Baseball Crazy

Lorraine Douglas is the youth services co-ordinator at the Winnipeg
Public Library.

In this easy-to-read addition to the Sports Stories series, Rob Carter
enters a Blue Jays writing contest in the hopes of winning a chance to
be the team’s bat boy at spring training camp in Florida. His friend
Cheryl mails in his poem about why he wants the job, and he wins the
contest. He and Cheryl travel to Florida. Rob successfully completes his
tasks around the clubhouse but becomes jealous of the other bat boy,
Clyde, who is interested in Cheryl. Then a greedy bald man, Herb, offers
Rob money to steal the fielder’s gloves. Rob refuses, but when the
gloves go missing, he plans to entrap Clyde, his prime suspect. At the
end of the story, the winning poem is published; Cheryl turns out to be
the author.

Martyn Godfrey’s usual hilarity is missing in this novel. There are
no surprises in the predictable plot, and the characters are flat. Not a
first-choice purchase.