 In the story F. Winslow tries and fails to join Phi Beta Kappa while in real life Nathanael West wanted desperately to join a fraternity at Brown University but could not because he was Jewish.West, like F. Winslow, always played right field and consistently failed to measure up to his athletically superior cousins.The specific baseball game described in the story is fictional, but later in life West would frequently recall a similar incident from his time at Brown University, where the bat-yielding relative is replaced by a throng of angry spectators.