Man on Spikes

Baseball fans everywhere are flocking to warm weather to watch their favorite teams and players get ready for yet another season. If they are smart, they will take Man on Spikes with them to read on the planes and in the hotels. Man on Spikes is somewhat overlooked in the lexicon of great baseball fiction, but it's time to correct that. Eliot Asinof, who wrote Eight Men Out, tells a terrific story from mulitple points of view of young Mike Kutner's quest to make the major leagues. This book is for all of us grown up kids and aging dreamers out there.

A classic of baseball literature, first published in 1955, Eliot Asinof's "Man on Spikes" is a grimly realistic portrait of the fictional Mike Kutner--a lifetime minor leaguer. His baseball career is delineated in fourteen episodic chapters--each with a different narrator. Kutner has more determination than skill, and he fails his only big league test with the Chicago Lions at the age of thirty-five. The owner of the Lions, Jim Mellon, refuses to give the outfielder a chance with the parent club until it is too late. In the meantime, Kutner had lost valuable years serving in World War II. The author stresses the concept of indentured servitude in which players like Kutner were victimized by the business of baseball--long before the free agency era. One chapter, "The Negro," deals with a black teammate, Ben Franks. He and Kutner discuss the significance of Jackie Robinson's integration of major league ball--a rarity in baseball fiction at the time. Only Bliss Perry's "The Plated City" (1895), Murrell Edmunds' "Behold, Thy Brother" (1950), and Mark Harris' "The Southpaw" (1953) had touched on the problem of race in the professional game up to this point.

This is a must-read book! Very well written and insightful. It gives a realistic view of baseball in America as opposed to the usual romantic view presented in other books and films.

This is one of the best books I have read with baseball as it's central focus. It is a grity story of one ballplayer's long time struggles in the minor leagues trying to make it to the majors. I would strongly recommend this title to anyone interested in baseball!