Mock Newbery 2010

I had to read this for work, and was not looking forward to it because i have zero interest in sports. it pleasantly surprised me though, and was much better than I would have expected a sports book to be. Full of historical tidbits and actually thoroughly entertaining. A fun read. ( )

Follows the fortunes of a German immigrant family through nine generations, beginning in 1984, as they experience American life and play baseball. Through the years the Schneider family has dodged bullets on a battlefield, pitched perfect games, and dealt with the devastating loss of family and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

I love baseball, and wish people were still just as passionate about it today. ( )

The Brooklyn Nine follows the descendants of a German Jew named Felix Schneider and the development of our National Pastime. Felix lands in Brooklyn as a youth from Bremen - the fastest boy in Bremen, Germany- to work in the garment industry. The story then leads to his son who takes his love of baseball and the baseball his father made onto the battlefields of Northern Virginia. While serving with the Brooklyn 14th, the legendary Red Legged Devils, Louis meets the man erroneously charged with the invention of baseball, Abner Doubleday. Through the course of the book Pigtown becomes Ebbet's Field, Brooklyn hosts the Superbas, the Robins and Dodgers, and the Schneiders take the name Snider as anti-Semitic attitudes are on the rise following the flood of a new Eastern European immigrants. During World War II, Kat Snider becomes a star with a girl's professional softball team. Her son in the next chapter is the baseball card flipping champ of his school's playground and learns to "duck and cover," two activities I remember vividly.

Gratz does a fine job of intertwining baseball history with US history and the cultural development between the 1840s and 2002. Each chapter, or "inning" tells the story of yet another of the family's baseball fans. Some of these are more interesting and probable than others. I was better able to buy into the story of Frankie the number running Dodgers' fan who hobnobs with John Kieran at Robin's game than I was able to accept the story of her father, a Superba's batboy who tries to get place for Smokey Joe Williams on the Superba roster. Of the innings, I found most engaging, suspenseful and fun reading. Fans of my hero Sandy Koufax will especially admire Gratz's handling of the 8th inning. ( )