Josh feels like he's starting to make it big! Jaden, the school reporter, says he's going to take the baseball team to number one. Then his dad pulls him off the field and signs him up with Coach Rocky Valentine's youth championship team, the Titans. He says Josh has what it takes to be a baseball great—and the Titans will help him get there.
Now Josh is gulping down Rocky's "Super Stax" milkshakes to build muscle and trying to fit in with his new teammates—older, tougher kids who can suddenly become violent. All Josh really wants to do is play ball, but as he gets in deeper with the Titans, there are questions he's just got to ask. As Josh and his new friend Jaden investigate their suspicions, they find themselves in a dangerous struggle with a desperate man who doesn't want them to expose the nasty secrets they uncover.
Pulsing with action, baseball great offers a baseball story attuned to today's headlines, a totally involving, character-driven, sports-centered thriller.
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Seven Foot Monster
The first book in a fantastic sports adventure series centered around 12-year-old Josh, the star of his school baseball team. Tim Green uses humor and relatable middle school dramas to hook readers.
Booklist
Green delivers a fast-paced story, told in short chapters that build to the exciting climax. Add this to other novels that feature the temptations of steroids for young athletes, including Carl Deuker’s Gym Candy (2007) and John Coy’s Crackback (2005).
Football Genius, Tim Green's debut as a young adult novelist, scored a touchdown. Now the former NFL star and Fox commentator returns with an inspiring baseball story about a young man coping with problems on and off the diamond. For our money, one of the best active young reader authors.
Publishers Weekly
Green (Football Genius) wades into John Feinstein territory with this fast-paced story about two middle-schoolers who put themselves in peril to probe steroid use on a youth baseball team. Josh LeBlanc's father is a pitcher who never made it to the big leagues. After he's cut from the farm team for the Toronto Blue Jays, he projects his unfulfilled dream on Josh, yanking him from the school baseball squad to play for the Titans, a travel team run by Rocky Valentine, a winning-is-everything caricature who supplements his income by selling milk additives that will reputedly help players bulk up. When Josh is also slipped some "gym candy," he talks over his suspicions with school reporter Jaden, and together they investigate with exciting, if predictable, results. A subplot about a bully who thinks Josh is moving in on his girlfriend adds nothing, and Josh's mother is basically relegated to serving meals. But most kids will not notice, focused instead on the action-heavy, high-testosterone plot that has Josh in near-constant motion. Ages 8-12. (Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
VOYA - Lucy Schall
Seventh grade baseball star Josh feels trapped by his father's failed attempts to be a major league player when his father pulls him from his new school team to try out for the championship Titans, a ninth grade ball club fueled by coach-distributed supplements and steroids. Involuntarily retired from a professional farm team, Josh's father has been offered a job by a local businessman who is promoting youth baseball to get big company endorsements. His father believes that playing with a nationally recognized team will give talented Josh the shot at the majors that he missed. When his super teammates pressure Josh to use "gym candy," his two school friends help him craft a successful plan to expose the operation. The businessman goes to jail, but with Nike endorsements the father continues the team, and Josh is tapped to be part of a national company promotion. Like Heat by Mike Lupica (Philomel, 2006/VOYA April 2006), this feel-good story manages an involving plot filled with strong, appealing characters who face danger and find support from responsible adults. Centered on the headline issue of steroids and crafted with short, fast-paced chapters, it is a great middle school choice for both boys and girls whether they are reluctant or enthusiastic readers. Reviewer: Lucy Schall
Children's Literature - Barbara L. Talcroft
Twelve-year-old Josh has the potential to be a baseball "great." Or so his angry, controlling father believes, as he is fired from his job on a farm team and his career is gone; Josh just wants to play for his school and make friends. Enrolled by his father in a traveling team of 14-year-olds, Josh is cruelly hazed and pushed by thuggish coach Rocky to lift heavy weights and practice till he is aching and exhausted. With schoolwork suffering, Josh comes through for the team, but soon discovers that Rocky is feeding steroids to the older boys. So far, it is a vivid, though depressing, picture of exploitation of young players by a greedy entrepreneur and an obsessed parent. When Josh and his friend Jaden (school reporter) decide to frustrate Rocky's drug business without help from adults or the police, the story becomes less credible. As tension mounts, readers may stop to ask some questions; among others, what school would allow a young girl to be alone there at night? Could naive seventh-graders hope to escape a dedicated drug lord? Resolution comes much too easily without making the point that these pre-teens might very well have been killed. Dad is suddenly transformed, as a Nike representative materializes to offer money and ad appearances. Can readers believe that Josh will really go to college one day as his mother so staunchly insists? Baseball fans will probably keep turning the pages anyway, but follow-up discussion of issues raised would be a much-needed reality check. Reviewer: Barbara L. Talcroft
School Library Journal
Gr 5-7 Twelve-year-old Josh LeBlanc's father has come to the end of a baseball career that never made it to the majors. Josh is also a talented player, and the family's dreams of glory settle on him. His angry, controlling father pulls him off the middle school team to have him try out for a traveling youth team sponsored by a suspicious character named Rocky Valentine, who is also Mr. LeBlanc's new employer. While the competition is fierce, Josh eventually makes the team, but his doubts about Rocky Valentine continue to grow. With the help of a girl he likes, aspiring journalist Jaden Neidermeyer, Josh uncovers evidence that Rocky is dealing in illegal steroids. It appears that Jaden's father, a doctor, is supplying Rocky with the drugs, but eventually everything is straightened out. Rocky is apprehended, Dr. Neidermeyer is cleared, and, in a deus ex machina, a Nike Youth Baseball representative shows up out of the blue and offers to sponsor Josh's team, to put his dad on the payroll, and to sign Josh up to appear in Nike ads. While the resolution might strike even less-sophisticated readers as wildly implausible, issues of peer and family pressure are well handled, and the short, punchy chapters and crisp dialogue are likely to hold the attention of young baseball fans.-Richard Luzer, Fair Haven Union High School, VT
Kirkus Reviews
Josh is a hugely talented player who loves baseball and is destined for greatness. His father, who never made it to the majors, takes a job with an independent youth baseball team, pulling Josh from his school team to join him. Josh wants to please his father, but all is not as it should be on the new team. Winning is everything and the coach pushes his players to be ever bigger, stronger and fiercer, insisting on tortuous weight training and surreptitiously passing along "gym candy." The third-person narration filled with crisp dialogue brings immediacy to Josh's painful practice sessions, the excitement of his games and his confusion at the flux of middle-school dynamics. Although several of the characters are somewhat one-dimensional, Josh and his friends are well developed and likable. Green carefully constructs the dilemmas and decisions they face as they come to terms with the steroid issues, so that the rather histrionic finale comes across as both plausible and satisfying. A cut above the usual baseball novel. (Fiction. 10-14)
Brightly
The first book in a fantastic sports adventure series centered around 12-year-old Josh, the star of his school baseball team. Tim Green uses humor and relatable middle school dramas to hook readers.
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