The Kid from Tomkinsville [protagonist of the book of the same name] was a sand-lot rookie … who pitched and batted his way to fame, but this is more than the story of one man's success, for it turns inside out the making of a winning baseball team. Here, in prose which has the good hard smack of ash against leather and the quick impressions and scope of a candid camera, are portrayed the problems, the disappointments and the sheer nerve of a team….

[Even] a reader who does not know a hit from an error will respond to the tense excitement of play-by-play accounts of games. It is, however, the finer values of sportsmanship interpreted in very human and masculine terms which make this more than just a tale of sport.