Great American Novel - Roth

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was going to tackle some of the best American novels. Well, one down I guess. This book is written from the point of view of an old sportswriter. He's very very angry because history has been rewritten to deny the existence of a third major league, the Patriot league. It was on par with the American and National leagues but destroyed and erased from history.
The book follows the last couple of seasons of the league and explains the events that destroyed them. Mostly by following one of their teams, the Ruppert Mundys. The Mundys were forced out of their stadium during WWII so that it could be used as a staging area for troop transports. This forced them to play their entire schedule on the road, a grave injustice. The team is filled with misfits and men who are really too young or too old to play. Their second baseman is 14, the third baseman in his 50s.
This book is quite vulgar and it took a bit to get past that. The images of the baseball players are mostly cartoonish. In fact, baseball is just used as a stand in for the USA. Still, it's got some laughs and some outlandish situations that are well put together. But this is far from a great novel.