Celebrating Fenway Park: Ted and Me by Dan Gutman

2012 marks the 100th birthday of Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, and children's publishing is on the ball. There have been some lovely children's books published this year, focusing on the park and the team, and I plan to read and review them all!

I'm starting with Dan Gutman's Ted and Me, which is the eleventh volume in Gutman's Baseball Card Adventure series. The premise of the series is simple: Joe "Stosh" Stoshack is an every-boy with a remarkable gift; he can travel through time by touching old baseball cards. On his adventures he has met 10 famous ball players, including Honus Wagner, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and Satchel Paige. I have been campaigning for an adventure with Ted Williams almost since the day he died. And it seems that Mr. Gutman and I are of the same mind, because here, just in time for Fenway's 100th birthday, is the book. (Spoilers ahead!)

The best thing about the Baseball Card adventures is the spirit of fun in which they are written. The science involved is pretty vague, and the ease with which Stosh incorporates himself into the lives of the players he meets is suspect (I'm guessing we will never see "Ty and Me".) But who cares--it's a little boy meeting baseball legends! That's a formula that's hard to resist. However, the initial suspension of belief required at the start of Ted and Me is whopping. The FBI are aware of Stosh's ability, and they want him to travel back in time to warn FDR about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Stopping the attack on Pearl Harbor is a time-travel chestnut--one of the greatest "what-ifs" out there in speculative fiction, so it's not a bad starting point for a story about a boy meeting not just a great ballplayer, but a true American patriot as well (which, Williams, with his distinguished military career, was.) But the fact that the FBI don't want to commandeer Stosh and take him back to headquarters to run tests on him, or anything sinister like that, but instead simply send a polite agent to his house to talk with him and his mom about it--that's difficult to swallow.

But at this point, Gutman plays a great trick on the readers which derails the issue--he sends Stosh to the wrong Ted Williams. The FBI may have done their homework about Stosh's talent, but they don't know diddly about baseball cards. They give Stosh a Ted Williams card from 1952. Consequently, Stosh finds himself in the back of Williams' bomber as he's flying a mission over what is now North Korea.  Wrong war! Pearl Harbor is long gone, Roosevelt's been dead for 8 years, and--oh yeah--Williams' plane has been hit. Just before they crash land, Stosh gets himself back to his own time. It's a great scene, full of action and swears (which Gutman wisely replaces with "!@#$%") and a full-frontal, in your face introduction to Ted Williams and his larger than life personality.

When Stosh does connects with the correct Williams, the baseball finally takes over. It is September 27, 1941. Before Stosh can complete his Pearl Harbor mission there is the little matter of baseball history: the next day Ted Williams will go 6-8 in a double header against the Philadelphia Athletics. He will finish the year with a .406 batting average, a feat which has not been equaled to this day. Stosh is particularly careful not to interfere with that, especially since part two of his "warn about Pearl Harbor" plan is to convince Williams not to join the military so that he can reclaim the five years lost to active service and potentially improve his lifetime statistics.

I've said that Gutman never moralizes in these books, but that doesn't mean that he is not trying to reveal a greater point. When Stosh encounters these baseball greats, it's always the right person at the right time. He certainly learns lessons that he can apply to his current situation. In this case, Stosh and his little league team are fresh from defeat in the Little League World Series. Despite his thrill about being involved, the reader sees a hesitancy in Stosh. He feels that he has leveled off as a player, a .270 hitter with a decent arm. He's good enough, but will probably not get any better. He is so preoccupied with not messing up on TV, he turns down an offer to carry the team's American flag during the opening ceremony, and he is unhappy to be in the position to make the final out of the game. Rather than rising to any challenges, he settles back and accepts defeat. This is clearly the perfect time to meet Ted Williams, a man who never settled for being anything but the greatest at everything he put his hand to.

Ted Williams' number 9 was retired by the Red Sox

Ted Williams is not an easy character to recreate for children. For starters, there is the matter of his language. This is not a man who spoke in "gosh's" and "darn's." He swore. Prolifically. This points to the fact that if he is going to be central to one's book, he can't be watered down. Gutman rather humorously addresses this in his "Note to Readers", and then just gets on with it. Williams was a human of striking contradictions. For as gruff and brash as he was, he was also immensely generous with his money, his time, and his compassion. Gutman gets mega-kudos for mentioning Williams' work with the Jimmy Fund. But of course, how could he possibly write a book about Williams and not mention it? It is one of the many reasons he is legendary in the city of Boston.

All in all, as a reader and a Sox fan, I thoroughly enjoyed Ted and Me. I just have one complaint--Stosh never makes it to Fenway Park! History dictates that Williams set his record in Philly, so of course that it where Stosh lands. And then they head for Washington DC, to warn the president, a mission which is--obviously--not completed. I understand that the structure of the story sends them away from Boston instead of to it, but I was looking forward to Stosh checking out my ballpark. But, as Stosh himself admits, these trips through time never turn out as he plans, and for this reader, the same holds true.

Stosh started the story knowing very little about Ted Williams. But by the end, his understanding of the man's legacy is firm. Stosh has grown up during the steroid era, as have many of his readers. He sums everything up quite well as he is sitting in Shibe Park, watching what is a meaningless game of baseball, with no play-off implications--but huge historical ramifications.

"Over the next 70 years, I knew, Babe Ruth's home run records would fall. Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak would be broken. Humans would go to the moon, invent rock and roll, and create the internet; and the world would change in so many ways.
But nobody would ever hit .400 again."