Striking Out

by Will Weaver, Jim Carroll (Illustrator)

Overview

Up until now, Billy Baggs's life has been loaded with nevers. Never been to a movie. Never played baseball with a real team. Never got over feeling guilty for the loss of his brother. But change is in the air. Billy discovers he has a natural talent for baseball, especially as a pitcher. Maybe, just maybe, there's more in store for him than life on the farm. But can Billy convince his father of that? Or is he destined to spend the rest of his life pitching nothing but hay? Teenager Billy Baggs is desperately needed on his family's struggling dairy farm, but he's also an extraordinarily gifted natural baseball player. How he struggles to reconcile his father's desire to keep him on the farm with his coach's interest in getting him on the field is at the heart of this ‘meaty story.… The complex characters grow and change in profoundly real ways.''K. ‘[With] flashes of humor, a wealth of lovingly recounted details evokes the difficult daily life on a small dairy farm.''Publishers Weekly.

1994 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
1994 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
1993 "Pick of the Lists" (ABA)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780064471138
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/20/1995
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	859,916
Product dimensions:	4.19(w) x 6.75(h) x (d)
Lexile:	540L (what's this?)
Age Range:	13 - 11 Years

About the Author

Will Weaver is an award-winning fiction writer. His latest novel is The Survivors, a sequel to his popular young adult novel Memory Boy. His other books include Full Service, Defect, Saturday Night Dirt, Super Stock Rookie, Checkered Flag Cheater, Claws, and the Billy Baggs books Striking Out, Farm Team, and Hard Ball, all of which are ALA Best Books for Young Adults. Formerly an English professor at Bemidji State University, he lives in northern Minnesota, a region he writes from and loves. He is an avid outdoorsman and enjoys hunting, fishing, canoeing, and hiking with his family and friends.

Read an Excerpt

1965

Billy's brother, Robert, would have been thirteen that summer.

But here's how it happened.

The accident.

Billy and Robert were home on the farm by themselves. Their parents were gone to town, the father for plow parts and their mother for groceries. A brief town trip. There was nothing unusual about this.

At home Robert was disking with the big tractor. It was spring. Spring was the shortest season in Minnesota. It was important to keep the tractor going. To put in the hours. Dawn to dark, dark to dawn. Fields did not get finished otherwise. They did not get plowed, disked, harrowed and planted unless someone kept the tractor moving.

Robert, the older brother, was twelve. He would be thirteen in August. So he was old enough. He was big enough for tractor work. Robert had disked all that spring. There was no reason, then, why he could not keep disking while Abner and Mavis were gone to town.

Eight-year-old Billy was supposed to clean out the hayloft. Get it ready for first cutting. That was Billy's chore while they were gone. One hour, they said. They would be back in one hour.

It was hot and dusty in the hayloft. Billy worked and thought about his brother. Robert got all the good jobs. He got to drive the tractor while Billy got to sweep the loft and muck out calf pens. It wasn't fair. Not fair at all. He went to the haymow door to watch Robert on the tractor in the field. The sky was blue and the tractor rumbled and left a thick cloud of dust.

Billy sighed and turned back to the loft. The dim, gloomy loft. Along the eaves were skeletons of beavers and muskrats and minks and foxes. These were from hisfather's winter trapping. After skinning, he threw the carcasses up for the cats. The cats chewed on them all winter. Chewed on the red meat until spring, when there were only gut sacks and bones and beaver tails left. With a fork Billy pitched the stinking remains out the door. Once he stopped to look at the long yellow teeth of a beaver; the skull smelled and there were white maggots in the eyeholes. He pitched it, too. Below, Skinner, their dog, crunched bones with his teeth. A crackling, crunching sound. Billy went again to the door. To watch Robert in the field.

Billy kept working, sweeping out the dusty hay chaff. He went again and again to the door for fresh air. In the field, under the blue sky, Robert kept disking. Kept the tractor rumbling. Kept the gray dirt rolling up in broad, black stripes. At field's end, when Robert made the turn, the round iron plates of the disk flashed in the sunlight.

Billy threw down his broom. Who was going to check the hayloft? Not his father. Not Robert. Nobody, at least for a while. He climbed down from the itchy hayloft and rode his bike to the field.

He arrived just as Robert came past. The big John Deere, their heaviest tractor, had an open cab, and Robert stood upright on the platform. No enclosed cabs on the Baggs farm. Cab tractors, with their radios and their air conditioning-those were for the big operators. The rich farmers. Not for the Baggs family. Besides, in a cab how could you see the ground? How could you see the rocks that rose up? How could you hear a bearing when it gave out or an axle when it snapped? No fancy cab for them, and no roll bar either; their John Deere was built in the days before those things were made. It was an old, rumbling green barge of a tractor plenty good enough for plowing and disking. And Robert stood upright at the wheel like a captain on his ship.

Billy waved.

Robert waved. And passed by.

Each round Robert came by Billy waved to him.

Each round Robert waved back.

Each time the tractor passed, Billy disgustedly pitched a rock at the grating, grinding disk. "Anybody can disk," he said to Skinner. "Why does he get to disk and I don't?"

The next time Robert came by, Billy waved and waved until Robert stopped. Billy shouted up to him. He asked Robert if he could ride along.

"No," Robert said.

"Please. just one round."

Robert glanced back at the yard. His hair was bright yellow and curly beneath his cap. "All right," he said, "but only one round."

So Billy got his ride.

He was mostly happy.

Halfway downfield Billy shouted again above the tractor noise.

"What?" Robert said.

"Can I steer?"

Robert frowned, but made way to let Billy hold the wheel for a while. Billy sat between Robert's legs and steered. He was happier still.

At field's end Billy shouted again.

"What now?" Robert said.

"Can I shift? Can I try shifting and steering at the same time?"

"You're too little," Robert said.

"No I'm not."

"Yes you are."

"No I'm not."

"Yes you are."

"Please?"

Robert checked his watch, then looked at Billy. "If I let you try it then you'll vamoose?"

"Forever," Billy said. "I'll leave you alone forever."

Robert stood up to make more room for Billy. He gave Billy instructions. "Push in the clutch," he said.

Billy pushed in the dutch pedal. It was heavy. It had a strong spring. He could hardly push it down.

"Now bring up the rpms," Robert said.

Billy opened the throttle partway.

"Now let it out real slow."

Billy tried-but that is when it- happened.

Something happened.

Billy's leg muscle cramped. Maybe that was it. His leg cramped and seized and gave way.

Or maybe his tennis shoe slipped. Slipped over the top of the clutch.