Baseball book lavish introduction to the sport

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/06/2002 (8693 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Baseball Book by Kevin Briand (Key Porter Books, 120 pages, $22, oversize paperback) is a comprehensive, lavishly produced introduction to the sport for young players.

A Toronto Blue Jays scout, Briand grew up in St. Hubert, Que., and played with Team Canada and in the world championships before an injury forced him to retire.

“Had I known about proper delivery, or about what pitches I should or should not have been using,” he writes, “I might have been able to avoid the injury that led to the end of my pitching career.”

Here he attempts to correct that weakness by giving step-by-step instructions for all aspects of the game.

The Baseball Book is extensively illustrated with full-colour photographs. It’s an excellent introduction for any young player. The only omission is information on today’s top players and teams, which would have added to the book’s popularity.

A second book that will appeal to sports enthusiasts is The Man Who Ran Faster Than Everyone: the Story of Tom Longboat by Toronto writer Jack Batten (Tundra Books, 104 pages, $17, paperback).

In the early 20th century, Longboat, a member of the Onondaga Nation, one of the famous Six Nations, was the fastest long-distance runner in North America. Batten tells us Longboat ran for the joy of it, not the money. If so, it was fortunate, because through mismanagement and manipulation he retained little of the riches he earned.

In public adulation and innate athletic ability, Batten compares him to Wayne Gretzky. “One unbridgeable divide separates the two men,” he writes, “Gretzky is white while Longboat was native.”

Longboat ended up working in a humble job as a street cleaner in Toronto.

Alberta author Cora Taylor has written a new fiction book for eight- to 12-year-old stamp lovers. Ghost Voyages (Coteau, 113 pages, $7, paperback) is about a young boy who discovers he can time travel back to the decks of some famous ships when he observes them through his grandfather’s magnifying glass.

Jeremy finds himself on board the Northcote, a riverboat that transported men and supplies to the Riel Rebellion, and later on the Nonesuch, which brought the first adventurers to Hudson Bay and led to the formation of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He takes part in some exciting events on shipboard and helps avert major disasters.

Another entertaining book for eight- to 12-year-olds is Stratford author Marthe Jocelyn’s The Invisible Enemy (Tundra, 160 pages, $16, hardcover), a sequel to The Invisible Day.

Jocelyn’s amusing heroine, Billie Stoner, finds her worst school enemy may have some good qualities once she’s rendered invisible by Billie’s magic powder. There’s plenty of humour and amusing episodes in this easy-to-read story.

Winnipeg children’s literature specialist Helen Norrie’s column runs on the third Sunday of the month.