baseball stories

Matt has a problem with tardiness that angers his history teacher, causes his girlfriend to break up with him, and finally finds him missing the bus to a baseball game in which he was to be the starting pitcher.

When the opposing team is confronted with the need to forfeit, Cruz and his teammates try to decide if they want to win in that manner or if they want to play the game under slightly different rules so that they can let the best team win.

Sixteen-year-old Alex is biracial and an adopted member of a white family. Neither her race nor her adopted status has ever bothered her much. She's always been too focused on excelling at baseball to give herself time to worry about it. But when she meets Reggie, the first black boy to be interested in her, and she discovers letters from her biological father that her adoptive parents have kept hidden, she begins to question who she really is.

High school senior Lazarus Weathers wants out of the run-down trailer park where he lives with his mother and brother. When he receives an invitation to move in with a well-off family and pitch for a high-profile high school baseball team on the other side of town, it's his chance to impress major-league scouts and maybe become a professional baseball player. But it also means leaving his family behind. As his brother gets sucked into the trailer park's drug world, Laz has to choose between being a star pitcher and being there for his family.

A Japanese American boy learns to play baseball when he and his family are forced to live in an internment camp.

After showing promise at whiffle ball, Blake's friends encourage him to try out for a traveling baseball team. He makes it through tryouts as a second-string player. But when a starter gets injured, Blake is called to action.

Ben Manson learns about Ricky Henderson when he gets thrown out at home plate and knows he must become faster on the base paths.

Bill Bailey, who is the smallest member of the Blackhawks' baseball team, really wants to be a pitcher, but after being temporarily sidelined by a freak accident, he must decide whether to prove himself on the mound or listen to his friend Larry and give up the game.

To complete their turnaround from perennial losers to baseball champions, a ragtag group of ten-year-olds needs help from everyone on the team, even the worst player, who can run the bases faster than anyone, but who cannot hit the ball.

Chad is thrilled to be a batboy for the Pine City Porcupines, even though the team is not doing well, his fellow batboy is less than thrilled about the job, and his favorite player seems to be jinxed.