From the very beginning of The Southpaw you know you are in for a treat. Just read the dedication to know why. Then, for further evidence, move on to the "Special Warning To All Readers!!!"
Henry Wiggen is a left handed pitcher reflecting on his career in baseball. Although Henry is obsessed with the game from the very beginning there is a real defining moment when, at sixteen, he replaces his father on the mound during a game against the Clowns. After that, he tries out and is subsequently signed to play for the New York Mammoths. During spring training in Florida Henry learns what its like to be a ballplayer in the big time - competition, women, egos. The only "criticism" I have of the book is that one must love baseball in order to really love The Southpaw. There is a lot of play by play action that can get a little tedious at times. ( )

This is my favorite book. It is wonderful baseball story, but even more is right up there with Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mocking Bird as a masterful example of the first person POV. ( )

I was interested in whether this 1953 novel would hold up. For a few pages, it seemed that the perhaps overly naive first-person narration would not -- there's a lot of Huck Finn in Henry Wiggens, perhaps too much and unrealistically so. But that feeling passed, and though I thought there a bit too much describing of individual baseball games, a lot of the little themes of the book are treated with subtlety -- or at least without Wiggens being too heavy-handed about them (issues such as those of race, class, and the place of a ballplayer as an employee and as a celebrity). The novel remains one the the best baseball novels, and still rewards reading.

The Southpaw is a great & wonderful book which repays reading & rereading. ( )

Mark Harris's four-book series about Henry Wiggen is widely regarded as the best modern baseball fiction, and for good reason. Henry Wiggen, the narrator, is a talented bush-league southpaw with confidence, love of the game, and poor grammar. His talent takes him far, and he finds himself in the starting rotation of the fictitious New York Mammoths. At first, he thinks that the baseball world and he himself are everything he thought they'd be, but as he grows and matures he experiences a number of reality checks. From politics within the organization to encountering racism towards his African-American teammate to becoming a man that his father, his girl, and he can be proud of, Henry experiences all of the usual growing pains on the mound of a baseball field. In the end, he becomes a left-handed hero who gets his girl and writes a book about his journey. Henry Wiggen is the salt of the earth; though not book-smart, he's savvy, charming, and knowledgeable. Once you enter his world, it's difficult to leave, and you finish the book happily aware of the fact that there are three more to come.