Man on Spikes, Special Edition (Writing Baseball) - Hardcover

Asinof, Mr. Eliot

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809322005 ISBN 13: 9780809322008

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Selected as one of baseball literature's Golden Dozen by Roger Kahn, Man on Spikes is an uncompromisingly realistic novel about a baseball player who struggles through sixteen years of personal crises and professional ordeals before finally appearing in a major league game. In a preface to this new edition, Eliot Asinof reveals the longsuffering ballplayer and friend upon which the novel is based.

 

 

About this title

Review

One of baseball writing's best utility men, Asinof is justly famed for Eight Men Out, his masterful exploration of the tragic events that led to the surreal stain of the 1919 Black Sox scandal; it is a deservedly enduring work of baseball nonfiction. Asinof's first literary at-bat, though, was in the fictional league. Man on Spikes--long out of print until that egregious error was rectified with the debut of Southern Illinois University Press's Writing Baseball series--is about as unromantically clear-eyed a look at baseball as exists in the genre. Its hero is a journeyman ballplayer named Mike Kutner, based, intriguingly, on a real journeyman ballplayer named Mickey Rutner, who Asinof played minor league ball with, and who, in one of the game's cosmic jokes, winds up on the same page as Babe Ruth in the alphabetical listings of The Baseball Encyclopedia.

Kutner, like Rutner, is never quite good enough to stick in the Majors, but his dream of making it allows ownership to abuse and exploit his talent for the 16 seasons after he signs his first contract. Dreams die hard, and sports dreams die particularly hard; Asinof works this theme beautifully, until, in the end, Kutner can finally hang up his spikes and hold onto something more tangible than reverie: sustaining love. This is a novel bursting with passion, understanding, and the insight of someone who's played the game and can translate its feelings without filtering them through rose-colored flip-ups. --Jeff Silverman

About the Author

Eliot Asinof is renowned among baseball writers for Eight Men Out, his brilliant reconstruction of the infamous Black Sox scandal in the 1919 World Series. The author of five novels and eight works of nonfiction, he served an apprenticeship in the minor leagues as a prelude to his many works about baseball.

Edition details

• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0809322005
• ISBN 13: 9780809322008
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296