I’ve been building and organizing my links lately — there’s so much great stuff out there, and I want my blog to “only connect” — so I clicked on The Reading Zone to see what’s what. And lo! There’s a review of Six Innings right there on the front page. It’s always interesting when a reviewer admits to not liking baseball, and then watching how they handle that. Here’s the conclusion of the review:
This is a story that baseball fans, especially boys, will flock to. The game is described in detail, which may turn off some non-sports fans, but you can tell that James Preller poured his own passion for baseball into the story. I am looking forward to introducing it into my classroom library because many of my boys play Little League and I know they will connect with this story. However, this is also a story about friendship, family, and the pressures that kids deal with. I can see some of my girls connecting to these aspects of the book and also enjoying the story.
I didn’t know anything about the Cybil Awards, so I clicked away. Guess what? It’s the “premier Web awards for children’s literature.” Actually, the site is pretty great and I’ve added it to our growing sidebar.
This whole business of “learning-something-new-every-day” can be pretty distracting. At some point I’m just going to stop. I’m going to get myself a rocking chair. And I’m going to find a big wraparound front porch (don’t have one, dream of one). And I’m going to put a blanket on my lap, grab a Pabst Blue Ribbon, and spew. I’ve always wanted to be that Old Man. Cranky, irascible, dyspeptic, holding forth on how we’re all going to hell in a hand basket (my mother’s phrase). I don’t know why. It just seems like fun.
I like the idea of performing roles, fulfilling expectations. For example: Dad is food shopping. Uh-oh. He’s going to come back with something delicious that’s bad for us, some not-exactly-food-stuff that Mom would never, ever buy. It becomes an obligation. A familiar dance. A kind of joy. And I throw the Cap’n Crunch into the cart.
Each year, the Office of Children’s Services of The New York Public Library announces its list of “100 Titles for Reading and Sharing.”
Why do we care about that?
Because I just got a phone call from Liz Szabla, my editor at Feiwel & Friends, telling me thatSix Innings: A Game In the Lifewas named to the Children’s Books 2008 list, along with one other F & F title, Brooklyn Bridgeby Newbery Medal-winning author, Karen Hesse. As Liz said to me, “You should be thrilled. That’s a list of one hundred titles, out of the, like, five-gazillion books that are published each year.”
Who can argue with that kind of math?
The full 2008 list is not yet available. For a gander at the 2007 list, click here.
And to see a way cool video of Karen speaking with Jean Feiwel about Brooklyn Bridge, start clicking like a wild person right . . . here.
During the revision process for Six Innings, I cut more than 10,000 words. It was a very difficult time for me, filled with doubt and uncertainty. But I trusted my wise & experienced editors, Liz Szabla and Jean Feiwel, and understood their concerns. We all wanted the same thing — for this book to be as good as it could be. So I semi-sadly started hacking away.
My original concept for the book was to use a single game as the structural skeleton, on which I’d hang riffs and character studies, the stories that would add flesh to the book. Well in the first draft, that technique got a little confusing at times, and the through-line of the game itself got muddled, so in revision we cut out a bunch of off-the-field moments to achieve, we hoped, better balance. Some sections I simply lopped away like Van Gogh’s ear, some made it through unscathed, while still others survived in severely truncated form. That was the case with the selection below, which was reduced to a couple of brief paragraphs on pp. 53-54. I always liked it; hey, we all did. This was a classic case of removing something that was, in isolation, good (or so I thought), but that in our view did not do enough to serve the narrative arc. This happens with movies all the time. To preserve the narrative flow, the forward march of things, some decent material winds up on the cutting room floor. (And, I guess, eventually winds up on a blog somewhere.)
Here’s a 38-second example of a deleted scene that never made it into the final cut of a popular movie:
Back to Six Innings. This is how one section appeared in an early unedited draft, before I stopped by with a machete:
* * * * *
TYLER WEINBERG
“Ty-Ty Smash”
Naked except for a drooping diaper, two-and-a-half year-old Tyler Weinberg swaggered around in his backyard. As usual, he held a large stick in his hand. Tyler spied a squirrel and moved toward it, mischief blazing in his eyes.
“Ty-Ty smash,” he announced to the birds in the bush. Whap! He smacked the stick on the lawn. Hee-hee. The sound made him laugh. Whap, whap!
“Ty-Ty smash,” he repeated happily.
Whoosh, thwack. He whipped the stick against the hammock, still damp from last night’s rain. The squirrel watched transfixed, alarmed, yet curious. Its tail flicked nervously. The creature sized up the approaching pink-bellied menace and decided: Trouble. A final twitch of the tail and the gray creature scurried a few feet up the trunk of an oak tree, just beyond, it thought, harm’s reach.
Tyler Weinberg pushed against the tree with both hands. He tried knocking it down. Again he swung the stick, leaping to reach the squirrel. Thud, thwap, crack; thud, thwap, crack. Again and again.
The squirrel complained bitterly: Tcccccckkkkkssss.
Thud, thwap, oomphff.
A glorious peel of laughter erupted in the backyard. A whoop of triumph.
Whap, whap, whappp!
The back door flew open, banged closed. “WHAT’S GOING ON OUT HERE?” Tyler’s mother, Amy Weinberg, screamed. “TYLER! TYLER, GET AWAY FROM THAT SQUIRREL! PUT DOWN THAT STICK THIS INSTANT!” Her voice was rising, shrilly climbing toward hysteria. She barreled forward incautiously and twisted an ankle on a battered toy truck.
Tyler turned to his mother and grinned, triumphant.
“Ty-Ty smash,” he explained proudly.
He was holding a dead squirrel by the tail.
And so a slugger was born.
Tyler — or “Red Bull,” as he came to be called by his coaches — was simply one of those boys suffused with an excess of energy. Super-charged. He could not sit still. In truth, he could barely sit at all. Knees popping up and down, toes tapping, fingers fidgeting, brain a blur, arms akimbo. Bouncing was better. Jumping, running, leaping, pouncing, flouncing, crawling, cavorting, gamboling — all good. But best of all, the single act that calmed Tyler, that focused his scattered energies and made his heart soar?
Smashing things.
The world was his piñata. And there he stood, dizzy and daffy and blindfolded, a big stick in his grip, eager to swing and swing again. To batter, bash, smash, and shatter. The boy liked to clobber things. He became a one-boy wrecking crew. And the bigger he grew, the harder they fell: Crash, bash, boom. Broken lamps, cracked windows, whatever was in his path. Especially, and most happily, baseballs.
However, when it comes to baseball, I do have startlingly vivid recollections. Here’s one of my favorites:
When I was little, I used to throw a rubber Spalding ball against the back of my house for hours at a time. I filled notebooks with imaginary lineups and kept score. I pitched against all the legends of the game, past and present. One week my grandparents came to watch over the horde (remember, I was the youngest of seven) while my parents were away. Now let it be known that Grandpa needed his afternoon naps. But whap, whap, whap, there was little Jimmy throwing that ball all day long.
Instead of getting mad, or forbidding me from doing what I loved, Grandpa went out and shocked me by buying a brand-new pitchback. It was the most beautiful, unexpected gift I ever received. Sploing, sploing, sploing — now I hurled hard baseballs, real baseballs, almost soundlessly against the net. While Grandpa napped contentedly.
Like many boys, I played out fictional games in my imagination. And I talked to myself in a half-whispered mumble, announcing the action: “Jerry Koosman into the windup . . . it’s a hard smash back to the box . . . Koosman snares the line drive . . . inning over . . . the Mets win!”
Reflecting back, I realize those were the first stories I ever told, the beginnings of my life as a writer, working through a fictional narrative, juggling a variety of characters, with the game itself neatly providing its own beginning, middle, and end.
In Six Innings, I gave that experience to a minor character, Max Young, who finds himself on the mound during a crucial spot in the 6th inning:
The relief pitcher, Max Young, is not nervous. He has been in spots like this hundreds of times before . . . with one important difference. It was never the real thing.
For years, Max stepped into his backyard, walked off the proper distance from his pitchback, and entered the limitless realm of his imagination. He played fantasy games in his very own field of dreams. And all the while, Max talked to himself, taking on the voice of the radio sportscaster. Somehow the words made it real. In a barely audible whisper he’d murmur: “Leading off for the Legends team, it’s Tyrus Raymond Cobb. The Georgia Peach . . . .“
I’m convinced that hundreds of thousands of boys have done and still do the same thing. I see them on driveways everywhere, bouncing a basketball, looking up at the net, their lips moving, the hushed words bringing a story to life.
Later in the book, with everything on the line, there’s Max again, with a touch more poetry:
One last time, Max is alone in his daydreams, throwing against an imaginary hitter in a game of his own invention. He is the author and the instrument, the pitcher and the ball, the beginning and the end.
Max rocks back into his windup, he drives forward, the ball leaves his fingertips, comes in high and hard and true.
Angel Tatis hits nothing but air. Swing and a miss.
Wednesday again? My God, where do they come from?! It’s like the savage hordes coming over the hill, but instead of sword-wielding huns it’s, um, hump days. Well, let’s see what’s in the old mailbox, shall we?
Full disclosure, this is an abbreviated, slightly edited version of an email I received today:
I have been a Little League President for the past eight years. My son and I read your book, Six Innings, together for summer reading . He actually read without my nagging! He loved it! He so related to Colin’s and the benchwarmer’s feelings. In fact, at a league meeting last night I encouraged all the managers to read along with their boys. Thank you again for putting in words the experiences that are so meaningful to all players.
I replied:
I appreciate the kind words. Like you, I’ve been very involved with Little League for the past ten years or so (I’m currently BURIED with “Fall Ball” details). You know, I remember the first signing I did for this book. I assumed that I’d be seeing all sorts of baseball-crazy boys — the star athletes — and it surprised me at first when a lot of the boys looking for signatures were clearly not star players. They were, of course, the readers. Or, as I thought to myself, they were the boys who maybe loved the game, even if the game didn’t love them back. I think it’s so important to remember those kids. The ones who struggle to catch a ball or make a hit. We tend to focus too much on All-Stars and the so-called best players. That’s why I focused on a typical team, rather than a team of All-Stars in, say, the Little League World Series. I wanted all types. I’m glad that I had Patrick Wong on that team, the boy who wasn’t a star, full of doubt and worry; and glad, too, that when he made a play it was a simple one. He didn’t suddenly hit a grand slam. He hit a foul ball. He worked out a walk. He caught a grounder (and, yes, struck out twice and made an error, too). But he contributed in his way.
