HIT HARD! THROW HARD!

Power baseball as promoted in this wretchedly written tract is an aggressive game whose fun derives from seeing the ""enemy"" ""nearly break his back to reach WAY out over the plate. . . ."" The key to playing power ball is to throw HARD, and to make sure that nobody misses the point Smith repeats it endlessly--several times per page in the first chapter. He is equally heavy-handed in the chapters on specific positions: ""Your glove will be his target. . . . You make a good target by holding your glove with the whole surface facing the pitcher. . . be sure you present the whole surface wide open toward the pitcher. Don't show him just the edge of the glove. Give him the whole thing to aim at."" And that's all one paragraph. Smith teams big-league competitiveness with game strategies geared to the weaknesses of little-league ball, ""where so many throws are off target."" Girls can play (if they can take Smith's macho manner), but Fournier's graceless drawings show all boys. Three strikes.