Swing Batta!

By Garrett Mathews

When he wasn't writing a five-day-a-week column for the Evansville, Indiana, Courier & Press, Garret Mathews coached baseball players who weren't much taller than the equipment bag. In Swing Batta , he chronicles his ten-year-old son Evan's season, beginning with tryouts and the player draft and ending with the post-season tournament.
Mathews writes of seven-kid sleepovers, players who wear shower thongs to practice, and kids who go to McDonald's and say, "Give me four dollars' worth, please." Mathews's line-up features a player with cystic fibrosis who keeps an inhaler in his bat bag. One who went to a major-league game and hollered at the third-base umpire to give him a ball. One who pretends he's an ESPN highlight film. One who almost died in an automobile accident. And baby sisters getting loose on the outfield. And Evan wearing his catcher's equipment downtown after a game because he wanted everyone to know how he spent his morning. Writing their names in the dugout dirt. Asking for do-overs. Trying to get the warped popcorn popper ready for opening day. Mathews is strictly Minor League. And he couldn't be happier.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870135732
• ISBN13: 9780870135736
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Michigan State University Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Time Machine to Those Wonderful Little League Years

If you've ever played baseball you'll connect immediately with this book. If you've never played...you'll wish you had. Mr. Mathews writes about a set of young boys in the best years of their youths playing a game. But they could be any set of boys. You'll undoubtedly see yourself or your son or daughter in many of the characters. In a way, it's not even about baseball. It's about the ability of children to make life mean more than cell phones and pagers. It's a translator for the secret language that children speak, but few adults do. You'll get an insight into the minds of the nine-year-old boys, and you'll find yourself reminiscing about those days when you were so little. You'll surely smell the dirt and the dust that rise above the field when the slide came in just under the tag. You'll feel the wind rise out of the west and watch it push the hit into a triple, and you'll hope that Felix's dad can beat cancer.Mr. Mathews takes the reader on a trip to a gas station as the boys attempt to trick the clerk into believing that Rand McNally is a city in southern Indiana. He walks you through the rules of the 'Going Down Game,' in which batters have to answer questions about world geography, or become 'beamed' (as the boys say) by the incoming pitch to their cranium area. Anyone who purchases this book will get more than their money's worth. They'll fall in love with these kids, and maybe, this game.It's about baseball. It's about children. But most of all, it's about life.