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Bat Boy: An Inside Look at Spring Training

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When you are a kid and it dawns on you that you are not old enough to play for your favorite baseball team one of the next best dreams you can have is that you are the batboy. "Batboy: An Inside Look at Spring Training" shows exactly how much hard work is involved in that particular dream. Writer Joan Anderson and photographer Matthew Cavanaugh follow young Kenny Garibaldi through a 14-hour-day as the batboy for the San Francisco Giants during spring training in 1994. On the one hand Kenny is shown sitting next to Hall of Famer Willie Mays in the Giants' locker room in Scottsdale, Arizona, but on the other there are more color photographs of his doing his job.

Actually, that would be jobs, because this book is as much as inside look at the hard work of being a batboy as it is about providing a glimpse at what spring training is like. We learn that Kenny has to sort uniforms, answer the phone, deliver fan mail to lockers, unwrap gum, take out the garbage, make endless trips to the laundry, brush dirt off of shoes, put clean towels and batting helmets in place before the game, carry balls and other supplies to the visitor's dugout, and put the rosin bag, pine tar, and towels needed by each batter for warm-upon at the on-deck circle. All of this is before the game even starts, at which time he gets to really be a batboy, and for all of his effort the 13-year-old Kenny receives the sum of $25 a day.

The book also looks at what happens during Spring Training, but it really is not as interesting as learning about Kenny's job. He never talks to the players unless they speak to him and he cannot ask for autographs. But he does drive to work with catcher Kirt Manwaring, a neighbor, and one of the rookie pitchers, Fred Costello, is a former batboy with the Giants, who is willing to play cards with Kenny. Still, young readers will be struck by the need for Kenny to be hard working without being noticed by the players who are working at their jobs. But the kid must be pretty good at it because at the end of the book we learn that he has been hired to be the batboy for the Phoenix Firebirds, the Giants AAA farm team, for the summer.