Look Who's Playing First Base

by Matt Christopher

LOOK WHO'S PLAYING FIRST BASE Will Mike stand up to his teammates to defend his friend? When the Checkmates need a new first baseman, Mike Hagin's new friend, Yuri, seems like a logical choice. But when Yuri starts flubbing plays and the team's star player threatens to quit as a result, Mike is not sure Yuri is such a good choice after all-for a teammate or for a friend. It appears as if Mike will have to choose between his friendship with Yuri and his loyalty to the team-or is there another solution?

Genres: Fiction, Sports, Childrens, Juvenile, Baseball

131 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1972

About the author

Matt Christopher is the writer young readers turn to when they're looking for fast-paced, action-packed sports novels. He is the best-selling author of more than one hundred sports books for young readers.

Matt Christopher is America's bestselling sports writer for children, with more than 100 books and sales approaching six million copies. In 1992, Matt Christopher talked about being a children's book author.

"I became interested in writing when I was 14, a freshman in high school. I was selling magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Country Gentleman, and Liberty, and I would read the stories, particularly the adventure and mystery stories, and think how wonderful it would be to be able to write stories and make a living at it. I also read detective, horror, aviation, and sports stories and decided I would try writing them myself.

Determined to sell, I wrote a detective story a week for 40 weeks, finding the time to marry, work, and play baseball and basketball before I sold my first story in 1941, "The Missing Finger Points," for $50 to Detective Story magazine.

After writing and selling children's sports stories to magazines, I decided to write a baseball book for children. I was living in Syracuse, New York at the time, working at General Electric. I spoke about my idea to the branch librarian. She was immediately interested and told me that they needed sports stories badly. So I came up with my first children's book, The Lucky Baseball Bat. I submitted it to Little, Brown, and the book was published in 1954.

I'm sure that playing sandlot baseball and then semiprofessional baseball with a Class C club in the Canadian-American League influenced my writing. I had my own personal experiences, and I saw how other players reacted to plays, to teammates' and fans' remarks and innuendoes, to managers' orders, etc. All these had a great influence on my writing. My love of the game helped a lot, too, of course.

Out of all the books I've written, my favorite is The Kid Who Only Hit Homers. It's a fantasy, but the main character in it could be real. There are a lot of boys who would love to play baseball but, for some reason, cannot. The only difference between a real-life boy and Sylvester Coddmyer III is the appearance of a character named George Baruth, whom only Sylvester can see and who helps Sylvester become a good ballplayer.

I've written many short stories and books for both children and adults, and find that writing for children is really my niche. Being the eldest of nine children (seven boys and two girls), I've lived through a lot of problems many children live through, and I find these problems excellent examples to include in my books.

Sports have made it possible for me to meet many people with all sorts of life stories, on and off the field, and these are grist for this writer's mill. I'm far beyond playing age now, but I manage to go to both kids' and adult games just to keep up with them, and keep them fresh in my mind.Very few things make me happier than receiving fan letters from boys and girls who write that they had never cared for reading until they started to read my books. That is just about the ultimate in writing for children. I would never trade it for another profession."

Matt Christopher died on September 27, 1997. His legacy is now being carried on by his sons, Duane and Dale Christopher.

Reviews

[Marilyn Showalter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Realistic Fiction
3rd-4th grade reading level
This book told the story of a boy named Mike who loved baseball and played on a neighborhood team. When a new kid named Yuri moves next to him, they become fast friends. Mike encourages him to play on his baseball team as they need a first baseman. Yuri is not a very good fielder as he has never played before, but he is good at hitting. Yuri has to overcome bullying from his teammates, and Mike is torn on which side to join. Even though I know baseball terms, this book was still quite boring for me because mainly is just narration of different games. I could see this book being enjoyed by some baseball lovers or reluctant readers who enjoy sports.

[Rio Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

exiting

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this is a good story, it adheres to the basic Christopher formula for adolescent sports fiction a bit too much. As the title suggests, the sport is baseball and Mike is the second baseman for the Checkmates youth team. Their first baseman has moved away, and they need another quality player for that position. There is a candidate, but he is a very weak hitter at a position where there is traditionally a solid hitter.
Yuri is a boy where his family has recently emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States. While he is familiar with baseball, it is not a sport that he played a great deal, so he is unfamiliar with many of the fundamentals and lacks experience. Mike encourages Yuri to join the team with the idea that he will play first base. Yuri agrees, but has some difficulties due to lack of experience.
One of the players on the Checkmates is unhappy with the problems that Yuri has and is openly critical of him. That leads to dissension on the team to the point where Yuri is thinking of quitting. Furthermore, a player on another team accuses Yuri of being a communist and degrades him. The coaches come to Yuri’s defense in both cases, but not as strongly as they could.
It all works out in the end, as Christopher’s books always do. The “bad guy” learns the error of his ways and the Checkmates win the big game at the end with Yuri a major contributor. That part followed the Christopher formula. What was good was the message of overcoming mindless intolerance of those that are a bit different or come from different backgrounds.

[Andrew Barash · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about this kid who moved to the United States a week ago. A person left my baseball team and we needed someone to replace him at first base. He didn't know who to choose so he picked the new kid. The new kid was horrible in practice! Thats when are catcher didnt like the new kid and wanted him to get off the team. After a while the new kid got very good and are catcher was jealous so he threatened to quit the team. I thought he was kidding but after a few practices he left. The coach was worried. Nobody wanted to be catcher. They wanted me to be catcher! I said ok but I wanted to say no but I couldn't. So after two practices I was horrible at catcher and had a swollen hand. I wished the old catcher would come back and he did. At the last second he came in and did great. I was very happy. I liked this book a lot. This book was mainly for sports people, and well, thats me. This book gave me visions of what the hits look liked and thats mainly why I liked this. This book also gave some awesome word choice like CRACK or BOOM.

[Alek Severkovski · Rating 2 out of 5]

First Base by Matt Christopher is an ok book I think it was really fast and hard to paint a picture about the main idea, but overall it was decent. Mike is a kid from a small city who is all baseball but when the first basemen of the checkmates leaves they are in the hunt for a new first basemen. Luckily there is a new kid named Yuri who recently moved from Russia who has a arm and is really lengthy. Most of the players don't like him but in the end he really is something different.

I rated this book a 3/5 and it really deserves that because it is hard to really paint a mental picture in your head and it goes by really fast it will switch from one game to a different game and you will still be in the middle of reading one game.

I really just wouldn't recommend this book to anyone but if I had to it would be to fans of sports books or fans of Mike Lupica and Matt Christopher books.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mike is on a baseball team and his friend Yuri is going to play.Yuri is not very good and his teammates are getting mad. Yuri can't catch or throw. The setting of the story was mostly on the baseball field. It seemed like the story was around our years in the present. Mike will either stick up for him or not. Mike ends up sticking up for Yuri and Yuri gets better. the team starts to like him after he gets good.
The genre is realistic fiction by Matt Christopher. I liked how the book had suspense. My favorite part was when Yuri gets good at baseball. It seemed like the author didn't know much about baseball.I would recommend this book to people that like sports. If you like baseball this would be the book to get. I love all these kind of books that Matt Christopher writes.

[Gavin Ludlow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Look Who's Playing First Base by Matt Christopher wasn't the best book I have read by him. It was really slow throughout the book. I don't think it went along very well, there was only a couple of exiting parts in the whole book. But overall I thought this was a acceptable book, but I wish it had woven together better.
It starts off with the new kid ,Yuri,throwing a ball against the side of his apartment building. And Mike came up to him and stared playing with him, then he suggested that he should join his team the Checkmates because they needed a first baseman. Yuri needed a team because he just moved here from Russia, so he took the offer and stared play with them.
I would recommend this book to all people that like Matt Christopher's baseball books.

[Mac Franklin]

First Base by Matt Christopher is an ok book I think it was really fast and hard to understand the main idea, but it was still a good book. Mike is a kid from a small city who is all baseball but when the first basemen of the checkmates leaves they are in the hunt for a new first basemen. Luckily there is a new kid named Yuri who recently moved from Russia who has a arm and is really lengthy. Most of the players don't like him but in the end he really is something different.

I didn't really like this book as much as other sports books I had read, but it was still a god book.

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone but if I had to it would be to people who like sports books and people who like books of Mike Lupica and Matt Christopher.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this book a four star rating. The I give it that is I like to read baseball stories. I also liked it because it was about a new kid from Russia,Yuri, that is on a team that needs a first baseman really bad. At first he's not very good at fielding but swings a excellent bat. He gets better towards the end of the story when they win the champioship game. The only controversy in this story is when there cacther/best player quits because I think he is jealous of Yuri's hitting skills. I really liked this book.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book was a really good book. In this story Mike Hagin plays for the checkmates, but when their first baseman moves away a left handed kid mike's age moves into his apartment he seems like the perfect replacement. Mike gets Yuri to play he soon starts to regret it because yuri starts to play sloopy. When a star player of the checkmates threatens to quit Mike has to take his spot. I would recommend this book to someone who likes sports books.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just read look who’s playing first base by Matt Christopher. I think it was a really good book because there is this kid who has never played first base. He starts playing first base, and they find out he’s pretty good at it. I would recommend it to anyone, especially if you are sports minded. It was a good book.

[Rick Haas · Rating 5 out of 5]

You gotta start somewhere.

[Hazim]

I like this book a lot.

[Sharif804]

The book was very cool. I really enjoy the book.

[Davidv42 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a really good book that has a lot of sports and was really nerve racking.