["The Seventh Babe" is] the American dream of baseball re-enacted as nightmare, a hallucinated image of what lies outside of the official histories and record books. Anyone brought up on the traditional myths is bound to find the novel irritating and disturbing. I certainly did. But then … there's a lot more to the game than its traditional myths. (p. 288)

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Two on Baseball," in The New York Times, Section III (© 1979 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), June 18, 1979 (and reprinted in Books of the Times, Vol. II, No. 6, 1979, pp. 286-88).∗