Baseball great / Tim Green.

Select an Action

Title:

Author:

Green, Tim, 1963-

ISBN:

9780061626869

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

New York : HarperCollinsPublishers, 2009.

Physical Description:

250 p. ; 24 cm.

Abstract:

All twelve-year-old Josh wants to do is play baseball, but when his father, a minor league pitcher, signs him up for a youth championship team, Josh finds himself embroiled in a situation with potentially illegal consequences.

Subject Term:

Baseball -- Juvenile fiction.

Fathers and sons -- Juvenile fiction.

Middle schools -- Juvenile fiction.

Schools -- Juvenile fiction.

Drug traffic -- Juvenile fiction.

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library	Juvenile Fiction Book Hardback	120791001854326	J GRE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

From New York Times bestselling author and former NFL player Tim Green comes a baseball book pulsing with action. Baseball Great offers a baseball story attuned to today's headlines, a totally involving, character-driven, sports-centered thriller. Perfect for fans of Mike Lupica. As a young reviewer on Brightly.com said: "Great book with many exciting, surprising events that make you want to keep reading."

When the school paper calls him "Grant Middle's best hope for its first-ever city-wide championship," Josh feels like he's starting to get noticed--in good and bad ways. Seeing Josh's talent, his father drags him out of the school baseball tryouts and gets him in the running for the Titans, the local youth championship team coached by Rocky Valentine.

All Josh really wants to do is play ball, but now Rocky wants him to gulp down protein shakes and other supplements. Suspicious, Josh and his new friend, Jaden, uncover a dangerous secret--and catch the attention of one man who will do anything to keep them from exposing it.

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Green (Football Genius) wades into John Feinstein territory with this fast-paced story about two middle-schoolers who put themselves in peril to probe steroid use on a youth baseball team. Josh -LeBlanc's father is a pitcher who never made it to the big leagues. After he's cut from the farm team for the Toronto Blue Jays, he projects his unfulfilled dream on Josh, yanking him from the school baseball squad to play for the Titans, a travel team run by Rocky Valentine, a winning-is-everything caricature who supplements his income by selling milk additives that will reputedly help players bulk up. When Josh is also slipped some "gym candy," he talks over his suspicions with school reporter Jaden, and together they investigate with exciting, if predictable, results. A subplot about a bully who thinks Josh is moving in on his girlfriend adds nothing, and Josh's mother is basically relegated to serving meals. But most kids will not notice, focused instead on the action-heavy, high-testosterone plot that has Josh in near-constant motion. Ages 8-12. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Horn Book Review

There are some mysterious goings-on at Josh's middle school involving the baseball team--and steroids. Assured, vigorous sports writing makes this book notable: Green knows about baseball and the pressures put on young players to perform at ever-higher levels. The text is convincing regarding training regimens and baseball play, though somewhat less so about middle-school social life. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Twelve-year-old Josh LeBlanc has moved a lot in his life; his father is a minor league pitcher hoping to make it to the majors. After his dad is abruptly dumped by his Triple-A team, Josh realizes that he has a chance to stay in one town and play baseball on his school team. His father, however, has other plans, signing Josh up for a traveling team, led by an intense and sometimes brutal coach. Josh eventually discovers that his coach's winning formula includes handing out steroids. With the help of Jaden, a school newspaper reporter, he manages to take a photograph of the coach receiving steroids behind a hospital. Green delivers a fast-paced story, told in short chapters that build to the exciting climax. He also doesn't sanitize the rough world of the locker room, showing the intimidation that often accompanies young people's sports. Add this to other novels that feature the temptations of steroids for young athletes, including Carl Deuker's Gym Candy (2007) and John Coy's Crackback (2005).--Morning, Todd Copyright 2009 Booklist

School Library Journal Review

Gr 5-7-Twelve-year-old Josh LeBlanc's father has come to the end of a baseball career that never made it to the majors. Josh is also a talented player, and the family's dreams of glory settle on him. His angry, controlling father pulls him off the middle school team to have him try out for a traveling youth team sponsored by a suspicious character named Rocky Valentine, who is also Mr. LeBlanc's new employer. While the competition is fierce, Josh eventually makes the team, but his doubts about Rocky Valentine continue to grow. With the help of a girl he likes, aspiring journalist Jaden Neidermeyer, Josh uncovers evidence that Rocky is dealing in illegal steroids. It appears that Jaden's father, a doctor, is supplying Rocky with the drugs, but eventually everything is straightened out. Rocky is apprehended, Dr. Neidermeyer is cleared, and, in a deus ex machina, a Nike Youth Baseball representative shows up out of the blue and offers to sponsor Josh's team, to put his dad on the payroll, and to sign Josh up to appear in Nike ads. While the resolution might strike even less-sophisticated readers as wildly implausible, issues of peer and family pressure are well handled, and the short, punchy chapters and crisp dialogue are likely to hold the attention of young baseball fans.-Richard Luzer, Fair Haven Union High School, VT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Review

Josh is a hugely talented player who loves baseball and is destined for greatness. His father, who never made it to the majors, takes a job with an independent youth baseball team, pulling Josh from his school team to join him. Josh wants to please his father, but all is not as it should be on the new team. Winning is everything and the coach pushes his players to be ever bigger, stronger and fiercer, insisting on tortuous weight training and surreptitiously passing along "gym candy." The third-person narration filled with crisp dialogue brings immediacy to Josh's painful practice sessions, the excitement of his games and his confusion at the flux of middle-school dynamics. Although several of the characters are somewhat one-dimensional, Josh and his friends are well developed and likable. Green carefully constructs the dilemmas and decisions they face as they come to terms with the steroid issues, so that the rather histrionic finale comes across as both plausible and satisfying. A cut above the usual baseball novel. (Fiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Excerpts

Baseball Great Chapter One Josh wondered why every time something really good happened, something else had to spoil it. It had been like this since he could remember, like biting into a ruby red apple only to find a brown worm crawling through the crisp, white fruit. For the first time since he'd moved to his new neighborhood, he had been recognized, and his unusual talent had been appreciated. So why was it that that same fame had kicked up the muddy rumor that got a high school kid looking to bash his teeth in? For the moment, though, riding the school bus, he was safe. The school newspaper in Josh's backpack filled his whole body with an electric current of joy and pride, so much so that his cheeks burned. He sat alone in the very front seat and kept his eyes ahead, ignoring the stares and whispers as the other kids got off at the earlier stops. When Jaden Neidermeyer, the new girl from Texas who'd written the article, got off at her stop, Josh stared hard at his sneakers. He just couldn't look. After she left, he glanced around and carefully parted the lips of his backpack's zipper. Without removing the newspaper, he stole another glance at the headline, baseball great, and the picture of him with a bat and the caption underneath: "Grant Middle's best hope for its first-ever citywide championship, Josh LeBlanc." The bus ground to a halt at his stop and Josh got off. As the bus rumbled away, Josh saw Bart Wilson standing on the next corner. The tenth grader pitched his cigarette into the gutter and started toward him with long strides. Josh gasped, turned, and ran without looking back. A car blared its horn. Brakes squealed. Josh leaped back, his heart galloping fast, like the tenth grader now heading his way, even faster. Josh circled the car--the driver yelling at him through the window--and dashed across the street and down the far sidewalk. He rounded the corner at Murphy's bar and sprinted up the block, ducking behind a wrecked station wagon at Calhoon's Body Shop, peeking through the broken web of glass back toward the corner. Breathing hard, he slipped the straps of the backpack he carried around his shoulders and fastened it tight. Two men in hooded sweatshirts and jeans jackets burst out of Murphy's and got into a pickup truck; otherwise, Josh saw no one. Still, he scooted up the side street, checking behind him and dodging from one parked car to another for cover. When he saw his home, a narrow, red two-story place with a steep roof and a sagging front porch, he breathed deep, and his heart began to slow. The previous owner had three pit bulls, and so a chain-link fence surrounded the house and its tiny front and back lawns, separating them from the close-packed neighbors on either side. The driveway ran tight to the house, and like the single, detached garage, it was just outside the fence. Josh lifted the latch, but as he pulled open the front gate, a hand appeared from nowhere, slamming it shut. The latch clanked home, and the hand spun Josh around. "What you running from?" asked Bart Wilson, the tenth-grade smoker. Baseball Great . Copyright Â© by Tim Green . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Baseball Great by Tim Green All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.