Title Post: Six Innings
Today's title post comes to us from Six Innings author James Preller. It has recently been released in Paperback! Read on to see why this book means so much to him and his family.
I learned to love baseball from my mother, a former Brooklyn Dodgers fan who, after the Dodgers fled to Los Angeles, adopted the expansion 1962 New York Mets as her hometown team. She taught me how to throw and catch, and somehow sold me on the preposterous notion that Ron Swoboda, the Mets iron-jawed rightfielder, was graceful. I used to ask her, “Am I graceful, Mom? Am I graceful?” She assured me that I was. I’ve come to see that my love of the game is impossible to separate from the love of my mother; I cannot imagine one without the other.
In the spring of 2003, my oldest son, Nicholas, was diagnosed with leukemia. It was a relapse. He had first been diagnosed in the summer of ‘95, at 26 months. We had been there, done our hard times, and believed the worst was behind us. But again we settled into an exhausting routine of doctors and medicines, the chemistry of hope and survival.
Meanwhile, my father-in-law contacted the New York Mets. He told them Nick’s story. Weeks passed. While undergoing treatment, Nick got an infection. He was forced to stay on IV-drips in the hospital for twelve long days until his temperature settled below 101 degrees. On one particularly bad day a letter arrived from Chris Brown, the New York Mets Community Outreach Coordinator. He invited Nicholas and three guests to a special day at Shea Stadium.
When Nick felt strong enough, down we drove from our home outside Albany, New York. Chris Brown met us at the gate two hours before the game, shook our hands, and brought us inside to the secret, special places. He opened a door and led us onto the field, where Nick stared in wide-eyed wonder. We stepped into the dugout, felt the bats in their racks, eyed the neat rows of clean helmets, and snapped picture after picture. We walked into a long concrete hallway under the stands, where we stood nearly alone outside the Mets clubhouse door, as real live ballplayers — guys with names like Vance and Ty, Joe and Cliff — walked past us on their way to the indoor batting cages. Some players stopped and briefly chatted, signed baseballs, and smiled for photos with their arms resting on my son’s shoulder.
I couldn’t help but think of my mother, and how our love of the game had brought us to this singular moment. My boy, sick with cancer, smiling into the camera, a Sharpie and a signed baseball in his hand. All those games we had watched together, our spirits dashed by defeat and lifted in victory. All of that life we poured into the game — all of it, truth be told, a little absurd. After all, it was only a game. Not life, not death, and certainly not childhood cancer. But standing in that gray basement of Shea Stadium, I knew with certainty that it all had been worth it. We loved the game. And somehow, amazingly, it loved us back.
It was why this book, Six Innings, is so important to me. Because it’s all in there, all that stuff, a rolling wave that carries the words along, the love of the game, a lifetime of baseball, and sometimes the hard things that get in the way.
And, lest you worry, Nick is in 11th grade, in great health and spirits. He recently announced that he did thirty pull-ups. "Good," I said. "Keep it up, Nick. Keep it up."
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2009 ALA CHILDREN’S NOTABLE BOOK
2009 BANK STREET COLLEGE BEST CHILDREN’S BOOKS OF THE YEAR
2008 TOP 100 BEST BOOKS FOR READING AND SHARING — New York Public Library.
2008 TOP TEN BEST SPORTS BOOKS OF THE YEAR — Booklist.
“If Judy Blume could write a book about Little League, about its players’ deepest fears and secret dreams, it might come out something like this.”—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“A magnificent championship game between two Little League teams that is as much about the players as the plays.”—Booklist, Starred Review
“It was Six Innings that made a baseball lover out of me.” – New York Times Book Review.
“A tale of baseball, friendship, growth, and coming to terms with hardships, this fast read will grasp any reader who enjoys sports.”–School Library Journal.
Librarians | tagged Booksellers, Kids, Teachers
Reader Comments (2)
James Preller is a very good author. I like his style because it's very fresh and easy to read. Though he's spoken serious critics against generic viagra brands, I think he is a very smart man. Great book.
Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.
Everything ought to be beautiful in a human being: face, and dress, and soul, and ideas.
None is of freedom or of life deserving unless he daily conquers it anew.