David Patneaude's Blog: Different Worlds - Posts Tagged "high-school"

If you're not a baseball fan, you should read ONE SHOT AT FOREVER. It's about much more than baseball. If you are a baseball fan, you'll think you've just been transported to your own personal field of dreams. Think of "Hoosiers" on a baseball diamond, but with a different cast of small town characters on a quest for an unlikely goal--a state championship--in a time--the early seventies--when Illinois high school teams weren't classified by school size. Picture "our" team, representing a rural school of fewer than 300 students, grades nine to twelve, boys and girls, competing against, among other behemoths, a Chicago area school of more than four thousand boys. Throw in a charismatic but counterculture coach, small town conservative values, lack of support from just about everyone including school administrators, no budget for uniforms and equipment, a divot-filled infield with no pitcher's mound and an outfield split by a running track and surrounded by corn stalks, and you have an intriguing but impossible situation, right? A fool's journey? You haven't yet met the boys (and girl) of Macon High. Read the book.