Bound To Stay Bound

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Booklist - 07/01/2015 Baseball fans love their stats and trivia, and this guide satisfies that craving. It begins with the basics of the sport, from the makeup of a baseball (which includes 1,107 feet of yarn) and the differences in players’ gloves to the evolution of bats and the quirkiness of some major league fields. Sylvester also explains how to make sense of pitching and hitting stats. With an emphasis on the math involved in baseball, the numbers continue as the author gives the history of the sport and makes numerous comparisons about past and present baseball facts, such as the height of the pitching mound, the size of players, and players’ ever-growing salaries. He also touches upon the increasing diversity in baseball—except when it comes to women—and dubious stats due to performance-enhancing drugs and cheating. Colorful charts, graphs, and digital illustrations keep the text lively, but it’s the wealth of fun facts that will keep readers’ attention. A hit for sports enthusiasts and STEM collections alike. - Copyright 2015 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 06/01/2015 Gr 3–6—Cartoon illustrations and well-chosen facts enliven this slim collection of kid-friendly trivia. There are sections on equipment, stadiums, pitching, and hitting, along with interesting historical facts and records. The book highlights Babe Ruth's home run record, along with the detail that "he once missed a bunch of games because of indigestion. He'd eaten a dozen hot dogs and guzzled eight sodas between games." Baseball's rise in global popularity is described; currently, there are 103 players from the Dominican Republic on U.S. teams. Sylvester visually depicts the odds of making it to baseball's major leagues through a bustling double-page illustration of ballplayers—boys and girls—throwing, catching, and hitting baseballs, paired with text that notes that 11 million kids play baseball in North America but that only about 800 will make it to the major leagues. Sylvester also discusses how the cost of new stadiums and player salaries is passed along to the fans in the form of higher ticket prices, relying on a double-page illustration of a fan in 1950 and a modern-day devotee, each loaded down with snacks with labeled prices (a hot dog that once cost 30 cents, for instance, now goes for six dollars). A trivia quiz, with answers, rounds out this book. VERDICT Baseball fans will welcome this relevant, well-done title, and the whimsical graphics will broaden the audience.—Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA - Copyright 2015 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

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