[In] time for the opening of the 1953 season Mark Harris has come up with a novel, "The Southpaw" … that is the best straight—as distinguished from Lardner's satirical—treatment of baseball we have yet had. Mr. Harris has written a serious novel, skilfully using the folklore and mythology of baseball to illuminate some pleasant and unpleasant aspects of contemporary American character.

His story is the story of Henry Wiggen…. A phenomenal player, Henry shot quickly into place on the fabulous team of the New York Mammoths … and in a short time was well on his way to becoming one of baseball's "immortals." In the course of these developments—told in a semiliterate first-person prose—Henry learned, as will the reader, a great deal about the racket as well as the game of baseball, about himself, and about the American veneration for and sacrifices to the symbols of success...