Fatherhood, Little League & Amateur Baseball

Swing, Batta!

Name: Swing, Batta!
Author: Garret Mathews
ISBN: 9780870135736

by Garret Mathews

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Overview

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.

Synopsis

"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.""--BOOK JACKET.

USA Today Baseball Weekly

A newspaper columnist looks back at his hilarious summer toiling in his other occupation-coaching a collection of 10-year-old characters and cutups in Indiana youth baseball.

About the Author, Garret Mathews

Garret Mathews is a columnist for the Evansville, Indiana, Courier & Press and author of Baseball Days: Recollections of America\'s Favorite Pastime.

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Editorials

New York Times Book Review

The rough-and-tumble world of minor-league baseball-extremely minor, as in the kind for 10-year-olds-is the subject of "Swing Batta!," a funny, heartfelt memoir by Garret Mathews, a columnist for The Evansville Courier & Press in Indiana. Mathews, who proclaims himself to be "parenthood's biggest yes man," recounts the year he spent coaching his son Evan's team, a predictably motley crew of cocksure contenders and gawky pretenders, rich kids and poor kids, carefree newcomers and intense offspring of intense parents. He cheerfully employs what he calls the "romper-room theory of coaching," which involves equal parts training, counseling and horseplay, postgame mud baths, glove-slinging and other shenanigans designed to make a team a team. He also describes his primary game strategy: not to win necessarily, but to steal as many of the rival team's baseballs as possible. The book's most touching moments-dads bonding with sons, a player with cystic fibrosis who struggles to keep up his strength, a blind boy who is named the team's honorary captain-make it clear that its' the small victories, on and off the base paths, that count the most. By the close of the season, it's hard not to agree with Mathews when he tells the boys: "I wish we didn't have to get older. I wish we could keep it right here.

USA Today Baseball Weekly

A newspaper columnist looks back at his hilarious summer toiling in his other occupation-coaching a collection of 10-year-old characters and cutups in Indiana youth baseball.

Library Journal

Newspaperman Mathews, a daily columnist for the Evansville, IN, Courier & Press, has coached Little League baseball since 1988. He tells here of the joys and anxieties in guiding his ten-year-old's team through its tryouts, field drills, and games to the playoffs. Just as Bill Geist did in Little League Confidential (LJ 3/1/92), he finds humor in coaching his roster of fourth graders in wins and losses. However, though he only hints at unruly parent behavior, he does see serious issues: team discipline vs. individual nurturing and parent-player complications. This account is enjoyable reading for both adult and YA collections in public libraries. Morey Berger, St. Joseph's Hosp. Lib., Tucson, AZ Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.