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About Strike Zone
Product Description A timely and heartfelt follow-up to #1 New York Times bestseller Heat, about a young baseball prodigy and his immigrant family living in today's America. Twelve-year-old star Little League pitcher Nick Garcia has a dream. Several in fact. He dreams he'll win this season's MVP and the chance to throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium. He dreams he'll meet his hero, Yankee's pitcher Michael Arroyo. He dreams they'll find a cure for Lupus so he sister won't have to suffer. But mostly, he dreams one day his family can stop living in fear of the government. For one kid, it's almost too much to bear. Luckily, Nick has his two best friends Ben and Diego to keep him balanced. But when Nick notices a mysterious man lurking on his street corner, he senses a threat. Suddenly, his worst fears are realized, and just when it seems there's no one they can trust, an unexpected hero emerges and changes everything. Praise for Strike Zone : *"Lupica skillfully addresses the timely and complicated topic of living as the child of undocumented immigrants and the uncertainty facing many American families....This exceptional baseball novel delivers both lively sports action and critical subject matter." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) --"Lupica's action sequences are thrilling and fast-paced....[a] solid purchase where Mike Lupica and the Yankees are popular." -- School Library Journal --"As he did in Heat, Lupica skillfully juggles the baseball drama with the larger social issues that swirl around it, vividly putting a human face on the immigration crisis." -- Booklist --" Strike Zone brings the game of baseball to life, but moreover, it addresses immigration, a current issue in U.S. culture and politics. Teens will choose to read Strike Zone as a "sports book" but will root for Nick both on and off the field. The Garcia family's desire to become legal U.S. citizens is well woven into this fast-paced story." -- VOYA About the Author Mike Lupica is a prominent sports journalist and the New York Times-bestselling author of more than forty works of fiction and non-fiction. A longtime friend to Robert B. Parker, he was selected by the Parker estate to continue the Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone series. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. It figured that Nick García was playing in the Dream League. He loved to dream as much as he loved throwing a baseball, something Nick knew in his heart—even if he’d never say it out loud—he could do as well as anybody his age in the South Bronx. Nick’s coach, Tomás Viera, once told him he could throw even harder at the age of twelve than Nick’s hero, the great Yankees pitcher Michael Arroyo, had at the same age. “Now, I can’t actually prove that,” Coach Viera said. “But I saw Michael play when he was in Little League. Heard the sound the ball made in the catcher’s glove. The sound you make is louder.” Back when Michael Arroyo was growing up in the Bronx, he’d pitched on the north side of 161st Street, right where they’d built the new Yankee Stadium. At that time, it was the baseball fields of Macombs Dam Park. Once the new Stadium went up, a replacement Macombs Dam Park opened on the south side of 161st, in the footprint of the old Stadium. This was where Nick and his teammates on the Bronx Blazers now practiced and played, often with fans filing past on their way to Yankee games. “I know about the fields where Michael Arroyo pitched,” Nick told his coach. “I’ve seen the old pictures online.” “You seem to know just about everything about him,” Coach Viera said. It was true. Nick dedicated a lot of time to finding out everything about Michael, including what happened during his childhood, when he came to America on a boat from Cuba with his father and brother. He’d read every news piece, biography, and article in existence, not to mention the ESPN documentary he’d seen about a hundred times. Nick even knew about the time Michael threw a ball fro
