Game by game, Keith Hutchinson’s baseball team makes its way to the Florida state championships at Roger Dean Stadium. Playing on “the big field,” on television, is Hutch’s dream, and he’ll be following in his father’s footsteps. Carl Hutchinson made it all the way to Triple-A ball with the Twins, but his sad-looking eyes betray his hurt over not being quite good enough to make it all the way to the majors, and he doesn’t want his son hurt the same way—by letting baseball matter too much. As in Lupica’s Travel Team (2004), the father-son dynamic is at the heart of this story, a tale of baseball, dreams and what really matters most. Lupica’s signature style—a weaving of long, meandering sentences and staccato bursts of sentence fragments—yields a fast-paced, completely involving story with excellent game sequences, conflicts with a fellow star player and the tension of making it to the big game and what that means for his relationship with his father. Another gift for the author’s many fans. (Fiction. 10+)
