Striking Out

At 13, Billy Baggs, the only surviving child in a struggling farm family in northern Minnesota, carries the memory of having caused the accidental death of his older brother, Robert, five years earlier, in 1965. When he gradually becomes involved in the local youth baseball team, his father, hardened by repeated adversity--polio, poverty and the loss of Robert--is less than thrilled. But with the support of his feisty, independent mother and a sensitive and sensible baseball coach, Billy overcomes his own self-consciousness and the initial hostility of his teammates, and finds acceptance. If this plot suggests a throwback to the Chip Hilton books or other sports-oriented series from the 1940s and '50s, the subplots, involving teenage sex and the mother's decision to take an office job in town, are clearly the stuff of contemporary YA fiction. Weaver ( Red Earth, White Earth ) is a competent writer, and he knows his milieu well. A wealth of lovingly recounted details evokes the difficult daily life on a small dairy farm, while flashes of humor serve as relief. However, several plot possibilities are introduced but never developed. Ages 10-up. (Oct.)