The book I read is called Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Moneyball is about a major league baseball team called the Oakland Athletics and how they went from losing their best players during the free agency, to still be able to have a winning season and go on a 20 game winning streak. The Oakland A’s are a low budget baseball team, meaning that they are extremely outmatched when it comes to facing bigger city teams financially. The book goes over the life of Billy Beane who was a major league player that was projected to be a superstar but ended up not being very effective in the big leagues then transitioning to being the A’s general manager. Billy Beane has a strategy to how they will win which relies greatly on the statistics of the ball players.
For a 12-year-old Cuban boy living in the Bronx, baseball is his family's only way out and means a better tomorrow. In the novel, Heat by Mike Lupica, baseball represents a way out and a better tomorrow. He loves baseball and idolizes the Yankees pitcher El Grande, who was also Cuban-born. Michael Arroyo is a young boy who has reasons to distrust the representatives of the state must figure out how to continue life on his own terms while navigating the adult world and avoiding both the well-meaning and the badly-intentioned interference of grown-ups. Michael is also the best baseball pitcher on his South Bronx all-star team. Michael's arm is so good, that a rival Little League coach begins requesting proof that he's only 12 and eligible to play. They ask for his father but, recently, his father took a trip to Florida and had a heart attack, killing him. Michael and his 17-year-old brother Carlos, are trying to avoid Child Protective Services until Carlos turns 18.
This is a story of baseball and how it is a team sport. The book relates with the title by showing how this boy named Sandy Comstock that plays on the Grantville Raiders and has a big game coming up. It was against the Newtown Raptors. He wanted to beat them and become one of the best teams. By the time he knew it he ended up on the Newtown Raptors team and he was going to play is old team. It was kind of like a baseball turnaround.
The novel that I read over winter break was The DH, by John Feinstein, who is known for his books regarding sports mysteries. The DH, falls under that genre of realistic fiction, along with other books by Feinstein. The novel is one of three books in the series and is the last one. Alex Myers the main character, is an all-star athlete in football, basketball, and baseball, living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attending Chester Heights High. Alex has needed to take care of himself, and his sister Molly, because their dad has been MIA ever since their parents got divorced. On top of all of Alex's stress, his baseball season starts as he finds out his football teammate, Matt Gordon, is eligible to play baseball after found guilty for taking
This summer I read an outstanding book called Heat by MIke Lupica. This book includes a lot of baseball and when you start this book you won’t stop reading it!If you like baseball this book is definitely for you, I was able to connect with the character and his love for the sport. The characters in this book are Michael, the main character who loves baseball and is the best pitcher in his league. Carlos, Michael’s brother who will do anything to keep them together. Mr.Gibbs, an official person who wants to know the truth about Michael and Carlos’ father,but also wants to help them. Manny, Michael’s best friend who wants to help as much as he can, but wants to make it to the Little League World Series. Another character is Mrs.C, Mrs.C tried
The book that I chose to review was Summer ball by Mike Lupica. It is about a kid named Danny who let his basketball travel team to the league’s championship and won. The next year he is going to Right Way Basketball Camp, which is a camp designed for kids at the elite level of basketball.
I really enjoyed this book because of how they are the underdogs. They don't have enough money, players, and a good field to play. As a sports fan, I always want the underdog team to win. It is just a good feeling when a team that was expected to lose, comes out victorious.
Like many of the works discussed here, Peter Booth Wiley and Korogi Ichiro's 1990 book, Yankees in the Land of the Gods:
Going line by line of the poem MONEY by Dana Gioia. The first stanza, 3 lines are all syllabi for money, all different names that people usually call money. The next stanza are things that you do with money, spending it. You are either spending it or “watching it burn a hole in your pocket, so you are either spending it or itching to spend it. Stanza 3 again is using different names for money. “greenback” is another name for a dollar bill. “double eagles” is another name for a gold coin that is worth twenty dollars and so on.
If you love sports fiction books, especially Mike Lupica’s, you will love this one. The book I chose to write a book talk on this quarter is called The Batboy. In the book, Brian, a fourteen year old child, gets the opportunity that he has always wanted. Brian is hired to become the batboy for his favorite baseball team, the Detroit Tigers. Although Brian’s dad was in the major leagues at one point, he left Brian and his mother when Brian was eight. However, Brian got over that when he was young and the situation was not a big deal anymore. When Brian thought things could not get better, he found out that the Tigers signed his favorite player Hank Bishop with Bishop coming off of his fifty game suspension because of steroid use. While reading
The novel begins with preseason football in the heat of a Texas summer. The players and coaches practice over 4 hours a day in 100-degree weather. The media is affecting every player pushing for a state championship and college scouts at every practice. The boys who gave completely of themselves for their sport are unique personalities. From dedicated quarterback Mike Winchell to Harvard-bound Brian Chavez to the inscrutable Ivory Christian, the team was full of young men who were singular human beings, each one bringing something special and indefinable to their group. And that's just scratching the very surface.The book recounts the tragic story of Boobie Miles, team’s star running back who had been highly recruited by all of the major programs. He is expected to attend and earn a scholarship to a large state college. The community
To start, the book is, The Journal of Biddy Owens by Walter Dean Myers. First of all, Biddy is a 17 year old player from the Birmingham Black Barons, a team from the Negro Leagues. Biddy’s journal starts in 1948 in Birmingham, Alabama, his home town. Biddy tells the story about how the team traveled from city to city playing baseball against “white
The A's recent success is attributed to the innovative approach taken by Billy Beane in assembling a baseball team with a very limited amount of financial resources. Billy Beane has built a successful ball club because he has found an efficient and cost effective way of measuring baseball talent thus essentially creating a loophole in this unfair game because winning percentage is a result of talent not
Book Report on Baseball: A History of America's Game by Benjamin G. Rader In "Baseball: A History of America's Game", the Author Benjamin G. Rader discusses the history of baseball and how it developed to present day. Rader explains how baseball started as a simple game consisting of no rules besides the players using a stick to hit a ball and its constant evolution to what the game is today. He also displays several issues which America's favorite sport has had while
This summer I’ve read the book Heat by Mike Lupica. This baseball themed book is a out of the park excitement. It’s about a 12 year old cuban boy named Michael who is newly orphaned but loves to throw killer heat. But everything goes downhill when Michael can't prove his age by a lost birth certificate and gets kicked off the team. Michael tries to do his best by supporting the team by the sidelines. It gets worst, since his brother Carlos is only 17, they have to stay in the shadows so they don't get separated into foster homes.
The book Moneyball by Michael Lewis is about a former major league baseball player who became the manager of the Oakland A’s. It tells the story of how he led the team to success despite their low budget by using computer based analytics to draft players. With the help of Bill James, the Oakland A’s came up with a new plan based on statistics to draft players. He went after players nobody wanted due to their low budget and his new plan. Billy led the Oakland Athletics to a successive win seasons by changing the way he measured players. He abandoned the traditional 5 “tool” the other scouts used and adopted empirical analytics. The abandonment of the traditional assessment of