Man on Spikes (Writing Baseball)

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Summary: A realistic view of baseball the way it used to be played!
Review: 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.

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Summary: Great story about Baseball and following your dreams
Review: 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!

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Summary: the ultimate Screwed by the System story
Review: Unfortunately, it has been labelled a baseball story, and this limits the amount of people who would be even remotely interested in it. And while it is probably true that if you don't like baseball, or know little or nothing about how the game is played on the field, then this book is probably not for you. Nonetheless, Asinof does a wonderful job of chronicling the career of an athlete who never got a break, but in the end the long descriptions of game situations scattered throughout the book will quickly wear on the reader who isn't interested in baseball, and this dooms the book to a limited audience. What's interesting about the novel is how each of the chapters is really a self-contained short story. If you find yourself not liking the first chapter, jump to some of the other ones and give them a try; you can easily do this without losing the thread of anything, because it's not a novel at all but a series of situations which put together can make up a bigger picture. I'm giving it a four because, again, the game descriptions get tiring, even for a baseball fan like me.