THE HOT CORNER

Coach Rocky McCune of the Koulee Nine finds his baseball teams ethics threatening to disintegrate with the addition of brilliant but unsportsmanlike Red Bostic, the boy who specializes in spectacular plays, many of them illegal. Pressures from without and within the team mount to make it more difficult for the coach to insist that Red observe the rules. But a crucial game with rival Charles City brings out the best in Red and vindicates the coach -- whom readers met earlier in Captive Coach. A competent but undistinguished tale of diamond ethics.