The Best Night of His Life
A young baseball fan rises to the occasion to protect his favorite team
“I’m a baseball player,” 12-year-old Timothy “Pumpsie” Strickland declares. “Baseball is my life.” In Andrea Williams’ new middle-grade novel, Inside the Park, Pumpsie is navigating the ups and downs of life in a household of seven as a sometimes awkward, frequently ignored, and always self-doubting preteen while pursuing his dream of becoming a professional athlete.
As the best catcher on his team, the Music City Legends, Pumpsie finds himself benched just before their upcoming tournament because of his batting. No matter how hard he tries, he freezes at the plate. “I’m probably not going to get to play catcher in Knoxville,” Pumpsie thinks. “And when I don’t, I’m just gonna get over it. Not because it isn’t the absolute worst-case scenario (it definitely is), but because I have no choice. I will get over this just like I’ve gotten over everything else. It’s what you learn to do when life throws you nothing but Ls.” (That’s baseball lingo for “losses.”)
Although Pumpsie’s family is warm and loving, he still feels like an outsider at times. “I may not know anything about a lot of things,” he says, “but there are certain things I know a lot about. And I know that in the ranking of the five Strickland kids, I’m not number one, two, three, or four.” His oldest brother, 16-year-old Isaac, is the star athlete. Then there’s Miles, a scientific genius, followed by Pumpsie’s twin, Tiana, who is a gifted performer. Last is the 2-year-old, Jasmine, who seems to absorb all the rest of their parents’ attention, leaving little time for Pumpsie. But baseball is his saving grace. He even gets his nickname from Pumpsie Green, the first Black player for the Boston Red Sox.
Pumpsie’s home team is the Nashville Wildcats, and this year they finally have a chance to make it to postseason play if they can win three games in a row against the Portland Hemlocks. Their success is a good distraction from Pumpsie’s personal problems, and everything is going great until Tiana gets a part in a commercial for the Wildcats, acting alongside a dog named Campy. It’s the night before the third game, and the Wildcats are 2 for 3. Suddenly a thunderstorm whips up, the outdoor filming wraps in a hurry, and Campy gets spooked and runs inside the stadium. Pumpsie goes to his rescue, and they both end up locked inside.
What ensues is a wild ride for Pumpsie — a night filled with exciting highs and frightening lows. After he overcomes his initial panic and finds his way down to the field to run the bases, he admits that “having full access to an empty stadium for a few hours may not be so bad after all. And if I look at it that way — if I think about baseball and the Wildcats and everything else I love — tonight could maybe be the best night of my entire life.”
But then Pumpsie uncovers a plot against the Wildcats, and it’s up to him to slow down the villains until his parents realize he’s missing and stadium security can come to the rescue.
Young baseball fans will revel in the details of Pumpsie’s adventures inside the park — from enjoying all the leftover hotdogs he and Campy can eat to exploring the press box and the batting cages. And even non-fans will enjoy the slapstick, “Home Alone”-style action of Inside the Park as Pumpsie must overcome his fears and think fast to save the day. Along the way, he puts his own troubles into perspective and remembers some good advice: “Grandpa always says there are no accidents in life, that everything happens the exact way it’s supposed to. He also says that how we react to those events is how we build the future and leave our impact on the world.”
Tina Chambers has worked as a technical editor at an engineering firm and as an editorial assistant at Peachtree Publishers, where she worked on books by Erskine Caldwell, Will Campbell, and Ferrol Sams, to name a few. She lives in Chattanooga.
