Download or read book Baseball in April and Other Stories written by Gary Soto and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1990 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mexican American author Gary Soto draws on his own experience of growing up in California's Central Valley in this finely crafted collection of eleven short stories that reveal big themes in the small events of daily life. Crooked teeth, ponytailed girls, embarrassing grandfathers, imposter Barbies, annoying brothers, Little League tryouts, and karate lessons weave the colorful fabric of Soto's world. The smart, tough, vulnerable kids in these stories are Latino, but their dreams and desires belong to all of us. Glossary of Spanish terms included. Awards: ALA Best Book for Young Adults, Booklist Editors' Choice, Horn Book Fanfare Selection, Judy Lopez Memorial Honor Book, Parenting Magazine's Reading Magic Award, John and Patricia Beatty Award
Download or read book Taking Sides written by Gary Soto and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1991 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lincoln Mendoza has to face his homeboys when his posh new school goes up against his old school on the basketball court.
Download or read book Baseball in April and Other Stories written by Gary Soto and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2000 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of eleven short stories focusing on the everyday adventures of Hispanic young people growing up in Fresno, California.
Download or read book Local News written by Gary Soto and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2003 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In thirteen stories full of wit and energy, Gary Soto illuminates the ordinary lives of young people. Meet Angel, who would rather fork over twenty bucks than have photos of his naked body plastered all over school; Philip, who discovers he has a "mechanical mind," whatever that means; Estela, known as Stinger, who rules Jos 's heart and the racquetball court; and many other kids, all of them with problems as big as only a preteen can make them. Funny, touching, and wholly original, Local News is Gary Soto in top form.
Download or read book Gary Soto written by Gary Soto and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 1995 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soto writes with a pure sweetness free of sentimentality that is almost extraordinary in modern American poetry. -- Andrew Hudgins. Soto insists on the possibility of a redemptive power, and he celebrates the heroic, quixotic capacity for survival in human beings and the natural world. -- Publishers Weekly. Soto has it all -- the learned craft, the intrinsic abilities with language, a fascinating autobiography, and the storyteller's ability to manipulate memories into folklore. -- Library Journal.
Download or read book Petty Crimes written by Gary Soto and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1998 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hard-hitting short story collection takes a hard look at teens and preteens on the edge.
Download or read book The Baseball Codes written by Jason Turbow and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-03-22 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insider’s look at baseball’s unwritten rules, explained with examples from the game’s most fascinating characters and wildest historical moments. Everyone knows that baseball is a game of intricate regulations, but it turns out to be even more complicated than we realize. All aspects of baseball—hitting, pitching, and baserunning—are affected by the Code, a set of unwritten rules that governs the Major League game. Some of these rules are openly discussed (don’t steal a base with a big lead late in the game), while others are known only to a minority of players (don’t cross between the catcher and the pitcher on the way to the batter’s box). In The Baseball Codes, old-timers and all-time greats share their insights into the game’s most hallowed—and least known—traditions. For the learned and the casual baseball fan alike, the result is illuminating and thoroughly entertaining. At the heart of this book are incredible and often hilarious stories involving national heroes (like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays) and notorious headhunters (like Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale) in a century-long series of confrontations over respect, honor, and the soul of the game. With The Baseball Codes, we see for the first time the game as it’s actually played, through the eyes of the players on the field. With rollicking stories from the past and new perspectives on baseball’s informal rulebook, The Baseball Codes is a must for every fan.
Download or read book The Baseball Whisperer written by Michael Tackett and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2016-07-05 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Field of Dreams was only superficially about baseball. It was really about life. So is The Baseball Whisperer . . . with the added advantage of being all true.” —MLB.com From an award-winning journalist, this is the story of a legendary coach and the professional-caliber baseball program he built in America's heartland, where boys would come summer after summer to be molded into ballplayers—and men. Clarinda, Iowa, population 5,000, sits two hours from anything. There, between the cornfields and hog yards, is a ball field with a bronze bust of a man named Merl Eberly, who specialized in second chances and lost causes. The statue was a gift from one of Merl’s original long-shot projects, a skinny kid from the Los Angeles ghetto who would one day become a beloved Hall-of-Fame shortstop: Ozzie Smith. The Baseball Whisperer traces the “deeply engrossing” story (Booklist, starred review) of Merl Eberly and his Clarinda A’s baseball team, which he tended over the course of five decades, transforming them from a town team to a collegiate summer league powerhouse. Along with Ozzie Smith, future manager Bud Black, and star player Von Hayes, Merl developed scores of major league players. In the process, he taught them to be men, insisting on hard work, integrity, and responsibility. More than a book about ballplayers in the nation’s agricultural heartland, The Baseball Whisperer is the story of a coach who put character and dedication first, reminding us of the best, purest form of baseball excellence. “Mike Tackett, talented journalist and baseball lover, has hit the sweet spot of the bat with his first book. The Baseball Whisperer takes one coach and one small Iowa town and illuminates both a sport and the human spirit.” —David Maraniss, New York Times-bestselling author of Clemente and When Pride Still Mattered
Download or read book Dear Baseball Gods A Memoir written by Dan Blewett and published by Dan Blewett. This book was released on 2019-04-08 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dear Baseball Gods, Why didn't you look out for him? Didn't he deserve better? He hustled, competed, and played the game the right way. What happened wasn't fair. A Second Comeback Dan sat by a tree, staring at the ground trying to decide what he would do next. The doctor had just explained that everything he worked for was now ruined. A second Tommy John surgery? Does anyone come back from that? Is my career over? Is this it? A Winding Road to the Top As a walk-on in college, Dan had to earn everything. He pitched on three hours sleep, lived in the clubhouse, played for a team that collapsed mid-season, and endured more arm pain than any kid should. A Way to Move On When finally forced to hang up his cleats, Dan looked in the mirror and didn't recognize the man peering back. If no longer a ballplayer...what would he do? What had been the point of it all? Who was he? The Deeper Side of Life as an Athlete In this philosophical memoir, written as a series of letters, you'll learn that the pinstripes don't wash off so easily.
Download or read book How Baseball Happened written by Thomas W. Gilbert and published by Godine+ORM. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of baseball’s nineteenth-century origins: “a delightful look at a young nation creating a pastime that was love from the first crack of the bat” (Paul Dickson, The Wall Street Journal). You may have heard that Abner Doubleday or Alexander Cartwright invented baseball. Neither did. You may have been told that a club called the Knickerbockers played the first baseball game in 1846. They didn’t. Perhaps you’ve read that baseball’s color line was first crossed by Jackie Robinson in 1947. Nope. Baseball’s true founders don’t have plaques in Cooperstown. They were hundreds of uncredited, ordinary people who played without gloves, facemasks, or performance incentives. Unlike today’s pro athletes, they lived full lives outside of sports. They worked, built businesses, and fought against the South in the Civil War. In this myth-busting history, Thomas W. Gilbert reveals the true beginnings of baseball. Through newspaper accounts, diaries, and other accounts, he explains how it evolved through the mid-nineteenth century into a modern sport of championships, media coverage, and famous stars—all before the first professional league was formed in 1871. Winner of the Casey Award: Best Baseball Book of the Year
Download or read book Facts of Life written by Gary Soto and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do Gaby Lopez, Michael Robles, and Cynthia Rodriguez have in common? These three kids join other teens and tweens in Gary Soto's new short story collection, in which the hard-knock facts of growing up are captured with humor and poignance. Filled with annoying siblings, difficult parents, and first loves, these stories are a masterful reminder of why adolescence is one of the most frustrating and fascinating times of life.
Download or read book Baseball Saved Us written by Ken Mochizuki and published by Lerner Publishing Group. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Author Ken Mochizuki reads his award-winning book. There is some soft background music, and a few gentle sound effects, but the power of the words need little embellishment...This treasure of a book is well-treated in this format." - School Library Journal
Download or read book Low and Inside written by Harry Allen Smith and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Low and Inside" covers baseball's follies and freaks from the sports origins in the mists of the 19th century until about 1915. "A fascinating and hilarious collection. It is something that should be sandwiched between Marcel Proust and "forever Amber" on every bookshelf!"
Download or read book Why Baseball Matters written by Susan Jacoby and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baseball, first dubbed the “national pastime” in print in 1856, is the country’s most tradition-bound sport. Despite remaining popular and profitable into the twenty-first century, the game is losing young fans, among African Americans and women as well as white men. Furthermore, baseball’s greatest charm—a clockless suspension of time—is also its greatest liability in a culture of digital distraction. These paradoxes are explored by the historian and passionate baseball fan Susan Jacoby in a book that is both a love letter to the game and a tough-minded analysis of the current challenges to its special position—in reality and myth—in American culture. The concise but wide-ranging analysis moves from the Civil War—when many soldiers played ball in northern and southern prisoner-of-war camps—to interviews with top baseball officials and young men who prefer playing online “fantasy baseball” to attending real games. Revisiting her youthful days of watching televised baseball in her grandfather’s bar, the author links her love of the game with the informal education she received in everything from baseball’s history of racial segregation to pitch location. Jacoby argues forcefully that the major challenge to baseball today is a shortened attention span at odds with a long game in which great hitters fail two out of three times. Without sanitizing this basic problem, Why Baseball Matters remind us that the game has retained its grip on our hearts precisely because it has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to reinvent itself in times of immense social change.
Download or read book Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt written by W. P. Kinsella and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2017-11-17 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stories in this collection range in tone from zaniness to pathos. It's hard to choose a favorite…Highly recommended.”—Library Journal From “Reports Concerning the Death of the Seattle Albatross Are Somewhat Exaggerated,” about a mascot from outer space, to “K-Mart,” about boyhood, baseball, and betrayals, this collection of short fiction comes from the award-winning author of Shoeless Joe—basis for the movie Field of Dreams and one of Sports Illustrated’s “100 Greatest Sports Books.” These literary gems vary widely in their themes, yet each captures in one way or another the joy and poignancy of America’s pastime, and reminds us of why W.P. Kinsella is so beloved by those who love sports—or just outstanding literature.
Download or read book A Fire in My Hands written by Gary Soto and published by Clarion Books. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expanded version of A Fire in My Hands, Gary's Soto's acclaimed collection of poems about growing up Latino, now in paperback.
Download or read book K A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches written by Tyler Kepner and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From The New York Times baseball columnist, an enchanting, enthralling history of the national pastime as told through the craft of pitching, based on years of archival research and interviews with more than three hundred people from Hall of Famers to the stars of today. The baseball is an amazing plaything. We can grip it and hold it so many different ways, and even the slightest calibration can turn an ordinary pitch into a weapon to thwart the greatest hitters in the world. Each pitch has its own history, evolving through the decades as the masters pass it down to the next generation. From the earliest days of the game, when Candy Cummings dreamed up the curveball while flinging clamshells on a Brooklyn beach, pitchers have never stopped innovating. In K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, Tyler Kepner traces the colorful stories and fascinating folklore behind the ten major pitches. Each chapter highlights a different pitch, from the blazing fastball to the fluttering knuckleball to the slippery spitball. Infusing every page with infectious passion for the game, Kepner brings readers inside the minds of combatants sixty feet, six inches apart. Filled with priceless insights from many of the best pitchers in baseball history--from Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan to Greg Maddux, Mariano Rivera, and Clayton Kershaw--K will be the definitive book on pitching and join such works as The Glory of Their Times and Moneyball as a classic of the genre.
