Guide to Juvenile Baseball Books: W

Wallace, Rich. Southpaw. New York: Viking, 2006. [Winning Season] Divorce takes a young lefty from rural Pennsylvania to urban North Jersey, where he fits in by making the seventh-grade team.

Pure formula; with a dash of divorce and a touch of multiculturalism (the young southpaw's first Jersey friend is named Ramiro), the old chestnut flourishes in the 21st century.

Walsh, Caroline E. Sosa's Homers. Logan, IA: Perfection Learning, 2001. Young Cub fan Carlos agonizes over Sammy Sosa's 1998 chase of Roger Maris and Mark McGwire for the single-season home run record, learning in the course of this chapter book that winning isn't everything.

[Warner, Gertrude Chandler, "created by"] The Home Run Mystery. Illustrated by Charles Tang. Morton Grove, IL: Albert Whitman, 2000. [The Boxcar Children Special #14] Those intrepid rolling-stock orphans solve another case, this one dealing with urban renewal in a decayed Hudson Valley factory town.

Oh there's baseball too.

Weaver, Robert G. Nice Guy, Go Home. New York: Harper & Row, 1968. A young Amish man heads to Virginia to play semi-pro ball and finds himself in the middle of the struggle to desegregate the town he's playing for.

Complex, topical novel that doesn't find easy answers. Johnny King, the hero, struggles against a segregationist for a place in his club's starting rotation, adding political drama to the stock situation of intra-team rivalry. Unusual among sport juveniles for its strong political engagement.

Weaver, Will. Farm Team. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Forced to run the family farm by himself because his father has been imprisoned, Billy Baggs is still able to play baseball when his mother gets the idea of building a field on the property.

Sequel to Striking Out that adds a large helping of Field of Dreams to the tensions of the earlier novel; a comic and exuberant book.

Weaver, Will. Hard Ball. New York: HarperCollins, 1998. Billy Baggs and his arch-rival, snooty town kid King Kenwood, get a close look at each other's lives.

Sequel to Farm Team; a flawlessly constructed YA novel that offers hardship and hope in equal helpings. Notable for its realistic treatment of class barriers in American society.

Weaver, Will. Striking Out. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. Billy Baggs, scarred for life by an accident that has killed his older brother, lives with embittered parents and the privations of a tough farm life; the coach of the town baseball team helps to bring him into contact with other people, but the process is tough and slow.

Fine, vibrant Young Adult fiction with the emphasis on "Adult"; offers a realistic treatment of a young teenager's handling of sex, responsibility, and work.

Welch, Willy. Playing Right Field. Illus. Marc Simont. New York: Scholastic, 1995. A kid is depressed and lonely at the title position till a high fly ball comes his way.

Engaging picture book with a nice verse text.

Whittemore, C.W. "One Mighty Clout." In Owen (1948). Young ballplayer, for complicated reasons, is pitted in a big high-school game against a team led by his elder brother.

Wiles, Deborah. The Aurora County All-Stars. Orlando: Harcourt, 2007. Local youth baseball team gets mixed up with the secrets of a valetudinarian and the poetry of Walt Whitman.

Williams, Karen Lynn. Baseball and Butterflies. New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1990. Illustrated by Linda Storm. A third-grader is sure this will be the best summer ever, as long as his little brother leaves him alone to concentrate on his butterfly collection instead of nagging him to play baseball.

Drives to a rather uninteresting upbeat resolution.

Wilson, John. "The Comeback Trail." In Margulies (1948). Star shortstop, gravely injured in the war, attempts a comeback: but is his greedy owner just showcasing him to make a quick buck by selling him to a contender?

Shep Griffin's mangled knee prevents him moving laterally in the field, but when he comes to bat, "the hickory spat a dirge of ringing baseknocks." At the story's climax, he manfully tells his prospective new owner that he's literally on his last legs; the owner likes the cut of Shep's jib, and signs him as a minor-league manager instead of a player.

Wolff, Virginia Euwer. Bat 6. 1998. New York: Scholastic, 1999. Rural Oregon, 1949: the traditional game between rival 6th-grade softball teams is disrupted by prejudice and violence.

Highly stylized language and setting; the world of Barlow and Bear Creek Ridge is a microcosm of postwar America. Bat 6 is weakened (as many ensemble baseball fictions are) by having 18+ narrators, but it has some striking passages.

Worthington, Jay. "Box Score Battle." (1948). Repr. Thomas. Scorer's ruling costs pitcher a no-hitter, but pitcher is magnanimous.

Worthington, Jay. "No Hitter." Repr. The Boys' Life Book of Baseball Stories. (1964). Prep pitcher loses no-hitter but learns about sportsmanship in the process.

Worthington, Jay. "Speed Merchant." Repr. The Boys' Life Book of Baseball Stories. (1964). Lessons from a track meet help ballplayers in a Big Game.

Worthington, Jay. "Winning Pitcher." Repr. Thomas. (1950). Second-string pitcher resents star's success till events prove that baseball is a team game after all.