THE THING LENNY LOVES MOST ABOUT BASEBALL

Young Lenny learns from his favorite sport that it’s OK if practice doesn’t make quite perfect.

Actually, one of the several things that baseball teaches is that it’s possible to be great even while failing most of the time—but Larsen simplifies the lesson to make it a little easier to absorb. Lenny’s book of baseball facts and records leaves him pumped up about playing himself…but when a fly ball actually comes to him, he misses it. Maybe he’s just not cut out for the sport? But then he sees in his book that Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron struck out nearly twice as often as they hit home runs, and the thought that even they weren’t great all the time sends him out to practice with his dad. He misses a lot, he catches a few, he doesn’t give up, and in the next game he makes a ninth-inning, tie-saving catch. “Great catch!” say his teammates. The next batter (a girl) hits a walk-off home run, but so what? Lenny knows now that he can be great some of the time, and that’s good enough. Lenny and his dad (the latter’s red hair and beard notwithstanding) have olive skin in Pavlovic’s cartoon illustrations, and other players and parents are racially diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A good counter to the insistent, invidious message that winning is all that matters.