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.
Symbols & Motifs
Breaking Down Walls to Preserve Walls
Lucky Strike field is surrounded by stone walls that are 100 years old. The goal of Tom, Cruz, and others on their team is to protect those walls. To do so, they must tear down two other sets of walls. The first are the stucco walls that surround Dante’s compound. The destruction of those walls represents the second set: the emotional walls Dante erected to keep the hostile, uncomprehending world at bay. Once Dante accepts the dissolution of his barriers, he tears down several other walls. He systematically explodes one assumption after another—that is, he knocks down all the barriers between the Wildcats and their ability and willingness to win the Big Game. In the process, he also challenges the citizens of Dillontown to accept him once again as a welcome resident, breaking down those emotional walls.
Ritter makes another interesting reference to walls when he describes Cruz and Tom riding their horses to Dante’s compound. They see the remains of buildings constructed by Indigenous Americans and possibly by the Hispanic settlers who preceded the Western Europeans who came after them. Ritter’s message is that the walls built by those ancient civilizations did not endure. Similarly, the historical walls of Dillontown are under assault.
The Dreamsketcher
Upon observing Tom’s penchant for writing down his ideas and drawing pictures, Tom’s mother, a librarian, provides him with a pocket-sized notebook that he carries with him. Because he constantly writes in the journal, Tom’s teammates become curious about it. For Tom, the journal is a trusted companion, the only one with whom he shares his deepest thoughts and inspirations without reservation. He calls the notebook his Dreamsketcher, which Ritter uses as a play on the Indigenous symbolic totem, the dreamcatcher. Ritter implies that Tom’s use of the Dreamsketcher is elemental in saving Dillontown in two ways. First, Doc wrote his last will and testament on the journal’s last page, entrusting Tom’s Dreamsketcher to save the town. Second, in the journal entry at the end of the narrative, Tom writes that, had Cruz not existed, someone would have had to dream him up, which is Ritter’s way of saying that Cruz was a miraculous answer to the hopes Tom recorded in his journal.
The Double Cross
Readers acquainted with Spanish would recognize that the mysterious stranger’s name, Cruz de la Cruz, translates as “Cross of the Cross” or “double cross.” Since Blackjack Buck’s ominous prediction refers to a double cross, readers could anticipate that Cruz would somehow betray the Wildcats or somehow cause them to lose the Big Game. The vindication of this notion seems to come when Cruz disappears without a word the morning of the game. As the players have the opportunity to reflect on Cruz’s actions after the game, it appears that he understood what was going to happen and that, if he had been present, the victory of the Wildcats would have been attributed to him. The recognition of this might prompt readers to revisit Buck’s prophecy:
“Oh, the stranger lies between lies and truth,
But the truth lies here, my friends.
A double-cross begins the day,
And by a double loss it ends” (56).
In light of the game day events, this final stanza implies that the stranger, Cruz, is not completely transparent with his intentions. The game day begins with a double cross of the stranger with the two-cross name: he double-crosses the team by leaving. The double loss refers to the team and the town losing Cruz and Doc rather than losing the game and the town.
Voices of the Missing
A motif that Ritter uses several times in the narrative is the communication of important information from those who are no longer living. Ritter employs this device in three different ways. The most obvious example is Blackjack Buck’s old prophesy, which cryptically foretells death and loss. However, when the prophecy is fulfilled, the results are not negative but life-giving for the community. An example of a voice of a person now missing is Dante’s grandmother. Wandering outside his compound in an inebriated state during a thunderstorm, Dante encounters his deceased grandmother, who tells him to follow her. She leads him to the injured, unconscious Helen, whose life Dante saves. The third example is the written word of Doc. Someone shakes Tom awake the night after Doc’s death, though no one is in the room. Eventually, Tom finds himself sitting at the kitchen table, discussing the reality of heavenly visions. The mention of Doc stirs Tom to look at the inscription he wrote in the Dreamsketcher, which turns out to be Doc’s last will and testament.
Symbolic References to Animals and Ancients
Ritter sometimes imputes qualities to his characters by comparing them to animals or other descriptors. One clear example is the use of the last name Del Gato, which translates to “of the cat.” This shores up Ritter’s initial description of Dante as looking like a huge mountain lion. When Dante sizes up the team, Ritter says, he observes them with a lion’s focus. The appearance of a soaring, observant red-tailed hawk at the time of Doc’s death and again on the dugout roof in the middle of the night is Ritter’s way of comparing Doc to the elegant, keen-sighted bird. In his first meeting with the team, Dante had asked them to keep an eye peeled for a red-tailed hawk. By implication, the author implies that if Tom is observant, he will recognize that Doc is present and watching.
Ritter’s baseball team names also imply important qualities about the two clubs in the Big Game. The name Wildcats aptly describes the Dillontown team. They are independent, wily, fast, and aggressive. Wildcats are indigenous to the area around Dillontown, Ritter’s way of saying the team belongs. The other group is called the Vikings, a people who are not indigenous to Southern California or anywhere else in the Americas. Using this name, Ritter depicts the Vikings as invaders, symbolically linking them to those outsiders who come to confiscate land to which they are not entitled.
