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Summary
Summary
Twelve-year-old Alfredo "Stats" Pagano and Boston Red Sox pitcher Billee Orbitt work together to break a potential curse at Fenway Park.
Author Notes
John H. Ritter lives in Koloa, Hawaii.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Born with a heart defect, Alfredo Carl "Stats" Pagano has never been able to play baseball, but has loved helping his father with their Fenway Park hot dog stand and watching the Red Sox games from their family's season ticket holder seats. This year, things aren't going so well for the team. Players keeping getting injured or missing crucial game plays and fans are starting to turn on them. Red Sox pitcher Billy Orbit thinks there's a new curse starting. Something in the park has changed and caused an energy imbalance. Helping his friend to research the problem, Stats discovers that whenever the hawks get chased out of the park, the team has a bad year. Before long, however, Stats and his family start having their own problems. Stats's heart is giving out and he needs an operation. Papa Pagano is deep in debt and needs to find a way to come up with $135,000 as well as the cost of his son's operation just to keep his business going. Can Stats save his family's business and the park? James Colby's has great accents and unique voices for each of the characters eill resonate with the listeners. His transitions between humor, major setbacks, and the characters' love of baseball are beautifully done and occur smoothly without affecting the story. Avid and reluctant readers alike who enjoy baseball or mysteries will enjoy John H. Ritter's heartwarming story (Philomel, 2012).-Kira Moody, Whitmore Public Library, Salt Lake City, UT (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Die-hard Red Sox fans might believe in Fenway's "high, holy gates" or that the ballpark is "the love of baseball itself...to all boys, all girls, all across the globe." But this overblown hyperbole sinks Ritter's story of the friendship between a struggling pitcher and a kid whose father owns a hotdog stand and their use of magical thinking to turn the team's season around. (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Beneath "all the festivity and hooplicity" for the 100th anniversary of Boston's Fenway Park looms a calamity no one seems to notice, but a 12-year-old fan and an oddball starting pitcher step up to the plate. The Curse of the Bambino, the 86-year curse that kept the Red Sox from winning the World Series until 2004 and again in 2007, is back. Early in the 2012 season, the Sox have gone from four games in front of the Yankees to one game back, in just 10 days. "We're not that bad of a team, Stat Man. Something else is going on," says pitcher Billee Orbitt to Stats Pagano, a young hot-dog vendor and statistics guru. There's always enchantment at Fenway Park, but there's more than magic afoot, or afloat, in Ritter's life-affirming and tear-jerking new baseball novel. Ritter is a master at capturing the nuances of the game and infusing its magic into his tales. Here, Billee figures out that "It's not the ball park that's out of whack. It's not even the team. It's the balance of nature. It's the chi," and Billee and Stats set out to restore the proper lines of energy through the sacred grounds of Fenway Park and make the Red Sox winners again. A surefire winner, full of energy and wonder. (Fantasy. 9-14)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Twelve-year-old Alfredo Stats Pagano's family owns a hot dog stand outside of Fenway Park. Stats is sickly, and his father grieves for his dead wife. In fact, everything seems to be going wrong as the Red Sox are in a slump and the atmosphere at Fenway is growing poisonous. A quirky, philosophical Red Sox pitcher decides that the balance of the earth has been upset by the forced removal of hawks from the rafters of the stadium. Things grow worse when Stats discovers that the hot dog business is deeply in debt, and it appears as if his athletic brother won't get a chance to play in a game at Fenway. Events are set right, though, when the hawks are returned, and Stats gives an inspirational speech to fans at the stadium. Many young readers will identify with Stats' passion for baseball and the wonderful descriptions of the sights and sounds of the old ballpark on game day. The sometimes long-winded New Age sidetracks, however, may have less appeal.--Morning, Todd Copyright 2010 Booklist
