"You need two things to make a fine, fine book: a story and a teller. The Opposite Field brings them together, like young love. It's a story about fathers and sons, and good love and failed love, and baseball, and if that isn't by God a book I don't know what is. This story breaks your heart, in places. But then it makes you glad you have one."
— Rick Bragg, author of All Over but the Shoutin'
"Great and powerful storytelling. Jesse Katz delivers the human experience in a way that speaks to us all."
— Michael Connelly, author of The Black Echo, The Lincoln Lawyer, and other bestselling novels
"A love letter from a father to his son, The Opposite Field is also a hymn to baseball, the new Los Angeles, the joy and pain of modern parenting as well as one man's journey into wisdom and clarity, and Jesse Katz shapes this material in such a way that he makes it as dramatic as a movie. I never would have thought a book about a Little League team could be this compelling, or that so much could be at stake, or that La Loma could become—and it does in Katz's buoyant prose—the stuff of legend."
— Bret Easton Ellis, author of Less Than Zero
"A 'Little League Dad' book like no other."
— Greg Mitchell, author of Joy in Mudville
"Cast through the prism of one of America's oldest pastimes, Jesse Katz's memoir illuminates contemporary American life with wonderful detail and honesty. The Opposite Field brings to life the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles, drawing them out of the shadows of Hollywood glitz and gangland portraits we typically read about, evoking the struggles and dreams of the children and parents in and around the hidden-away baseball field of La Loma. It's a heartfelt story, well-told."
— Norman Ollestad, author of Crazy for the Storm
"Acutely observed, deeply human, and very wise about the game."
— D.J. Waldie, author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir
"And the poetry of his prose—Katz may be the next big writer dude of the L.A. style."
— Luis J. Rodriguez, author of Always Running: La Vida Loca