Pink Me

Boy21 by Matthew Quick - review

Finley is the only white kid on his basketball team. He's not the tallest, or the most talented, but he is the hardest-working player, and that has earned him his position as starting point guard. That hard work might just one day propel him out of his crime-infested ruin of a hometown.

So is Boy21 a sports novel? Not exactly.

Finley has played and trained - obsessively, single-mindedly - since he was ten years old, when something bad happened to his family and he found that shooting 500 free throws in a row allowed him to not think about it.

Is Boy21 a coming-to-grips-with-crisis novel? Not exactly that either.

Finley has time for only one thing in his life besides ball, and that's his girlfriend, best friend, and only friend, Erin. She is beautiful and the star of the girls' team and has a lot of patience. She gets along with Finley's drunk grandfather, his sorrowful father, and she loves Finley, even though he speaks rarely and breaks up with her every basketball season.

So it's a young love novel? Ok I know I'm getting annoying with this - I'll stop.

Leaving it all on the field

Hothead by Cal Ripken, Jr. and Kevin Cowherd

Football Champ by Tim Green

 

 

 

My cousin is a groundskeeper for the Baltimore Orioles, and Cal Ripken, Jr. is his hero:

 

In fact, it wouldn't be too far off the mark to say that here in Baltimore, Cal Ripken, Jr. is everyone's hero. He's my hero just for being a worthwhile hero. So many sports stars aren't. But even if he's not your hero, it is at least impossible to say anything not nice about the guy. Gentlemanly demeanor. Sterling work ethic. Humility. Compassion. Intelligence. Humor. Blue eyes like lasers. And his sense of responsibility toward the kids who look up to him verges on the ecclesiastical. Every sports star should be setting an example like this.

All Star! Honus Wagner and the most famous baseball card ever, by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Jim Burke - review

Honus Wagner: the name doesn't conjure the immediate haloed recognition that the names Babe Ruth, Satchel Paige, Shoeless Joe, or Jackie Robinson do. If the average kid has heard of him, it is probably because of that fabulously valuable baseball card - the card that Honus himself had pulled from circulation because it came in packs of Piedmont cigarettes and he didn't want his young fans to think that he approved of cigarette smoking.

Right there we know we are reading about a principled athlete, a public figure conscious of his status as a role model, and we can always use more of those.

But, as we learn from Jane Yolen's heartfelt, admiring text and Jim Burke's powerful oil-on-board paintings, Honus Wagner was not only a conscientious celebrity, but also an extraordinary ballplayer, leading the league in batting EIGHT years during the years 1900 to 1911. He has a base-stealing record - three in one inning! - that still stands, and he was one of the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Yolen's bio, unlike some sports biographies that focus on a single event or character trait in an athlete's life, gives us Mr. Wagner's story from birth, through an astonishing twenty-one seasons of major-league ball, on to his retirement and Hall of Fame induction. She paints a portrait of the original lovable lug, a bow-legged coalminer's boy with long arms whose youthful strength came from loading coal.

The illustrations are notable not only for their muscular energy - one two-page spread gives us three views of Wagner's wide-legged batting style - but also for a subject-appropriate palette of sandy browns and muddy greens. Faces are often turned away or shadowed by ball caps, lending emphasis to the action. And the composition is masterful: large areas of plain or textured color give these paintings a strong feeling of space and movement.

Great sports biographies are gold in the school library, and this is absolutely one of them.