Le Projet Syracuse

Le Projet Syracuse (The Syracuse Project) is a baseball-themed novel by Quebec writer Georges Desmeules (b. 1964). Originally published in 2008, it is Desmeules' first work of fiction after a number of books on the history of Quebec literature. The book was well-received, even though it is very much unique in French-language literature, combining a spy story with baseball and mathematical arcana. The book has not yet been translated into English.

The novel is subtitled: "The life and death of Wolf Habermann (1895 ?-1979 ?), mathematician, philologist, baseball fan and so-called conspirator". Right off the bat the narrator, who is unnamed but appears to be an academic from Quebec, explains that Habermann is one of the most enigmatic figure of World War II, a man who spent the first part of his adult life as a spy and the latter trying to flee his pursuers. Born in Germany, he was sent to America by Adolf Hitler in the late 1930s on a quixotic mission of undermining American science. After the war, Habermann assumed a false identity as Thomas Lewis (born Lowenstein), a Jewish Holocaust survivor, and reinvented himself as a professor of English literature in a New England college.

But there is an unexplained connection to baseball: for some reason, Satchel Paige himself turns up at Lewis’s funeral uttering typically undecipherable quotes about what links him to the late professor. Research in newspaper archives shows that Habermann was present at midget Eddie Gaedel's funeral in 1961, wrongly identified as "a member of the family". Lewis gave away his numerous papers to St. Louis University, and the narrator begins to search that voluminous archive for clues as to what exactly Habermann was up to. The archive turns out to be a treasure trove of information, including diaries, mathematical exercises, philosophical essays, and hours of recorded interviews. The novel is presented as a summary of this research, complete with academic-style footnotes and acknowledgements to editors and others (such as Claude Brochu and Bud Selig, for granting the author special access to the Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY).

When Habermann landed in the United States in 1935 on his mission from Hitler, he set out to understand the soul of America and quickly became fascinated with baseball, heretofore unknown to him, for its geometry based around the figure of the diamond and its precise rules that stroke his penchant for gathering of overly detailed information. He buys season’s tickets at Fenway Park, all the while conceiving his devilish plot, which is to propose a mathematical problem so fiendish that it will captivate the attention of American scientists for years, turning them away from more productive efforts. The problem is unveiled at a mathematicians’ congress at Syracuse University in 1937 and works exactly as planned, slowing considerably the work of developing the world’s first nuclear weapon as the most brilliant scientific minds in the nation waste considerable time in trying to solve Habermann’s conjecture, which has no solution.

In his postwar career as a literature professor, Habermann, now known as Lewis, becomes aware of a secret society called the "Higher Moral Standard League" of which he surmises Gaedel is a member, his appearance in a major league baseball game in spite of his handicap being the sort of unique feat that can open the doors of that elite group. Forming a friendship with St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck, who is also intrigued by the secret society, Lewis attempts to pry information from Gaedel and from Bob Cain, the pitcher immortalized for having faced him in his single plate appearance, who has since become convinced that Gaedel is some sort of secular saint. Veeck for his part wants to be admitted into the Higher Moral Standard League, but Gaedel just strings him along.

Lewis’s next clue comes from an unpublished 1959 Sports Illustrated article about spring training, which talks about a 40-year-old shortstop, Ansel Taylor, trying to make the Los Angeles Dodgers by hiding his age. Taylor talks to the writer about a secret society of men obsessed with higher moral values and baseball statistics who gather to play fictitious baseball games in secret. Lewis immediately makes the connection, also recognizing that Taylor was a young graduate student he met before the war at one of his mathematicians' congresses. Using his real name, Habermann tracks Taylor down in Utah, where he is a Mormon religious leader, and he realizes that his old theorem is now plastered all over Salt Lake City, UT, as Lewis believes it has mystical properties. Taylor confesses that only Gaedel could have sent the revelatory article to Lewis, but before Habermann can meet Gaedel again, the midget is killed in suspicious circumstances.

However, just before his death in early 1961, knowing his life was in imminent danger, Gaedel had been able to send a letter to Habermann, in which he explained that the Higher Moral Standard League, while founded on principles of defending the geatest moral values, has gone astray. It now seeks to destroy baseball, which its members now see as a ridiculously flawed copy of the idealistic form of the game they play in their minds, and to destroy American democracy. It seems that Gaedel thought that Habermann was the only man who could prevent this fatal outcome. But Habermann's quest for more information stalls; his only success is establishing contact with Satchel Paige, Gaedel’s former teammate, who encourages him to persevere. John F. Kennedy’s assassination is obviously a part of the plot, but Habermann can’t put all the pieces together and the investigation stalls for the next decade.

Still looking for answers and now into his 80's, Habermann begins a diamond-shaped road trip across the United States in the spring of 1979, accompanied by a Jack Kerouac-like figure named Louis Giroux. One night, feeling he is being followed by potentially dangerous characters, he switches motel rooms with Giroux, and his traveling companion quickly gets shot in his bed, although the wound is not fatal. Habermann apparently solves the mystery of Gaedel’s murder and manages to thwart the secret society’s plan to destroy America. Or, does he really ? The narrator cannot be fully certain that the paranoid Habermann did not invent all of this, and the word of Giroux is not authoritative either.

Beyond the spy story, Desmeules’ book revisits the thesis that baseball is a fundamental part of the American character. There are echoes of Philip Roth's The Great American Novel, from the role of midgets to the portrayal of baseball as a quasi-religious ritual, to the evocation of an enemy plot centered on an attempt to corrupt the game in order to undermine America as a whole. G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Friday is another obvious influence, but fundamentally, the novel serves to expose how deeply entrenched baseball is in American history, to an extent that no other sport can claim.

Further Reading

• Georges Desmeules: Le Projet Syracuse , L’instant même, Québec, QC, 2008. ISBN 978-2-89502-263-3