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Skinnybones is a 1982 children's novel written by Barbara Park. [1] It is Park's most popular book, and has won numerous awards for children's literature. It was followed up by a sequel in 1988 called Almost Starring Skinnybones.
The story is narrated by the main character, Alex Frankovitch, a rather unpopular and awkward grade school boy.
After writing a letter in a promotional contest for a cat food company, Alex goes on to describe key points in his young life, mainly having to do with little league baseball, occasionally going off on tangents or telling other stories from his life that, while not important to the story, are points of humor and show Alex's thoughts and feelings more clearly.
Though Alex has played in Little League for six years, his skills in the game are subpar (he refers to himself as "really stinky" when it comes to baseball). He is constantly berated by his nemesis, T.J. Stoner, a player widely known for his incredible skill. After numerous attempts to get T.J. to leave him alone fail, Alex tries besting T.J. in a pitching contest, at which he fails miserably. A few days later, Alex's team and T.J's team are playing a game against each other, and T.J. once again tries to make Alex look foolish. During the game, Alex bunts the ball and runs to first, where T.J. is set to get Alex out. Desperate to stop him, Alex jumps up and down, screaming "BOOGA BOOGA!" This makes T.J. miss the ball, allowing Alex to get a double. Alex is called out by the umpire immediately after for interfering with the play at first base. Though Alex was thrown out, he accomplished something better than getting a double to him: making T.J. embarrassed. When T.J. looks like he's going to beat Alex up, Alex runs home and locks himself in his room.
Though Alex tries to become a hermit, an effort which lasts only a few hours, he's forced to go back to school the next day, where the students and teachers all make fun at his expense. T.J. gets a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for beating Alex's team, and Alex, in a twist of good luck, ends up winning the contest from the cat food company that he wrote a letter to at the book's opening. By winning, Alex will get to appear on a national television commercial. He leaves school that day, nervous about filming the commercial, but eager to be a big star and hoping things will go well.
Henry Chadwick was an English-American sportswriter, baseball statistician and historian, often called the "Father of Baseball" for his early reporting on and contributions to the development of the game. He edited the first baseball guide that was sold to the public. He is credited with creating box scores, as well as creating the abbreviation "K" that designates a strikeout. He is said to have created the statistics of batting average and earned run average (ERA). He was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938.
"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is a 1908 Tin Pan Alley song by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer which has become the unofficial anthem of North American baseball, although neither of its authors had attended a game prior to writing the song. The song's chorus is traditionally sung as part of the seventh-inning stretch of a baseball game. Fans are generally encouraged to sing along, and at some ballparks, the words "home team" are replaced with the team name.
The question of the origins of baseball has been the subject of debate and controversy for more than a century. Baseball and the other modern bat, ball, and running games — stoolball, cricket and rounders — were developed from folk games in early Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe. Early forms of baseball had a number of names, including "base ball", "goal ball", "round ball", "fetch-catch", "stool ball", and, simply, "base". In at least one version of the game, teams pitched to themselves, runners went around the bases in the opposite direction of today's game, much like in the Nordic brännboll, and players could be put out by being hit with the ball. Just as now, in some versions a batter was called out after three strikes.
Town ball, townball, or Philadelphia town ball, is a bat-and-ball, safe haven game played in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries, which was similar to rounders and was a precursor to modern baseball. In some areas—such as Philadelphia and along the Ohio River and Mississippi River—the local game was called Town Ball. In other regions the local game was named "base", "round ball", "base ball", or just "ball"; after the development of the "New York game" in the 1840s it was sometimes distinguished as the "New England game" or "Massachusetts baseball". The players might be schoolboys in a pasture with improvised balls and bats, or young men in organized clubs. As baseball became dominant, town ball became a casual term to describe old fashioned or rural games similar to baseball.
Kickball is a team sport and league game, similar to baseball. As in baseball, one team tries to score by having its players return a ball from home base to the field and then circle the bases, while the other team tries to stop them by tagging them "out" with the ball before they can return to the home base. Instead of hitting a small, hard ball with a bat, players kick an inflated rubber ball; this makes it more accessible to young children. As in baseball, teams alternate half-innings. The team with the most runs after a predefined number of innings wins.
Walter Lanier "Red" Barber was an American sports announcer and author. Nicknamed "The Ol' Redhead", he was primarily identified with broadcasts of Major League Baseball, calling play-by-play across four decades with the Cincinnati Reds (1934–1938), Brooklyn Dodgers (1939–1953), and New York Yankees (1954–1966). Like his fellow sportscasting pioneer Mel Allen, Barber also developed a niche calling college and professional American football in his primary market of New York City.
The Rookie is a 2002 American sports drama film directed by John Lee Hancock and produced by Walt Disney Pictures. It is based on the true story of Jim Morris who debuted in Major League Baseball at age 35. The film stars Dennis Quaid as Morris, alongside Rachel Griffiths, Jay Hernandez, Angus T. Jones, and Brian Cox.
Ida Makes a Movie is a 1979 Canadian after school special short film produced by Kit Hood and Linda Schuyler for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who aired the film on December 8, 1979. The story was adapted from the 1974 children's picture book Ida Makes a Movie, which was written by Kay Chorao. Schuyler, a former media teacher at Earl Grey Senior Public School, was introduced to the book via the school's librarian, and purchased the film rights from Chorao for $200.
The Heart of a Goof is a collection of nine short stories by English comic writer P. G. Wodehouse. It was first published in the United Kingdom on April 15, 1926, by Herbert Jenkins, and in the United States on March 4, 1927, by George H. Doran, New York, under the title Divots. The stories were originally published in magazines between 1921 and 1926.
The Man with Two Left Feet, and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by British author P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the UK on 8 March 1917 by Methuen & Co., London, and in the US on 1 February 1933 by A. L. Burt and Co., New York. All the stories had previously appeared in periodicals, usually The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom and The Red Book Magazine or The Saturday Evening Post in the United States.
Eddie's Million Dollar Cook-Off is a 2003 Disney Channel Original Movie. It debuted on Disney Channel on July 18, 2003.
The Million Dollar Shot is a children's story written by Dan Gutman. It is held by over 1100 US and Canadian libraries, according to WorldCat. In promotion of Gutman's 2006 novel The Million Dollar Putt, Hyperion Books for Children republished the authors previous four books in his Million Dollar series, hiring Michael Koelsch to illustrate new cover artworks for all five novels.
The 2007 Major League Baseball All-Star Game was the 78th midseason exhibition between the all-stars of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL), the two leagues comprising Major League Baseball. The game was held on July 10, 2007, at AT&T Park, the home of the NL's San Francisco Giants. It marked the third time that the Giants hosted the All Star Game since moving to San Francisco for the 1958 season. The 1961 and 1984 All Star Games were played at the Giants former home Candlestick Park, and the fourth overall in the Bay Area, with the Giants bay area rivals the Oakland Athletics hosting once back in 1987, and the second straight held in an NL ballpark.
Maniac Magee is a television film made for the Nickelodeon network, based on the novel of the same name by Jerry Spinelli. The story follows twelve-year-old Jeffrey Lionel "Maniac" Magee, an orphaned runaway with many extraordinary and athletic talents, who arrives in a town divided with racial conflict. Developed as early as in 1999, the film was filmed in 2001 and broadcast on Nickelodeon on February 23, 2003.
Zachary Ben Hample is an American baseball collector. Hample claims to have collected more than 12,000 baseballs from Major League stadiums, including Alex Rodriguez's 3,000th career hit and Mike Trout's first career home run.
The Winning Team is a 1952 biographical film directed by Lewis Seiler. It is a fictionalized biography of the life of major league pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander (1887–1950) starring Ronald Reagan as Alexander, Doris Day as his wife, Aimee, and Frank Lovejoy as baseball star Rogers Hornsby.
This is an alphabetical list of selected unofficial and specialized terms, phrases, and other jargon used in baseball, along with their definitions, including illustrative examples for many entries.
Olivia is a children's computer-animated comedy television series produced by media company Chorion and based on Ian Falconer's books. The series won a silver Parents' Choice Award for its positive storylines and characters. The series premiered on January 26, 2009 on the Nick Jr. Channel and aired episodes through October 29, 2015. 40 episodes were produced.
Carlton Fisk's 1975 World Series home run was a baseball play that occurred in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series on October 21, 1975, at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Red Sox defeated the Cincinnati Reds, 7–6, forcing a deciding seventh game, when Carlton Fisk hit a home run in the 12th inning home run to cap off what many consider to be the best World Series game ever played.
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