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A Chance to Win: Boyhood, Baseball, and the Struggle for Redemption in the Inner City
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist follows an embattled Little League team in inner-city Newark, revealing the complex realities of life in one of America’s most dangerous cities
When Rodney Mason, an ex-con drug dealer from Newark’s rough South Ward, was shot and paralyzed, he vowed to turn his life around. A former high-school pitching ace with a 93 mph fastball, Mason decided to form a Little League team to help boys avoid the street life that had claimed his youth and mobility. Predictably, the players struggle—they endure poverty, unstable family lives with few positive male role models, failing schools, and dangerous neighborhoods—but through the fists and tears, lopsided losses and rare victories, this bunch of misfits becomes a team, and in doing so gives the community something to root for. With in-depth reporting, fascinating characters, and vivid prose, Jonathan Schuppe’s book is both a penetrating, true-to-life portrait of what’s at stake for kids growing up poor in America’s inner cities and a portrait of Newark itself, a struggling city that has recently known great hope as well as failure.
http://us.macmillan.com/achancetowin/...
When Rodney Mason, an ex-con drug dealer from Newark’s rough South Ward, was shot and paralyzed, he vowed to turn his life around. A former high-school pitching ace with a 93 mph fastball, Mason decided to form a Little League team to help boys avoid the street life that had claimed his youth and mobility. Predictably, the players struggle—they endure poverty, unstable family lives with few positive male role models, failing schools, and dangerous neighborhoods—but through the fists and tears, lopsided losses and rare victories, this bunch of misfits becomes a team, and in doing so gives the community something to root for. With in-depth reporting, fascinating characters, and vivid prose, Jonathan Schuppe’s book is both a penetrating, true-to-life portrait of what’s at stake for kids growing up poor in America’s inner cities and a portrait of Newark itself, a struggling city that has recently known great hope as well as failure.
http://us.macmillan.com/achancetowin/...
- GenresNonfictionSportsBaseball
288 pages, Hardcover
First published April 16, 2013
3 people are currently reading
310 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Schuppe
4 books10 followersI'm a former reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger, where I shared a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Gov. Jim McGreevey's downfall. In 2008, the University of Colorado and the Denver Press Club honored me with the Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting. That year, I covered a story that became the book A Chance to Win, which won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize, given by the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
I am currently a national enterprise reporter for NBC's websites in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, Miami, Los Angeles, Bay Area, San Diego, Dallas/Fort Worth and Connecticut.
I live with my wife and daughter in New Jersey.
I am currently a national enterprise reporter for NBC's websites in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, Miami, Los Angeles, Bay Area, San Diego, Dallas/Fort Worth and Connecticut.
I live with my wife and daughter in New Jersey.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
April 18, 2013
http://andalittlewine.blogspot.com/20...
When is a book about baseball not a baseball book?
When the book is Jonathan Schuppe's brilliantly realized A Chance to Win. What began as a feature article about a Little League team by a crime reporter turned into a tale of the long struggle to rebuild Newark, NJ. It's a story about the permanent underclass build by draconian drug laws, failed schools, and shattered families. It's a story about the shadow economy created by the shortfalls of the welfare state. Most of all, it's a story about how everyone involved in the generational tragedy that is Newark wants something better, but bereft of viable options, struggle to find a new path.
Rodney Mason is an ex-con, a part-time drug dealer, a onetime standout baseball player rendered paraplegic by a drive-by shooting, and coach of the South Ward Little League's Elizabeth Avenue Eagles.
Schuppe masterfully draws together the Eagles' story, as a Little League team and after. As he establishes a personal connection with Mason, the kids and their families, I couldn't help feeling just as drawn into the experience as he surely was. The families' success are encouraging, their errors are deflating, and their struggle to stay focused on the future in the midst of a world where life is cheap is inspiring.
This is not the kind of feel-good book that will be made into a movie. The kids are poor. Only a couple have ever played baseball before; they come to their games without equipment and uniforms, and they come lugging all the baggage of poverty. But it's a book about the underdog's hope. It's a great read for spring.
A Chance to Win doesn't come out for sale until May 7th, but you need to put your order in today. It's the best piece of non-fiction you'll read this season.
When is a book about baseball not a baseball book?
When the book is Jonathan Schuppe's brilliantly realized A Chance to Win. What began as a feature article about a Little League team by a crime reporter turned into a tale of the long struggle to rebuild Newark, NJ. It's a story about the permanent underclass build by draconian drug laws, failed schools, and shattered families. It's a story about the shadow economy created by the shortfalls of the welfare state. Most of all, it's a story about how everyone involved in the generational tragedy that is Newark wants something better, but bereft of viable options, struggle to find a new path.
Rodney Mason is an ex-con, a part-time drug dealer, a onetime standout baseball player rendered paraplegic by a drive-by shooting, and coach of the South Ward Little League's Elizabeth Avenue Eagles.
Schuppe masterfully draws together the Eagles' story, as a Little League team and after. As he establishes a personal connection with Mason, the kids and their families, I couldn't help feeling just as drawn into the experience as he surely was. The families' success are encouraging, their errors are deflating, and their struggle to stay focused on the future in the midst of a world where life is cheap is inspiring.
This is not the kind of feel-good book that will be made into a movie. The kids are poor. Only a couple have ever played baseball before; they come to their games without equipment and uniforms, and they come lugging all the baggage of poverty. But it's a book about the underdog's hope. It's a great read for spring.
A Chance to Win doesn't come out for sale until May 7th, but you need to put your order in today. It's the best piece of non-fiction you'll read this season.
July 10, 2019
There are those who can report and those who can write. It’s rare to find a journalist who can excel at both - Schuppe does. Excellent storytelling.
July 27, 2020
Quick, sad, important, well-written.
June 17, 2013
This review first appeared on my blog: http://www.knittingandsundries.com/20...
My Take:
Characters:
Rodney - a former drug dealer and promising pitcher, paralyzed for a decade from a shot fired by his girlfriend's new boyfriend.
Jonathan Schuppe - a reporter for Newark's Star Ledger who wrote an article about the inner city featuring Rodney. Since the printing of the article, they have kept in touch.
Dewan - his mom is a teacher raising two boys by herself while her husband (Dewan's stepfather) serves a prison sentence.
Derek - born to drug-addicted parents, he moves from relative to relative with no real sense of stability.
Thaiquan Scott - a former ex-con who now works at a hospital. He and his wife are determined to keep their children active and away from trouble.
This is a story of loss and redemption. It is a tale of Rodney's slow progress towards a "better" life and his search for meaning. It is a tale of two boys - one hopeful and earnest, one rather brooding and unsettled. It is a story of a man working hard to keep his children from making the same mistakes he made. It is a story of a city called Newark and it's hard-fought "renaissance" under Mayor Cory Booker. More than anything, it is a story of how a game called baseball brings them all together.
The Bad News Bears this is not - this is a true, gritty, eye-opening, at times heart-breaking, story of loss and redemption that illustrates the uncertainty of many young people's lives as well as how society makes it almost impossible for someone with a criminal record to break free and go on to a productive life.
When a new baseball field is built in 2007, Rodney sees it as an opportunity for him to "do something right" - to steer kids away from the streets and give them something to work for and to look forward to. Rodney's mom single-handedly raised five children while her husband wandered to and fro and eventually died. They grew up poor, and Rodney started dealing drugs to buy groceries for the family. After a stint in prison, and with his life now circumscribed by the boundaries of a wheelchair, Rodney has worked with an anti-violence activist, Thomas Ellis, giving speeches at schools warning kids of the dangers of "street life". He has met with many disappointments and has had ups and downs in his struggle to rebuild his life.
Now he struggles to build a baseball team in an environment where baseball is looked on as a "white man's" sport. Pulling together a ragtag team of kids, most of them never having played baseball before, he finds his calling.
In this narrative biography, Mr. Schuppe has done a masterful job of telling the tale of our urban youth, their parents, and the struggles the poor and working poor face - violence in their streets, the lure of easy drug money, the losses that end up breaking many spirits.
I highly recommend this one for so many reasons. If you haven't grown up in an urban environment, it is extremely difficult to understand how so many people end up turning to a life of crime, drugs, and poverty. With empathy and clarity, Mr. Schuppe opens a path to that understanding.
QUOTES:
When he looked around Elizabeth Avenue now, he saw hundreds of children just like him, growing up just as he had - poor, fatherless, coasting through an inept school system, fascinated with the streets, confronted with the decisions that, fairly or not, would define their adult lives. He knew what they needed: someone to steer them from the path that had been so easy for him to take, the one that now ended at the front curb of the building where he grew up, parked in his wheelchair, watching the world go by. He just needed a way to reach them.
When Rodney told his mother about his plans, she cautioned him against it. She'd been working as a substitute teacher in the South Ward and was appalled by the children's lack of discipline and respect for authority.
"Those kids is off the hook," Clara warned her son. "you ain't going to be able to do it."
"Mom," Rodney said, "I think something's wrong with me because I like doing stuff with bad kids."
Derek didn't complain about his predicament - he said he was just hoping "to go with the flow" - but sometimes he let himself think how nice it would be to stay in the same home for more than a few months at a time. To have his own bed. To stay in the same school. To make friends and keep them. Those were luxuries he'd never known.
"I'm not sad," he said.
"You're not?"
"I've seen so much that I don't get sad anymore."
Book Club Recommendation: Yes; I think this title would be a great book club pick. I can see many different lines of discussion opening up with this one.
BOOK RATING: 4.5 out of 5 stars
My Take:
Characters:
Rodney - a former drug dealer and promising pitcher, paralyzed for a decade from a shot fired by his girlfriend's new boyfriend.
Jonathan Schuppe - a reporter for Newark's Star Ledger who wrote an article about the inner city featuring Rodney. Since the printing of the article, they have kept in touch.
Dewan - his mom is a teacher raising two boys by herself while her husband (Dewan's stepfather) serves a prison sentence.
Derek - born to drug-addicted parents, he moves from relative to relative with no real sense of stability.
Thaiquan Scott - a former ex-con who now works at a hospital. He and his wife are determined to keep their children active and away from trouble.
This is a story of loss and redemption. It is a tale of Rodney's slow progress towards a "better" life and his search for meaning. It is a tale of two boys - one hopeful and earnest, one rather brooding and unsettled. It is a story of a man working hard to keep his children from making the same mistakes he made. It is a story of a city called Newark and it's hard-fought "renaissance" under Mayor Cory Booker. More than anything, it is a story of how a game called baseball brings them all together.
The Bad News Bears this is not - this is a true, gritty, eye-opening, at times heart-breaking, story of loss and redemption that illustrates the uncertainty of many young people's lives as well as how society makes it almost impossible for someone with a criminal record to break free and go on to a productive life.
When a new baseball field is built in 2007, Rodney sees it as an opportunity for him to "do something right" - to steer kids away from the streets and give them something to work for and to look forward to. Rodney's mom single-handedly raised five children while her husband wandered to and fro and eventually died. They grew up poor, and Rodney started dealing drugs to buy groceries for the family. After a stint in prison, and with his life now circumscribed by the boundaries of a wheelchair, Rodney has worked with an anti-violence activist, Thomas Ellis, giving speeches at schools warning kids of the dangers of "street life". He has met with many disappointments and has had ups and downs in his struggle to rebuild his life.
Now he struggles to build a baseball team in an environment where baseball is looked on as a "white man's" sport. Pulling together a ragtag team of kids, most of them never having played baseball before, he finds his calling.
In this narrative biography, Mr. Schuppe has done a masterful job of telling the tale of our urban youth, their parents, and the struggles the poor and working poor face - violence in their streets, the lure of easy drug money, the losses that end up breaking many spirits.
I highly recommend this one for so many reasons. If you haven't grown up in an urban environment, it is extremely difficult to understand how so many people end up turning to a life of crime, drugs, and poverty. With empathy and clarity, Mr. Schuppe opens a path to that understanding.
QUOTES:
When he looked around Elizabeth Avenue now, he saw hundreds of children just like him, growing up just as he had - poor, fatherless, coasting through an inept school system, fascinated with the streets, confronted with the decisions that, fairly or not, would define their adult lives. He knew what they needed: someone to steer them from the path that had been so easy for him to take, the one that now ended at the front curb of the building where he grew up, parked in his wheelchair, watching the world go by. He just needed a way to reach them.
When Rodney told his mother about his plans, she cautioned him against it. She'd been working as a substitute teacher in the South Ward and was appalled by the children's lack of discipline and respect for authority.
"Those kids is off the hook," Clara warned her son. "you ain't going to be able to do it."
"Mom," Rodney said, "I think something's wrong with me because I like doing stuff with bad kids."
Derek didn't complain about his predicament - he said he was just hoping "to go with the flow" - but sometimes he let himself think how nice it would be to stay in the same home for more than a few months at a time. To have his own bed. To stay in the same school. To make friends and keep them. Those were luxuries he'd never known.
"I'm not sad," he said.
"You're not?"
"I've seen so much that I don't get sad anymore."
Book Club Recommendation: Yes; I think this title would be a great book club pick. I can see many different lines of discussion opening up with this one.
BOOK RATING: 4.5 out of 5 stars
December 9, 2014
A Chance To Win by Jonathan Schuppe is an outstanding novel about a young man turning his life around. The main character is Rodney Mason who grew up in the dangerous streets of Newark. The novel takes place in Newark. The main conflict in this novel is that Rodney Mason is a great young baseball player but drugs and drug dealing start taking over his life. This causes something very bad to happen to him and he has to turn his life around now. The clear theme in this novel is to never give up no matter how challenging it seems. I thought this non-fiction book was a great story and I would read it again.
I myself highly encourage you to read this novel, I have a very positive opinion on it. It grabs your attention right away, you would think non-fiction books are usually boring but this novel was not boring at all. If you like books about overcoming adversity and never giving up on your dreams, then this book is definitely for you. Also, if you’re a baseball fan then I strongly recommend reading it because it also is a lot about baseball. This book is always teaching you something. For example, “You could have lost that game, so I give praise to y’all. You did not give up. Don’t never, never, never give up on yourselves,” (227). This teaches that the Eagles whom Rodney coaches in little league won their game because they did not give up. I thought Schuppe the author did a wonderful job of describing how the character’s were always feeling. As a reader, you want to know how the characters are feeling about things and the author did a great job of that.
Lastly, I just want to say that A Chance To Win by Jonathan Schuppe is a great novel about a young man named Rodney Mason who overcomes adversity and turns his life around. I strongly recommend you to read this book, it teaches you a lot of great life lessons. It’s clear theme and life lessons are a couple of many reasons why I loved reading this book.
I myself highly encourage you to read this novel, I have a very positive opinion on it. It grabs your attention right away, you would think non-fiction books are usually boring but this novel was not boring at all. If you like books about overcoming adversity and never giving up on your dreams, then this book is definitely for you. Also, if you’re a baseball fan then I strongly recommend reading it because it also is a lot about baseball. This book is always teaching you something. For example, “You could have lost that game, so I give praise to y’all. You did not give up. Don’t never, never, never give up on yourselves,” (227). This teaches that the Eagles whom Rodney coaches in little league won their game because they did not give up. I thought Schuppe the author did a wonderful job of describing how the character’s were always feeling. As a reader, you want to know how the characters are feeling about things and the author did a great job of that.
Lastly, I just want to say that A Chance To Win by Jonathan Schuppe is a great novel about a young man named Rodney Mason who overcomes adversity and turns his life around. I strongly recommend you to read this book, it teaches you a lot of great life lessons. It’s clear theme and life lessons are a couple of many reasons why I loved reading this book.
July 29, 2013
A Chance To Win: Boyhood, Baseball, and the Struggle for Redemption in the Inner City by Jonathan Schuppe is not a baseball book. It is a book about life in the inner city. Rodney, an ex-con, is left wheelchair bound after a shooting and decides to coach a little league baseball team to give young boys an outlet in an attempt to keep them from his former life of drugs. Most of the book deals with the people with whom Rodney has every day contact. These people have a rough life to say the least, but they never gave up and the part about the baseball team was enjoyable. I think you will like this one, I did. I was rooting for the people to get their lives on track.
(Gerard's review)
A Chance To Win--Boyhood, Baseball, and the Struggle for Redemption in the Inner City by Jonathan Schuppe is inspirational non-fiction based on the real lives of several people living in the ghetto in Newark, New Jersey. Rodney, a drug dealer who gets shot, paralyzed from the waist down, winds up in a wheelchair and seeks to make a difference in the lives of others by getting kids to play baseball and get off the streets. That was my favorite part of the book, when it was about their coaching and ballgames.
Unfortunately, that was just a small part of it and most was more about the lives of several of the players and their struggles with their family, particularly their fathers. It was interesting for the most part, but did not care about the part about the mayor and the city. I would classify this as an inspirational read because the message is not to ever give up, no matter what the circumstances. I was somewhat disappointed in the ending and found myself plowing through it near the end. It felt to me like a news article rather than a novel.
It was okay, but could have been better in my opinion.
(Karen's review)
(Gerard's review)
A Chance To Win--Boyhood, Baseball, and the Struggle for Redemption in the Inner City by Jonathan Schuppe is inspirational non-fiction based on the real lives of several people living in the ghetto in Newark, New Jersey. Rodney, a drug dealer who gets shot, paralyzed from the waist down, winds up in a wheelchair and seeks to make a difference in the lives of others by getting kids to play baseball and get off the streets. That was my favorite part of the book, when it was about their coaching and ballgames.
Unfortunately, that was just a small part of it and most was more about the lives of several of the players and their struggles with their family, particularly their fathers. It was interesting for the most part, but did not care about the part about the mayor and the city. I would classify this as an inspirational read because the message is not to ever give up, no matter what the circumstances. I was somewhat disappointed in the ending and found myself plowing through it near the end. It felt to me like a news article rather than a novel.
It was okay, but could have been better in my opinion.
(Karen's review)
February 12, 2017
Very moving and eye opening story which takes place right in our own backyard, Newark, which is minutes and worlds away. Story covers much more than baseball, but really about relationships (or lack of), redemption, recedivism, poverty, and how the system fails the people who are trying to redeem themselves.
November 18, 2013
A must-read for fans of "Random Family," "A Chance To Win" is a similar journalist's foray into the poverty stricken urban experience of Newark, NJ with a much happier ending.
It is interesting to compare these two books--Schuppe makes no effort to hide himself in his writing, and clearly points out his influences on and his conversations with the characters, unlike the eerily absent narrator in Random Family. Perhaps because of Schuppe's focus on maleness versus Random Family's focus on femaleness, this book has some heartbreaking moments but ends more with promise than disaster.
"A Chance To Win" follows the story of Rodney Mason, a paralyzed ex-drug dealer who decides to lead an urban little league team against strong odds. The no holds barred reporting also explores the lives of three families of boys on the little league team and follows their ups and downs for a couple of years as the boys move on into becoming teenagers.
It is interesting to compare these two books--Schuppe makes no effort to hide himself in his writing, and clearly points out his influences on and his conversations with the characters, unlike the eerily absent narrator in Random Family. Perhaps because of Schuppe's focus on maleness versus Random Family's focus on femaleness, this book has some heartbreaking moments but ends more with promise than disaster.
"A Chance To Win" follows the story of Rodney Mason, a paralyzed ex-drug dealer who decides to lead an urban little league team against strong odds. The no holds barred reporting also explores the lives of three families of boys on the little league team and follows their ups and downs for a couple of years as the boys move on into becoming teenagers.
February 1, 2016
Jonathan Schuppe's book is a moving story about what's been called "the other America": a place where children barely in their teens routinely confront unspeakable loss and grief; where adults feel, with some justice, that the system is stacked against them; and where the public institutions -- especially the schools -- that should offer an escape route too often compound generations of failure. Though framed as a baseball story, it's more a story about parenting -- and growing up -- against the odds, and it has the shagginess of real life: the narrative arc isn't tidy, and the reader closes the book uncertain how its protagonists will fare in another year, or another decade. Despite much here that is very sad, the indomitable spirit of Schuppe's real-life characters offers a spark of hope that they, and we, will eventually find the path to a better future.
April 4, 2013
Author Schuppe is a Pulitzer prize winning writer who spent four years following youths in the ghetto streets of Newark, NJ. It is a novel of hope and despair, chance and failure and about never giving up when life throws a curve ball. There is very little baseball here. It is the vehicle by which one paraplegic black man found a way to try and make a difference with inner city kids. Schuppe tags along with several of the subjects over the years and writes detailed accounts of their struggles, conditions and challenges. The book is well written as you would expect and gives the reader a view of a world most of us don't know, but a world that everyone should know.
This book was supplied as a pre-release copy by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
This book was supplied as a pre-release copy by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
October 1, 2013
I'd love to see a follow-up story online checking in on Rodney Mason and other graduates of the Newark Eagles. Mr. Schuppe gave us a little more insight into how Cory Booker is as an executive. A great story of the regular struggles of urban living and the choices young people in these settings have to make on an almost hourly basis and how easily they can be led astray. Well done Mr. Schuppe!
February 16, 2014
One strength of this book lies in giving the reader a window into living and striving in a rundown and dangerous city. Having baseball be one central theme is a bonus. But the best reason to read this book, in my opinion, is to witness so many people keep hoping for better days despite getting hit with disappointments and letdowns on a regular basis. There is no "happily ever after" here, but there is life.
October 7, 2013
Great clear writing. Having worked in Newark with ex-offenders it was easy for me to understand the frustration of trying to cause positive change in a city where all levels of society are grappling for a piece of whatever they can get. The spirit of the main character was truly inspiring as was the author's need to tell the story. Makes you become a fan of youth baseball too!
August 4, 2016
An insightful glimpse into inner city living and an inspiring story about working to overcome the struggles of everyday living in that environment.
September 11, 2016
*I won this book in a goodreads first reads giveaway*
October 13, 2013
Really good book , but I do beg to differ on it being inspiring. its more eye opening to the struggles and mentality of the Inner city ghettos.
June 10, 2014
Much more about the life of inner city kids than baseball.
March 4, 2014
Gritty, inspirational, and (like life) without tidy endings. Oh -- and extremely well written.
July 30, 2014
A Chance to Win is a story that goes way beyond the game of baseball, telling a gritty story of survival and redemption in Newark, NJ.
August 11, 2014
Very impressive reporting on real life in a real city. I am rooting for these men and boys; it's not fair, what they have to overcome.
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September 12, 2014363.45092 S393 2013
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews