“Sa
ving Babe Ruth is a novel based on a true story, and its only prerequisite is that one must harbor an appreciation for baseball to thoroughly enjoy the history and allusions of the plot.
It’s all about a recreational baseball league with an uncertain future, a lawyer who becomes involved in something over his head, and a ‘villain’ in the form of one Rob Barkus, who lures any good player away from the struggling league with promises of travel and scholarships to build his own A-plus winning travel teams. If this continues, there won’t be a town Babe Ruth league!
Lawyer David Thompson finds himself unexpectedly embroiled not just in building a team, but struggling with the political and unfair practices of a predatory rival who will stop at nothing to get his way.
It’s rare to see a thriller format embedded in a book about a ball game. Most such approaches create a ‘whodunnit’ mystery and leave the elements of a good thriller piece out of the picture entirely.
Not so Saving Babe Ruth, which blends its thriller with a focus on the politics and processes of youth sports and centers on how a baseball team of outcasts struggles to make a name for themselves against all odds.
For David, it’s a new lease on a purposeful life after his elder law business declines due to most of his clients dying off. Why else would a lawyer be motivated to involve himself in a small town team’s efforts?
Oh, and if you expect cut-and-dried scenarios, think again: that’s evident from the novel’s startling opening: “Armed with an 1859 Sharps carbine, David Thompson gazed beyond the baseball field, across the asphalt and slate-shingled suburban homes of Indigo Valley, wondering how these twenty-one thousand residents would feel if they knew that baseball was dying….He felt certain Annie would think he had lost it if she knew he was at the kids’ baseball field armed with a gun.”
Now, David’s solutions to problems are anything but conventional – and, they work. At least, they worked in his law office to some degree. But here on the baseball field where anonymous letters, parental interactions, a board of education concerned about school statistics, and student concerns intersect, who can say which unconventional approaches will work and which won’t?
All David knows is that it’s up to him to turn around not just a team, but a town. What it takes to achieve this goal is entirely up to him.
Saving Babe Ruth is all about the corruption of power, the bigger picture, young players struggling to succeed, and the progressive involvement of an adult who comes to realize that there’s much more at stake than simply building up a team.
Readers should ideally be interested in a disparate number of threads, from a thriller format to baseball politics, youth involvement, and a lawyer whose techniques don’t fit the traditional mold.
Wry humor is woven into encounters (you have to look for it; but it’s there!), there’s a healthy dose of special interest intrigue that pops up in daily interactions (“David sat outside trying to soak in the absurdity of it all while swimming in a state of disbelief. Here sat the principal of Indigo Valley High School at his desk on a school day, during school hours, defending a professional football player on drug allegations.“), and David finds himself more than mired in the quicksand of dangerous associations when he probes beyond the Babe Ruth league’s transparent surface.
The result is a fast-paced, changing baseball novel that is especially recommended for sports fans and those who enjoy thrillers filled with unexpected moments!”
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/mbw/jun_14.htm
From Diane Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review