The Cubs last won the National League pennant in 1945 and a World Series championship 104 seasons ago in 1908. I have learned to put it all in a theological context and comfort myself with Christian verities such as steadfastness, suffering that builds character, and the hope that always shines like light in the darkness.

There’s a rich literature of losing teams suddenly becoming winners when a superstar emerges unexpectedly and lifts his team to new heights. I was introduced to this literature when my mother handed me a copy of The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, a 1954 novel by Douglass Wallop that became the smash Broadway musical Damn Yankees. Joe Boyd, a long-suffering fan of the Washington Senators, makes a Faustian deal with the devil, becomes a superb player and lifts the lowly Senators to a championship.

Two new books are variations on the theme. In The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, Henry Skrimshander is an almost supernaturally gifted shortstop who plays for a small Wisconsin college that’s famous for a long-ago relationship with Herman Melville. Harbach has created interesting and peculiar names for his characters and weaves the Melville relationship into the story. The Westish College baseball team is known as the Harpooners and the main character’s name, Skrimshander, is a play on scrimshaw, the art of carving intricate designs on whale ivory or whalebone. And how can a reader not love a college president with the name Guert Affenlight and a daughter named Pella?