Customer Reviews

The Boy Who Saved Baseball

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The name of the book I read was The Boy Who Saved Baseball by John H. Ritter. The main conflict in this book is that the whole town especially the people who have alot of money and own alot of land want to tear down the old Dillontown baseball field, but thier baseball team the wildcats dont and if they could beat the best team in the state they get to keep there baseball field. This is pretty much the main problem in the story.
I didnt really dislike anything in the book the author was very creative the only sad part is when doc dies but it is for a purpose. The book was very exciting. It was exciting because the author was vey creative with it and it allways left you hanging in a way. When I was reading I felt like I was tom because I have the exact same personality and he does what I would do. One of the best things about the book was its ending it was so creative, I love how the author thought ahead of time when he wrote the book.
This book is the first book I have ever read by this author and I loved it it was absolutely awesome in a couple of days I am going to look up his name in the library and read another one. Also the authors writing was so descriptive I felt like I was in the book as I said before. This authors writing style is my writing style I loved it. I also like how descrbed his characters and what there personalities were. They were perfect for each person.
If I had to rate this book I would give it a 3 thumbs up. After I read a book I always Say I loved I and give it a 5 star rating. Not that the books were bad I just didn't enjoy them as much as I enjoyed this one especially the ending.
I dont want to give anymore information out just in case your reading this. I would recomend this book to boy or girl at any age its a fantastic book. You have to read it!

By: Max Mordini

Hey reader, do you like underdog stories? If you do, you will enjoy The Boy Who Saved Baseball, by John H. Ritter. It is about a baseball team of friends that isn't very good that has to beat an extremely good rival team in order to save their town from being developed. Tom, (the main character) has to also find out why Dante Del Gato
quit baseball. You will become a fan of the Dillontown Wildcats baseball team by the end of this book. I recommend this book because it is very interesting and I had fun reading it.
If something seems impossible, but you try your hardest, you can achieve your goals, but have fun trying. When Tom and his friends were running down the big hill, most of the kids are laughing. Tom tries his hardest and works out in order to get better at baseball. They have a sleepover the night before the big game. When the team was losing, nobody gave up. The team always eats out together. This book really shows why you should never give up on anything.
You will literally become friends with these interesting characters, they are mostly all nice people. Tom isn't that great at baseball but is a friendly kid who helps out his neighbor, (Doc). Cruz de la Cruz is an excellent baseball player and tries to help all of his teammates become better baseball players. Doc is an old friendly neighbor who is read the box scores by Tom every morning. Dante Del Gato is an old grumbling man who used to play professional baseball but is now despised by the town... read the book and find out why! Maria is one of the few girls on the team. You will think that these characters are people that you know.
You will feel like every place in this book is real. This story takes place mostly in Dillontown, California and in the present. Dillontown is a small town located on the California-Mexico border.
This book will show how hard work and determination can pay off toward your dreams. The mysterious and friendly characters will be like people that you actually know. I would definitely recommend this great novel to all people. You will enjoy The Boy Who Saved Baseball if you read it.

I read this to my two girls, ages 7 & 9 and they both liked it.

Some of the references will go over the heads of younger kids, and kids not familiar with baseball lingo but the story will hold their attention.

What I appreciated also was that the story portrayed in an easy-to-understand fashion the concept of how our choices are relavent and how the future depends on the choices we make now. It also showed how the value of things, whether they be land or people or an old ballpark can not be understood with snap judgements or measured simply in dollars and cents, but rather that intangibles such as love, sentimentality, teamwork, and cooperation have a far greater, if less measurable effect on the quality of our lives.

I love this book! I?ve already read it three times and you have to to see all the cool stuff in it. I really like Cruz de la Cruz and Tom and Maria Flores. But del Gato is my hero because he is so honest and doesn?t care what people say. This book is a mystery and a legend and you never see the ending coming?you think you do but you don?t. That?s why I read it all over again. My dad loved it, too.

This Baseball thriller was one of the best books I have ever read. This book gives it all, sports, sports, and more sports. This book is for a true sports fan and any one else who likes some thrilling adventures and suspense to the very end. Well I hope this book gives you a great time reading it as it did to me.

Sam's Book Review

I read an amazing book called The Boy Who Saved Baseball by John H. Ritter. The setting of this book is in a town named Dillontown in the state of California.

The main characters in this book are, Tom, Cruz, Doc, and, Dante Del Gato. The story is mostly about a big group of kids that are fighting to save the town's baseball field from designers that want to tear it down. When a mysterious kid named Cruz comes to play on Tom's team he suggests that an old amazing baseball player named Dante Del Gato should coach their team. He becomes the coach and they just barely win the game. So the field is saved and the field and everything stayed the same.

The main problem in this story is that there is a group of designers that want to tear down the town's old baseball field. So the town declares a baseball game to determine if the field stays or not.

My favorite part was when Tom hits a high pop up and it swerves and makes the fielders fall down and miss so that Tom's team wins and the field stays.

This book is really exiting and is so realistic that it makes you feel like you are right there when things happen. I would recommend this to anyone who loves sports books and books that make you want to read on. I would definitely give this book 5 stars.

What's most brilliant about The Boy Who Saved Baseball is how John Ritter writes to adults and children at the same time. The kids get the story on their "Let's go you cowboys, computer geeks, and baseball fanatics against huge odds" level. But for adults, on the higher level, this is easily one of the deepest and most thought provoking baseball novels ever written.

So much is here. There's the lyrical language. There's the pure love of the California mountains ("A boy needs to read the earth. This is a truth older than the iron dust that redpaints the boulders. Older than the woolback mammoths that are fossiled in these hills.").

As the forlorn baseball campers ponder the night sky, Ritter weaves in a prophecy alluding to the Vachel Lindsay poem, "The Congo." Throughout the book, a self-described tramp, Hollis B (based on Lindsay's "The Tramp"), shows up to talk in prophetic verse, as a sort of Greek chorus, using a broken cell phone as cover so no one will report him as crazy or dangerous.

The characters are Mexican, Mexican-American, and Euro-American--without ever saying so--and are united. Not a big deal. Neither are the three girls (Maria is remarkable) who make up one third of the baseball team.

And the parody of the radio talkshow, which shows up to broadcast from the field, is classic, especially when Hollis B talks about his position on the controversy using a soliloquy based on Casey Stengal's historical (and hysterical) testimony before Congress regarding baseball's monopoly.

A deep and fun-loving novel for all, fan or not, this is a literary and storytelling gem. I highly recommend it.-Jenna Diaz, New York, NY.

Tom Gallager finds himself in a tight spot! The fate of Dilltown is on this one baseball game, winner takes the field. Just because Tom Gallager had to open his big mouth.

Darn! if only Tom Gallager could get crazy old Dante Del Gato ( the best hitter ever known in baseball) to come down and coach his team. He lives high in the mountains of Dilltown and has not spoken to folks in years. Tom Gallager and Cruz Del La Cruz go up to his house and convince him to coach the team. Dante Del Gato has once played on Lucky Strike Field and doesn't want it to turn into a lake.

I think John H. Ritter was trying to tell me that even if you lose you still do good in all. But if one of your best players leaves you can still win the game against All-Stars. So try your best whenever you play a sport, in school, or doing your homework.

John H. Ritter's last Novel was lively and dramatic. I recommend this book to all ages and grades above . This book is a fun book to read in groups also, or on your own.

John H. Ritter is a writer?s writer. The way he paints the western landscape and his careful building of a modern day Tall Tale (in the manner of Twain?s ?Jumping Frog?? story) speak to his brilliance, too rarely available in juvenile literature today.

But Ritter is also a storyteller?s storyteller. In no way do his multiple story layers and seamless literary craftsmanship lose the young reader or baseball fan or the middle school language arts teacher (like me) or the fantasy book lover of any age.

In The Boy Who Saved Baseball, Ritter pays great homage to songwriter Bob Dylan, (thus the story?s setting, Dillontown, and the wondeful ?Blowin? in the Wind? ending) and to Latino writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez?s One Hundred Years of Solitude (thus the magical 100-year-old ballpark, the Mexican-American setting, and the dip into magical realism in creating the myth of Dante Del Gato).

I highly recommend this funny, uplifting, and brilliant story to readers of all ages.

We need John Ritter's next novel NOW!!!

This book is about a boy named tom. He lives on the boarder of Mexico. Tom loves to play baseball, so does his dad and mom. His parents organize baseball camp every year, but this year there is something special about the baseball camp. The team will decide if the town will get destroyed or not. If the town gets destroyed high ways will be placed, more houses will also be placed, and a lot of new things will be put there. The whole town will be come busy. If they win the town will not change.
Tom's baseball team gets the world's best hitter as a coach. Dante Del Gato was a in the world series but he quite just before it started. No one had seen him after that, but he moved to the town where tom lived. Up in the mountains. The coach gets them ready for the baseball game. Cruz de le Cruz shows them the secret of hitting a baseball that Dante De Gato knows. This makes the whole team great hitters.
This book reminds me of a movie about the Alaska Hockey team and that in the beginning they weren't to good but in the end they almost beat the New York Ranchers. This is related because they both did not quit they played. They never thought of quitting they put the best effort in this. The only thing that is different id that in the book they win.
This is a really good book I picked it because I love baseball. It looked interesting to see what happened all ready in the first three pages. I couldn't take my eyes out of the book. Their weren't any best parts because all the parts where great but the funniest was when Cruz de la Cruz and tom went to Dante Del Gato house and broke his wall.