56 pages • 1 hour read
John H. RitterThe Boy Who Saved Baseball
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Tom Gallagher
The novel’s protagonist, Tom is the 12-year-old only child of Helen and Jerry. Though he loves baseball, particularly the San Diego Padres, and plays on the local team each year, Tom is not a particularly good athlete. Rather, he is a daydreamer, a bookish boy who always carries a journal he calls his Dreamsketcher, in which he writes and draws whatever comes into his mind. He is particularly good with computers, devising templates for the family’s use and ultimately perfecting Cruz’s HitSim program, allowing hitters to learn how to hit any pitch. Tom also loves nature and is a great observer of the wild, as when—running down the mountain at Dante’s request—he watches for small animals and unusual undergrowth.
The chief characteristic Ritter emphasizes about Tom is that he is quiet, withdrawn, and unwilling to accept public attention. Put on the spot by Doc, a teammate, Dante, or a reporter, Tom freezes and cannot find the words to respond. However, when those he cares about are attacked, Tom responds immediately, as when Alabaster calls Dante a disgrace. The entire narrative could be characterized as Tom’s journey of finding his voice: discovering his ability and willingness to speak out.
Ritter also portrays Tom as entering the new world of romantic attraction, as reflected in his fascination with and adoration of María. That María returns Tom’s interest allows the author to show the two taking fledgling, innocent romantic steps.
Cruz de la Cruz
Mysterious, talented, and supremely confident, Cruz literally rides into the lives of Tom and Dillontown at their moment of greatest need. Despite his seeming transparency—he fills in the background story of his parents, his interests, and his underlying concerns—Cruz remains enigmatic throughout. Ritter never explains how Cruz knew about the “world famous Dillontown Wildcat Baseball Camp” (24) or why he disappears without explanation, apart from the foreshadowing note that he hates goodbyes.
Ritter portrays Cruz as everything Tom is not. Brave and brash, Cruz does not hesitate to ride to Dante’s compound, jury-rig a grappling hook, and scale the wall. When confronted by adults like Dante and the mayor, Cruz neither backs down nor resorts to falsehood. Indeed, under pressure, Cruz grows more eloquent, leaving Tom to say he hopes he will be able to write such beautiful words one day. At one point, Cruz stumbles when he is uncertain about how to complete his HitSim software, Tom steps in with inspiration and confidently takes over. Ritter’s last observation, that someone would have had to invent Cruz if he had not appeared, keys into the mystic element of Tom’s imagination. The author implies Tom dreamed that someone like Cruz was needed to fulfill everything he was not ready to be, and Cruz responded to that dream like an answer to prayer.
Dante Del Gato
As a literary figure, Dante fulfills the characteristic role of the “brooding recluse,” like the Prince in Beauty and the Beast or Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. He is the subject of rumor, fear, and scorn. Like other reclusive characters, Dante proves all too human when Cruz and Tom break into his compound, figuratively smashing through the wall he has placed between himself and the prying world. The narrative eventually reveals that others have misunderstood and cursed Dante, forcing him to retreat from the public. And, as with other reclusive characters, when faced with the need to protect the innocent from the hostility of the ruthless world, Dante steps forward in the fullness of his power. The narrative does not answer whether he will recede into self-imposed exile now that he has again experienced human interaction.
Dante is a former major league baseball player who, in the narrative, led the San Diego Padres to the 1984 National League pennant, only to ghost the team as it entered the World Series. Though the Padres really did lose the 1984 series, Dante is a fictional character. Considered by many fans, including Tom, to be the greatest hitter who ever played baseball, Dante’s departure caused a furor. To escape it, Dante created his compound and retreated for a time into alcoholism, which he defeated with the help of Doc.
As Dante’s backstory develops, readers recognize that he is a person of the highest moral character, someone who reveres baseball so much he cannot bring himself to play the game any longer because he has acquired so much skill that no pitcher can retire him. Dante is heroic, miraculously saving the life of Helen and seeking no notoriety for his actions. He is also willing to set aside his loathing of the media and unscrupulous individuals, like the mayor, to help local kids who want to learn baseball on the same field where he became great.
Kennesaw Mountain “Doc” Altenheimer
A lifetime resident and community physician of Dillontown, Doc is a lean, genial, pipe-smoking, boot-wearing man in his late 80s. Facing the end of his life, and perhaps more aware of its proximity than he lets on, Doc finds himself simultaneously being loved and detested for the first time. He is the sole owner of 300 acres, including the Lucky Strike baseball field, which are highly sought by outside land developers. Though offered $6 million for the property, Doc is unmoved by the huge sum of money. His willingness to sell the land comes from a desire to see Dillontown once again become a robust, vital community. Torn between the developers’ plans and his lifelong friends’ aversion to the desecration that will come with builders, Doc decides to put the sale in the hands of the now inconsequential Dillontown Wildcats baseball team.
Just as Ritter allows readers to experience Tom and María’s first encounters with adolescent affection, the author also displays the wistfulness that Doc feels as life and relationships slip away. Each of Doc’s encounters has a note of finality to it, as when he bids Dante farewell, speaks with Tom about his career plans, and abruptly strides out of the town meeting, having placed the decision about the town’s future in the hands of nine pubescent children. The one certainty Doc expresses is that he does not need the investors’ money, which is Ritter’s proclamation of the ultimate value of material wealth: You cannot take it with you, but you can use it to ruin the lives of others. The author ameliorates the sudden death of the beloved doctor by bringing him back in the form of a red-tailed hawk who circles the field when Tom gets the game-winning RBI and again lands in front of Tom at the ballfield in the middle of the night.
María Flores
Tall, pretty, fearless, and outspoken, María is the female complement to Cruz. María steals every scene she is in, not by being obnoxious or demanding but through her unfiltered, emotionally pure comments. Ritter gives Maria most of the funniest lines in the narrative, as when she brings a teammate up short, telling him to “eat cactus and die.” When adults threaten the togetherness and purpose of the team, María rises and confronts the detractors with authentic insight that goes beyond adolescent posturing, as when Alabaster condescendingly refers to her as “Sugardoll,” and she dresses him down for his ignorance of what is taking place. Her physical courage is underscored after she is injured during the baseball game but refuses to yield until she physically cannot endure the pain of the pitching motion.
As is characteristic of first loves, María’s attraction to Tom slowly manifests itself with smiles, compliments, and fragments of conversation until the two have a shared private moment in the henhouse. The coda of their affection comes when Tom tells María she is the most interesting girl he knows, then straightens himself to hear her tell him he is the bravest boy she knows.
