Cubs v. Cardinals
Cubs V Cardinals can best be described as a family drama, which culminates in the very first baseball game of an eight-year- old boy’s life, which morphs into a miniature Jackie Robinson story.
The main character is named Jimmy Williams and the year is 1967 and he has just finished second grade. The book starts the day after the last day of school and ends three weeks later, the day after the first organized baseball game of Jimmy’s life. Jimmy lives in the small town of Canton, Illinois, and his family is one of the few black families in town. They are a tight knit group with a hard working father, devoted Christian mother, and three girls and two boys. Jimmy is a very sickly boy and his life consists of being constantly surrounded and coddled by his sisters when he is not being tortured by his older brother, nicknamed Slugger.
The main plot of the book is Slugger hatches a scheme to get Jimmy to play organized baseball, and teaches Jimmy how to pitch for that reason. Slugger feels the need to do this because he doesn’t think Jimmy will survive Canton if he doesn’t learn to be as tough as Slugger himself is, and he won’t be around much longer to protect him. The reason for this is Slugger has just graduated from high school and wants to go straight to Viet Nam. The main subplot of the book revolves around Slugger and his parents and this decision.
The tone of book is based on how wonderful, magical, and terrifyingly humorous and adventurous life is for lucky little boys like Jimmy, even though that may only be understood in retrospect, and it flows from Jimmy’s first pitching lesson in the family garage to a message of redemption at his church to facing his first batter in the alley behind his house to an unforgettable fishing trip with his brother and friend to building a fort in his back yard for protection against the neighborhood bully to his first practices and on to the morning of the game.
The game itself takes up the last third of the book, and as it is the first organized game in the lives of most of the kids playing in it; it is a comedy, a drama, and a tragedy all in one. Each at bat will make you laugh, cry, scream in terror, grit your teeth in anger, or be uplifted or ashamed, all within six short innings.
But in the end, it’s family that triumphs.
