Baseball Crazy: Ten Stories That Cover all the Bases
by: Nancy E. Mercado, Editor
Published by: Puffin Books
Buy From Amazon.com
Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart
I love to buy my twelve-year-old nephew books; I am ever hopeful that he’ll turn into a reader. Right now, he’s into baseball; plays on a tournament team and so forth. So when I saw Baseball Crazy: Ten Stories That Cover all the Bases at a St. Louis independent bookstore, I had to buy it for him.
And of course I had to read it first, and I’m so glad that I did. Puffin says the stories are geared toward the eight- to twelve-year-old reader, but these stories are so well written that they will appeal to readers and baseball fans of all ages. The only thing that gears these stories toward younger readers is that all the protagonists are eight to twelve year olds.
My favorite story is the title story: “Baseball Crazy” by John H. Ritter. While all of the stories take place on ball fields, “Baseball Crazy’s” time is the 1950s. The narrator wants to “tell you a little story about Frankie Alvarez, the finest secret agent baseball player I’ve ever known.” This laugh-out-loud story had me clutching my sides. The last time I laughed that hard at a character, the last James Herriott novel had just been released.
Ritter writes a lot of books about baseball–there’s a scorecard for each writer as well as a list of other publications the reader might enjoy–so he knows his stuff. Other writers (that I have heard of) include Charles R. Smith, Maria Testa, and Jerry Spinelli. All the stories are original, well-crafted, and worth the time.
Baseball Crazy will have appeal to both sexes as the genders of the participants are both boys and girls.
If I had to find a negative thing to say about Baseball Crazy: Ten Stories That Cover all the Bases, well, I can’t find one unless it is that the book’s editor, Nancy E. Mercado, knew nothing about baseball when she was given the assignment. Now, thanks to these wonderful stories, Mercado is a convert to summer’s game.
Armchair Interviews says: A baseball book for all ages.
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