Take Your Base

"What are you doing,Jeremy?" Gloria asked. "You never swing like that. Come on. We depend on you." And surely the Scrappers do. Jeremy Lim has been the leadoff hitter all year. His job is to get on base any way he can: slapping the ball for a clean base hit or, more often than not, drawing a walk so that the power hitters can bring him home. But Jeremy knows why he is the leadoff hitter: He is the smallest guy on the team, with the smallest strike zone, so walks are more likely. But Jeremy's tired of the less exciting role he has to play. He resents the ridicule from opponents because of his size. He's tired of their certainty that he doesn't pose much of a threat. He's sick of hitting little bloopers that just drop in front of the outfielders. And he's determined to prove he can drive the ball as far as anyone, and that he's fast enough to be a real threat running the bases, too. But his anger and determination lead to disaster and threaten to sink the Scrappers at just the point where the championship is in sight. Benched for a while, Jeremy has some hard thinking to do about the different skills individual players have and how important each player is to the team's overall success.


Genre: Children's Fiction