Cleveland Incubus Ticket

Elwood Reid first appeared on the literary stage with a powerful and bruising story called "What Salmon Know," which appeared in the March 1997 issue of "GQ. Here was a writer not afraid to examine the soulful underside of the American male, or the violence that accompanies disappointed dreams. Now, in his first, extraordinary novel, Reid tells the story of Elwood Riley, a six-foot-six, 275-pound blue-collar kid whose ticket out of Cleveland is a "full ride" football scholarship to the University of Michigan. But Riley is cursed with intelligence and an awareness of the vicious inhumanity of the college football system. If Riley doesn't want to "six"--lose his scholarship or get maimed--he has to become a "fella," a pain-loving freak too nihilistic to care what he does to himself or others. And after Riley encounters the alluring, mysteriously damaged Kate, his dilemma becomes ever more painful. Elwood Reid's portrait of this world is at once blackly humorous, starkly tragic, and perfectly detailed. With deft strokes, he portrays emotionally stunted coaches who have mastered the art of humiliating and manipulating young men, groupies attracted to the fame but undone by the shocking cruelty of the players, and the athletes themselves, who grow addicted to violence, alcohol, and steroids, too caught up in the glory of playing for Big Blue to notice they are mere meat to the coaches and the university. In tough, spare, beautiful prose that should invite comparisons to the works of Thom Jones and Denis Johnson, Reid describes a place where young men damage their souls and their bodies in pursuit of a worthless glamor. This is a profound, unsettling book about a familiar yethidden world--a Greek tragedy in cleats.

She's beautiful, smart, goal-oriented, and she just inherited the Cleveland Indians. Unfortunately, she wants to move the franchise to Miami, and a losing season is her only ticket to Florida. So she signs the wildest gang of screwballs that ever spit tobacco. They're handsome, but they're hopeless! Her catcher (Tom Berenger) is a washed-up womanizer who struck out in life. Her ace pitcher (Charlie Sheen) is a punked-out crazy who struck out with the law. And her third baseman ("L.A. Law"'s Corbin Bernsen) is more concerned about fielding endorsements than grounders. Throw in a busload of other misfits and you've hot yourself a hilarious line-up that's destined for disaster.