The Summer of the Homerun

Smitty is 13. It is the summer when he and his friends enter high school, the time when all the awkwardness of youth begins to shift and all those things that seemed simple are actually complicated. But Smitty is okay. He has his friends on his baseball team, and he and his sort-of girlfriend seem to want to hang out. But then the New Kid hits that homerun and everything changes."The ball seemed to be something other than an object struck by a wooden bat and sent sailing through the air over the park; it was more like a bird, something with an intelligence of its own, or like time itself moving as we stopped to gaze and wonder." That's how Smitty, 13, shortstop turned pitcher, describes the home run that the New Kid hit. Everything, Smitty says, was just fine before that hit. After the hit, his whole world, even the budding romance with Sandy Miller, seems to change, and the changes leave Smitty bewildered.It's a summer in the early 1960s. Smitty and his pals are entering high school. The story examines those changes through the prism of one spectatular baseball hit. It is also a story about kids playing summer baseball, their joy, their youth and friendship.