Customer Reviews

The Young Pitcher

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book evokes vivid images of intercollegiate sports in the early 1900s. The characters are warm and well-developed. The setting is nostalgic and timeless. Readers will puzzle over "Frosh on the fifth" and chuckle over the potato toss. The reader can feel the despair when Ken finds out what he has done to the Captain of the college baseball team, and feels his chances of making the varsity squad slip away in an instant. No one can keep from laughing out loud when the perfume is spread or the sweater put on. The combination of setting, characters and good old-fashoned baseball makes for very pleasant reading.

Personally, I recommend this book be read every Spring in anticipation of the upcoming baseball season, such as I have done for the last twenty-three years. It is a wonderful way to get in the mood for great battles on the ball diamond, as well as recapture the joys of youth. Reading this book could become as much a pastime as baseball itself.

Young adult readers will find this book interesting and fun. Parents will appreciate the role model of young Peg Ward, whose standards of conduct are the highest, even when faced with peer pressures, not unlike those of today.

I had a hard time putting this book down. Zane Grey has the feel for what it is really like to be a college baseball player, along with all of its struggles and victories. This is a great story with a great ending. You too will enjoy this story about Ken Ward and all of his fellow teammates. In the end, you will be thoroughy satisfied. Great book!

I have read many books of juvenile fiction and this is not one of the best. Grey is of course best known for his western novels and until recently I was unaware that he had ever penned sports fiction. I have read "The Shortstop", also by Grey, and it is much better than this one. Ken Ward is a freshman who has just started his classes at Wayne University. It is a place where there is a great deal of hazing, there is a scene where the sophomores chase him across campus and he fights them off by hitting them with thrown potatoes.

When the entire varsity is declared ineligible because they played for money, the coach is required to create a team from scratch. At first, the team is rough; they have no real grasp of the fundamentals of baseball. Ken plays as poorly as the others do until he is made into a pitcher. From that point, he is a star, becoming the best pitcher in his league. The team rises to a high level and in a dramatic final game, beat their main rivals and win the championship.

The interaction between the players and their coach sounded very artificial, even when passed through a 1911 filter. There were times when I paused and thought how silly it was for these near adult men to speak to each other that way. It also lacked a great deal of emotional involvement. Sports books like this generally end with a dramatic final game that gets and keeps you excited until it is over. Even though there was a final game, reading about it did not increase my pulse rate; it was flat and stayed flat. Unlike "The Shortstop" when I read this book I kept thinking that the author really doesn't seem to have a flair for this genre.

I am only writing this review because it is the first book I ever read. At the age of 5 or 6 or 7 it was the beginning to what would become a lifetime of walking around with a paperback in the back pocket of my jeans. I remember quite a bit of it vividly, even now, 40 years later, especially Ken Ward trying not to throw that final low inside pitch to the slugger on a 3 and 2 count. I have never re-read it, but it stays with me still.