A story with a heart of gold about love and the loss of innocence at the bottom of the most minor league in baseball-the class D Alabama-Florida League in the 1950s, with a sour old maverick manager, a yearning teenage second baseman, and a black catcher masquerading as a Venezuelan. A first-rate novel.-Newsweek. A sharp, unsentimental portrait of the minor league life...and Hemphill makes it all come to life, believably and memorably.-Sports Illustrated. So good, so true, so funny...-New York Times Book Review.