces that caused a memory lapse in those who witnessed it.

OK, so I didn’t remember all of the above description before reading it. I had bought the book over four years ago. The part I didn’t remember was Gideon and Stan going back in time. However, that didn’t spoil me on this book at all. As a matter of fact, I think this is a great book in general, let alone “baseball” book.

What makes this more then a baseball story is the characters and what they go through. There is love. There is despair. There is unbalanced relationships. There is close relationships. There is no real happy ending. But a very satisfying ending, at least to me. There are oddities of all sorts. And we are not just talking about the fantastical elements of the story.

The fantastical idea: the disappearance of an entire baseball league is not new to fiction. One of my favorite books, “The Great American Novel” by Philip Roth also deals with this. But it’s a conspiracy that erases the third major league. But this story is more then the league disappearing, it’s an entire game, an epic game, being erased. There is a monumental struggle of spiritual proportions that leads to the disappearances.

One of the things that I liked best was how it was all handled. Most fictional stories, and movies for that matter, that tackle sports (no pun intended) usually have some element that you really wouldn’t see happen in the real world. What makes this story so well written and plotted is the idea to go beyond that. Kinsella not only did something that you wouldn’t see happen, but he exploded the idea to make the whole thing seem absurd. Not only did the strange happen, the impossible did, too. How he wrote it though made it magical, much like what happens to Gideon and Stan, the Iowa Baseball Confederacy All-Stars, the Chicago Cubs, and the rest of the city of Big Inning, Iowa. It is well beyond what could happen, yet is worked so incredibly well.

Great characters sometimes do strange things, not being able to cope with the outcome of events, maybe even just sit back and take it in, and do things that aren’t going to make them a hero. It seemed to me that this book was filled with those kind of characters. Many might disagree with me, but it was that magic again that made them all endearing. There was something that was real about them, even if I don’t think that Frank Chance would really yell as much as he did in the book. Even Teddy Roosevelt was wonderfully done by Kinsella (this now being the THIRD book of fiction I have read where Teddy’s a character, even if really, really minor in this book, only present for three pages).

I think some of my love for the book comes for my love of the game of baseball. I really enjoy stories of baseball, and especially those from those eras that were well before I was born. Even with it’s fantastical moments that would be unbelievable, this story still captured my heart. And more importantly, I think it captured the soul of the game. That’s really saying something since the story captures a lot more then just the game.(less)

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Sep 29, 2012 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I received this book ages ago as a gift, but I hadn't gotten around to reading it until now, which is somewhat surprising since it's baseball and fiction (a dynamite combination for me). I think part of my hesitancy was that it was by the same author who wrote the book Shoeless Joe, upon which Field of Dreams is based. I may be alone in this among baseball fans, but I never cared much for Field of Dreams because to me it was just too much of a head trip. But I have to admit now, having read The...more I received this book ages ago as a gift, but I hadn't gotten around to reading it until now, which is somewhat surprising since it's baseball and fiction (a dynamite combination for me). I think part of my hesitancy was that it was by the same author who wrote the book Shoeless Joe, upon which Field of Dreams is based. I may be alone in this among baseball fans, but I never cared much for Field of Dreams because to me it was just too much of a head trip. But I have to admit now, having read The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, that it is possible that I just did not enjoy Field of Dreams because of the medium and that perhaps Kinsella's books are not meant to be filmed, because this was a pleasure to read although thoroughly more strange than Field of Dreams ever was.

Where to start: this book involves Leonardo Da Vinci, an irritable little person, an Indian who has been waiting centuries for the return of his wife, time travel, a flood of epic proportions, a church that does everything 12 hours earlier/later than the rest of the world does, an angel statue playing as a right fielder, and the complete disappearance of an entire baseball league. Oh, and a baseball game that lasts in excess of 2000 innings. Yeah, like I said, definitely strange. But odd as it might be, the book's message that the pursuit of obsession may be a fruitless one and the road we think we want to travel may in fact be quite different than we imagined comes shining through despite the odd series of events. I think what I enjoyed most was the humor of it and that at no point did the strangeness feel out of place. There isn't much character development here really, which is usually something I insist on, but the plot here is so rich that I will excuse it.

All in all, a wonderful story about myth-making and baseball. My only complaint resides with the ending, which is not clear at all unfortunately. A tip of my cap to Kinsella, as this novel could have completely flown off the handle into "completely ridiculous" territory, and at times very nearly did, but he managed to control it.(less)

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Aug 27, 2009 Tom rated it 2 of 5 stars

Lets see. Where to begin...

There are levels of suspending reality which separate some works of fiction from others. There is the level of Harry Potter, in which we have to believe that magic exists, there is the level of Chronicles of Narnia in which we have to believe in portals to other worlds, and there are pretty simple suspensions of reality like Forrest Gump, in which we have to believe that one "special" man could accomplish all of those incredible things.

Then there is the complete suspe...more Lets see. Where to begin...

There are levels of suspending reality which separate some works of fiction from others. There is the level of Harry Potter, in which we have to believe that magic exists, there is the level of Chronicles of Narnia in which we have to believe in portals to other worlds, and there are pretty simple suspensions of reality like Forrest Gump, in which we have to believe that one "special" man could accomplish all of those incredible things.

Then there is the complete suspension of all concepts of what is/is not possible. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy contains something called the infinite improbability drive; as we approach infinite improbability, random stuff, like spaceships turning into flower pots, become possible.

The Iowa Baseball Confederacy starts out in the somewhat benign level of fantasy, something along the lines of WP Kinsella's best-known work, Shoeless Joe (the basis for the movie, Field of Dreams). In the latter, we are only asked to believe in a hereafter, appearances to mortals of people from the great beyond, and a little bit of time travel. Ditto for the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. Theres magic in the air and time travel is possible. Not normal, but also not infinitely improbable.

With about 100 pages left in the book, all semblance of benign, mystical fantasy gives way to no-holds-barred randomness. Lightning strikes players, Leonardo Da Vinci appears in 1908 Iowa, A statue of an angel comes to life and plays baseball, pitchers throw 2000 innings in 40 days, and a mystical 300 year old Indian who torments the main character and who himself is tormented by the spirits of his grandfathers hits a game-winning homerun using the root of a tree.

Throw in an appearance by Teddy Roosevelt, towns washing away, and a church whose members live life 12 hours ahead (or is it behind?) of everyone else, and The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is just simply too weird to qualify for the "magical story" exemption to the laws of reality. (less)

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Mar 13, 2013 Rory Pollaro rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes suspension of belief can ruin a story. Not so in this case. This is the Kinsella book that should have been made into a movie. I found myself caught up in a world where baseball as myth and religion melds into an almost believable formula. This book more than any other I have read, finally taught me why I love baseball so much. A game could go on forever. The romanticism about the game touched me deeply and I found myself believing that pro baseball could be great again.

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Sep 24, 2010 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, fiction

The story extended the boundaries of reality in a dreamlike way that gave even the most unbelievable situations and characters a footing in reality. The story could have been better if it hadn't taken on so many fantastical elements from page 222 through the end. Also, the author seemed to be making attempts at allegory throughout the book, but he didn't make them obvious enough for me to understand much of it. Even still, the abstracted reality presented in this story was good enough for four s...more

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Apr 11, 2011 Betty Dickie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved Shoeless Joe and when this one appeared on our staff favorites shelf, I grabbed it. It is a strangely compelling story of a baseball game that "never" happened, but was really a titanic battle of wills. It goes even farther out there than Shoeless Joe and not quite as heartwarming, but still a really good read!

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Mar 10, 2012 Carol rated it 2 of 5 stars

It took me a long time to warm up to this story - at first it just seemed creepy and sad. I was also disappointed to discover that it was straight-up magical fantasy, though I wouldn't have minded had I known that going in. I enjoyed the baseball parts. I was utterly confused by the ending - not a clue what that was.

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Jan 09, 2011 Kathryn Hahn-Ferguson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am not a big sports fan, or of books about them, but I really enjoyed this book. It had a lot of the feeling like 'Field of Dreams' but not exactly the same story. There was some weird stuff at the end, which was a bit disconnected (for me) from the rest of the story, but still overall an enjoyable read.

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Mar 28, 2011 Dallas rated it 5 of 5 stars

A game of 2000 innings and a Big Indian... Angels in the graveyard and an albino protagonist. This is magical surrealism at its most wonderful. "Shoeless Joe" was a wonderful magical and popular book. This will never be so popular, but it contains some of his finest writing.

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Jan 20, 2013 Tim Nistler rated it 4 of 5 stars

I haven't read this book in many years, so I was surprised by some of the things I didn't remember about The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. In some ways I was disappointed that it wasn't as I remembered but I was greatly surprised by other things in the book. I forgot how strong the magical realism is throughout the book. Also the way that Kinsella weaves baseball, religion, and mysticism together and was very excellent. They all go together when one looks right down it.

I still think Shoeless Joe is...more

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Jul 20, 2008 Mike rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, baseball

The overly sentimental writing and the unfortunate use of magic as a central plot device in a more or less believable story really bother me about Kinsella's writing. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy is a great example of Kinsella killing a great idea by going just a little too far with the spiritual/magical/time travel business.

This book just seemed like a haphazard assembly of half-baked story ideas that could have been interesting on their own if developed properly.

On a semi-related side note,...more

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Nov 15, 2010 Grace rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: baseball

What a fun book! Also a bit confusing, however. I really loved all of the baseball + time travel + historical figures (Teddy Roosevelt, Leonardo da Vinci). But some of the other characters, such as Sunny, bothered me, and I didn't get the thing about Sarah getting stuck. The ending kind of lost me. Still, left me feeling pretty happy with it.

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Apr 04, 2013 Gannon Pitre rated it 3 of 5 stars

Simple pleasure for a summer afternoon. If you like baseball and magic, you'll enjoy it. If you don't like baseball and magic, stay away. Not from the book--from me.

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Sep 04, 2011 Lori rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, generalfic, 20th-century-lit, american-authors, haunting-fic

About a baseball game only two men remember anything about (including the stats, scores and players), but which was never recorded in written history... Great story.

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Jul 29, 2012 Elsa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Baseball, magic, and mysticism keep this from being anything like an ordinary story. There were things I loved about it - the analogies that were as thick as heat lightening in an Iowa summer, the easy flow between the real and the unreal - but in the end there just wasn't enough of a narrative drive to keep me completely engaged. My favorite parts involved the women in Gideon's life, and for me there just weren't enough of those sections to outweigh the rest. In the interest of fairness, I must...more

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Aug 07, 2009 Darlis rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is rather an odd baseball book. It is rather mystical yet it still shows the roots of the game and how people love it.

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Feb 24, 2013 Dan Mccarthy rated it 4 of 5 stars

The first 50 pages are the kind of perfection that makes you hold your breath. The rest of the book takes you home.

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Mar 06, 2012 Lynn rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is such a crazy, imaginative story that I always pull it out whenever I need a serious break from reality.

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Jun 05, 2013 Joe Metz rated it 4 of 5 stars

A crazy story with so many twists, like Field of Dreams on a trip. Lots of fun, but crazy.

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Nov 21, 2008 Phil rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a wonderful piece of magical realism from the guy who wrote Shoeless Joe.

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Aug 30, 2012 Dan Jackman rated it 5 of 5 stars

Has a mystical feel. Sort of a science fiction/baseball book. Very enjoyable.

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About W.P. Kinsella

William Patrick Kinsella, OC, OBC is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. His work has often concerned baseball and Canada's First Nations and other Canadian issues.

William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his...more William Patrick Kinsella, OC, OBC is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. His work has often concerned baseball and Canada's First Nations and other Canadian issues.

William Patrick Kinsella was born to John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years-old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.

As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the Government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.

Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He travelled down to Iowa and earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1991, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.

Kinsella's most famous work is Shoeless Joe, upon which the movie Field of Dreams was based. A short story by Kinsella, "Lieberman in Love", was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film – the Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti in her acceptance speech – a full-page advertisement was later placed in Variety apologizing to Kinsella for the error. Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on a First Nations reserve were the basis for the movie Dance Me Outside and CBC television series The Rez, both of which Kinsella considers very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1987.

Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary in Alberta. Kinsella suffered a car accident in 1997 which resulted in the end of his fiction-writing career. He is a noted tournament Scrabble player, becoming more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. He currently lives in Yale, British Columbia with his fourth wife, Barbara, and occasionally writes articles for various newspapers.

In the year 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British Columbia.
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