56 pages • 1 hour read
John H. RitterA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Ritter, who has written several middle grade books about baseball, offers this story of Tom Gallagher saving baseball and, thus, the community of Dillontown as a volume in the “baseball as a game of miracles” subgenre. While baseball has faded in popularity, seemingly eclipsed by football, basketball, and even soccer, authors like Ritter, Carl Deuker, Troon McAlister, and W.P. Kinsella continue to pen volumes intended for younger audiences about the apparent supernatural underpinnings of baseball. This theme is also prevalent in movies through motion pictures like The Bad News Bears, The Natural, and Angels in the Outfield. Like many other stories in this subgenre, Ritter’s narrative contains several common plot conventions: a team comprised of misfits, a former baseball legend pressed into service, an apparently insurmountable challenge, and what appears to be divine intervention just as all hope seems lost.
Long before Ritter’s fictional creation of Lucky Strike field, baseball was a real-life game of miracles, curses, prophecies, legends, and hope. Ritter could point to the 1968 “Miracle Mets” as the basis for the extraordinarily improbable victory of the Wildcats. The long-time Red Sox “Curse of the Bambino” and the Chicago Cubs “Curse of the Billy Goat” hung over those clubs almost as long as Blackjack Buck’s cryptic jinx seemed to doom Dillontown. Above all, as Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” baseball has always been a game of hope unextinguished until the last out of the last inning. This plays out in the narrative when the mighty Vikings fail to catch the final pitch of a strikeout, then walk the next batter to get to weak-hitting Tom, who miraculously answers all the hopes of Dillontown by getting on base and allowing the winning run to score.
The other significant element of the miraculous baseball subgenre is that, in the final analysis, each of these struggling, serendipitous teams is working for something beyond the thrill and accomplishment of beating a better team. In The Natural, Roy Hobbs’s homerun prevents a corrupt business group from acquiring a big-league baseball team. In Shoeless Joe, Ray Kinsella preserves the baseball diamond to resurrect his relationship with his father. In this narrative, Tom and the Wildcats play the game to save the baseball field and the town from unscrupulous developers. Beyond this, however, Ritter wants the story to rekindle the nation’s dying sense of community, respect, and hope through the example of Tom rising above his fearfulness to claim his true power.
Readers may note that each writer in this subgenre conflates the game of baseball, rightly conducted, with the highest moral standards. There is nothing wrong with working to get an edge, as the Wildcats do when they use the HitSim software. However, when outside influences attempt to sway players or the outcome, this is a moral failing that baseball cannot tolerate. Tom flirts with this dilemma, thinking he might throw the game or seek a forfeit after Alabaster threatens his parents, school, and home. Inspired by Cruz and Rachel, however, Tom quickly regains the moral high ground: “No matter what trouble Alabaster Jones might cause, Tom determined that tomorrow he would play to win” (166). Even when Doc dies at the end of the game, Tom finds that his willingness to cling to his hope and play the game with respect has opened the door for the miracle of saving Dillontown.
As much as Ritter’s book is about baseball, it is equally a prophetic outcry against the overdevelopment of natural land, the desecration of the environment, and the dangers of urban sprawl. While the youth baseball aspects of the story may have the characteristic of a miraculous fable, the descriptions of urban encroachment and the redevelopment of suburban communities are accurate and current. Particularly pertinent is the Southern California setting of the story. There, large cities continue to expand undeterred, natural resources—especially water—stoke conflict over usage rights, the pristine rural environment is threatened, and over-development creates fire hazards for exclusive, expensive dwellings.
Tom’s view of this issue is personal since his main concern is the preservation of his ballfield and hometown. The conflicting viewpoints expressed by Doc, who initially wants to see Dillontown reinvigorated, and Jerry, who assumes that only redevelopment can secure any vital future for their area, demonstrate that the issue is not simple. While the mayor is obviously in it for the money, others in the community express their different, sincere priorities. Ritter uses Dodge Bullit’s radio debate in Chapter 17 to give an overview of the varied, justifiable positions held by different individuals.
The most articulate spokesman to weigh in against urban sprawl is Cruz. Ritter portrays the Hispanic boy as a descendant of those who, like the Indigenous citizens before them, were forced off the land by encroaching settlers. Cruz eloquently describes to a radio audience the underlying deficiency of creating a totally urbanized environment in which humans have no regular interaction with—and thus no appreciation of—the earth. As the narrative’s editorial voice, Ritter lifts up this point several times, expressing the necessity for young people to interact with nature. He illustrates this point as he describes the teammates running down the mountainside, discovering hidden elements of the hillside and the presence of creatures as they go. Ritter also uses Cruz’s words—as well as Alabaster’s ironic reference to the motives of Columbus—to connect the current, ongoing actions of land developers to the practices of those colonial powers who usurped the generational lands of indigenous peoples, pointing out that the moneyed and ambitious are still garnering the property of others and diverting it from its natural state.
In Chapter 1, Doc greets Tom affectionately, expressing gratitude that his young friend still comes to see him since he has become a lightning rod for the greatest controversy in the history of Dillontown. Doc controls the town’s destiny and finds this burdensome far beyond any result that might benefit him personally since he senses his death is at hand. His revelation into how to make the decision seems at first to be an abdication of his responsibility. Only in the final chapter does the reader grasp that Doc took the step to spare Dillontown. His creation of the Big Game is, in effect, a ruse Doc establishes to challenge Tom and the townspeople to demonstrate their true investment in the village they love. Doc’s instigation of the game stirs everyone in Dillontown to rise to the occasion. Doc acts upon his personal interest in Tom at the time of their last private meeting when he gently encourages Tom to discover his voice even as he secretly provides for Tom and places the future of Dillontown in Tom’s secure hands. Ritter thus makes Doc an example of an empowered person who fulfills the calling placed upon him: He uses creativity and unrecognized wisdom to work for the empowerment of others and successfully answer the challenge placed upon him.
Ritter uses this rubric four times in the narrative, first with Doc. The second person who rises to the leadership challenge placed upon him is Cruz, who fires the imagination of the Wildcats from the moment he arrives. A stranger, he melds himself into the team on the first night; brings in the new, greatly needed coach the second day; buoys the spirit of the team through his spirit and physical abilities; inspires Tom to create the best hitting simulator ever made; and challenges the unquestioned greed of the mayor and developers. Like Doc, Cruz apparently fails when he ghosts the team on the day of the Big Game. Tom explains afterward that Cruz’s role was to prepare the team, which he did perfectly. Had Cruz been present and had the Wildcats won the game, their victory would have been attributed largely to Cruz.
The third leader who rises to the occasion is Dante. Misunderstood and widely criticized, Dante puts aside his secluded, comfortable life to rescue those young people who want to learn and enjoy baseball on the same field where he grew to greatness. Ritter demonstrates that, in large measure, Dante’s growth is in his ability to tune out his detractors and put the team’s welfare first. Just as Alabaster cannot understand the value of the hometown he wants to destroy, most baseball fans could not possibly understand Dante’s moral motivation to quit the professional game when he realized that no pitcher could retire him, thus making the game patently unfair. In return for his teaching, leadership, and inspiration, Dante asks nothing in return, just as when he saved the life of Helen, he sought no notoriety.
The final leader to step forward is Tom. Each of the first three had a hand in encouraging him to emerge as the individual who truly saved the baseball field and the town—twice: first, when his at-bat allows the Wildcats to win the game and second, when he accepts Doc’s inheritance and refuses to sell out to the developers. Doc shines the spotlight on Tom when he says Tom made him decide to risk the town on the outcome of the Big Game. Cruz inspires him when he drags him along to meet Dante and when he asks Tom’s help in perfecting the hitting app. Dante inspires Tom in several ways, finally when he sends the rest of the team out of the dugout to persuade Tom to believe in himself and play first base. As Doc puts it, each of these individuals has a moment when they are simultaneously the most favorite and least favorite person in Dillontown. Each rises to the occasion through creativity and courage.