Sophomore Campaign: A Mickey Tussler Novel

by Frank Nappi

Overview

• Ideal for fans of sports novels and Wisconsin novels
• Continues the story of Mickey Tussler that began with The Legend of Mickey Tussler (the basis for the TV movie A Mile in His Shoes)
• Follows the journey of the minor league Brewers

It’s 1949, and eighteen-year-old pitching phenomenon Mickey Tussler is back. He and his team, the minor league Brewers, continue their journey in this sports novel. In spite of Mickey’s claim that he will never play baseball again after the violent end of the last season, his manager (and now surrogate father) Arthur Murphy convinces the socially awkward, autistic, and emotionally fragile boy to try it again. Mickey comes back and has to learn to deal with the hatred and destruction around him. When a young African American player joins the Brewers, the entire team hears racial threats and is subjected to violence. Mickey witnesses one violent episode firsthand. Struggling to understand such hatred and ugliness, and afraid of the consequences of telling anyone what he saw, Mickey’s field performance suffers. Now, the boy needs to deal with a part of human nature that he barely understands.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620873069
Publisher:	Sky Pony
Publication date:	04/01/2012
Series:	Mickey Tussler Series , #2
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	339 KB
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Frank Nappi has taught high school English and creative writing for more than twenty-five years. His debut novel, Echoes from the Infantry, received national attention, including the Military Writers Society of America’s silver medal for outstanding fiction. Welcome to the Show is the third book in his critically acclaimed Legend of Mickey Tussler series. Frank lives on Long Island with his wife and their two sons.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 9 Up—This novel set in 1949 Milwaukee continues the story of an autistic youth with phenomenal baseball skills. Having escaped the clutches of his evil father in The Legend of Mickey Tussler (St. Martin's, 2009), Mickey has come under the protection of his manager, Arthur Murphy, who has fallen in love with Mickey's mother. Arthur woos and marries her, and the newly formed family lives together in relative happiness, although Mickey's condition continues to draw the taunts of opposing players and fans. Murph's job security is also an issue due to the unexplained animosity of the team owner, the nefarious Warren Dennison. Further complications arise when, at Murph's insistence, the team signs a Negro League star, Lester Sledge. Opposition to Lester's presence culminates in an attempted lynching by the local branch of the KKK. Several of Lester's teammates arrive on the scene at the last minute to rescue him, even as another teammate is unmasked as one of the miscreants. The complicity of a corrupt sheriff is documented on a recording device he had been given as a present, but Murph agrees to a deal in which the sheriff will admit guilt and testify as to the involvement of an opposing manager-but only if Murph's team wins the championship game. If they lose, he will surrender the tape to the sheriff. (No, it makes no sense at all.) The outlandish and difficult-to-follow plot is at times rendered almost incomprehensible by tortured syntax and grandiloquent prose. It is difficult to imagine any reader getting past the first few pages of this earnest but regrettable effort.—Richard Luzer, Fair Haven Union High School, VT

School Library Journal

Ridiculously mannered prose strikes out this ambitious tale of a 1949 minor-league baseball team with an autistic star hurler and a courageous black catcher. "This was home. The ballpark. The one place in the world that mattered. The one place in the world that did not morph in the tumult of the universe." Evidently styling himself the next Damon Runyon, Nappi follows up The Legend of Mickey Tussler (2008; made into the 2011 TV film A Mile in His Shoes) with more diamond action between the Brewers and archrival Rangers. This is highlighted by the return of Mickey, the "Baby Bazooka," and the arrival of slugging catcher Lester Sledge from the Negro Leagues. Mining the thesaurus for alternatives to the N-word, the author subjects Sledge to a hail of "ulcerous screams" and "festering odium" from "yard ape" to "jigaboo." Not even repeated attacks from local members of the KKK prevent him from emerging "like a powerful pupa" to shine on the field. Meanwhile, as Mickey mows opposing batters down, his mother and Brewers manager Arthur "Murph" Murphy consummate their relationship ("…her entire lifetime had been communicated to him through her soft, wet lips"). As in the opener, Rangers' chicanery again leads to a climactic Brewers defeat, but a call to the Show for Murph, Mickey and Lester tacks on an upbeat ending. Few young readers will get that far, or care much. (Historical fiction. 13-18)

Kirkus Reviews