Review of
Tiger
Rookie, by Edmund O. Scholefield
Three out of five stars
This is a most
unusual adolescent sports fiction book, there is no big game at the end with a
tense final act. Matt Lukens was orphaned at an early age and was taken in by
relatives, the two main father figures in his life were an attorney and the
owner of a construction company. As soon as he was physically able, Matt joined
the crew and became very capable of handling heavy machinery and hand tools.
He is on the
verge of graduating from high school and his plan was to attend college and
study either law or engineering. However, he is also a very talented baseball
player and he is offered a pro contract. Matt is genuinely conflicted over the
decision to play baseball versus working construction over the next summer.
He decides to
play baseball for the upcoming summer, yet never really has a full commitment
to the sport. Matt is always mentally conflicted between baseball and
construction/education, which is the main theme of the book. This weakens the
power of the story, there are no tense moments, the author puts Matt into some
difficult positions on the mound, yet they are expressed in a manner that one
would find in a personal diary.
This is not an
exciting book, people that are conflicted and habitually undecided make uninteresting
main characters. There is some romance, but even that is dull.
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