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Plunking Reggie Jackson | 
 enlarge | Author: James W. Bennett
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $15.99 (100%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1811193
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.8
ISBN: 0689831374
EAN: 9780689831379
ASIN: 0689831374
Publication Date: February 1, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Ex-Library Book;Writing Present Giving great service since 2004: Buy from the Best! 4,000,000 items shipped to delighted customers. We have 1,000,000 unique items ready to ship! Find your Great Buy today!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
In his senior year, Coley Burke is on top of it all, a baseball star courted by the major league scouts for his pitching arm, with his choice of college scholarships and pretty girls. He chooses red-haired Bree, who has a reputation for being hot. Their relationship mystifies him: Bree is sexually aggressive all right, but she retreats angrily whenever Coley asks questions about her family. Coley has family troubles of his own--a father who criticizes every detail of Coley's pitching and constantly holds up the example of his older brother, Patrick, now four years dead. For Coley, his relationship with his wild and athletic brother is symbolized by the metal statue of Reggie Jackson in their backyard and the gonging sound it made when the two of them used it for surreptitious target practice. But Coley is flunking English, he's injured his ankle and can't play, and when Bree tells him she's pregnant, he sees his career in the big leagues swirling down the drain if he can't solve his problems. James W. Bennett, as always, sticks pretty close to the conventions of the sports novel--the pressuring dad, the wise coach, the sports injury, the Big Game, the career in jeopardy. There's plenty of play-by-play baseball action here, described in the jargon of the sports page, and boys looking for a straightforward sports novel with a bit of sex thrown in will be willing to forgive the half-baked psychology of this simple story that tries to be more than it is. (Ages 12 and older) --Patty Campbell
Book Description
He wanted to see himself as a victim, but it was getting harder all the time. When Coley was a kid, his brother, Patrick, showed him how to "plunk" the life-size statue of Reggie Jackson that stands in the Burkes' backyard. If you nail the statue with a baseball in just the right place, it makes a loud gonging sound. It takes "mental toughness" -- a concept that Patrick mastered but that Coley is still trying to learn. Now Patrick is dead, killed in a drunken boating accident, and Coley is struggling to live up to their father's idealized memory of him. Like Patrick, Coley is a star high school pitcher destined for the major leagues. But an ankle injury has sidelined him for most of the season. He's flunking English and could go ineligible for the play-offs. And he's started dating Bree Madison, a gorgeous sophomore whose mysterious past is causing Coley more problems every day. When the pressures become more than Coley can handle, he and Bree run off to Florida. There, along the crystal waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Coley tries to get his mind right and understand what "mental toughness" really means. The master of sports fiction for teenagers, James W. Bennett weaves a powerful story of memories, relationships, and high school baseball in this stunningly realistic novel.
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| Customer Reviews:
Patty Campbell is half baked March 18, 2001
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Patty Campbell's Amazon review of "Plunking Reggie Jackson" refers to the book's "half baked psychology." If confronting your own deficiencies and finding the courage to confess and overcome them is half baked psychology, then we should all be taken out of the oven prematurely. "Plunking Reggie Jackson" is, like Bennett's other books, gritty, truthful, and multi-level.Like his other sports novels, the book is authentic in its portrayal of high school athletes, their pressures, their boosters, coaches, and the like. Most reviewers have perceived Coley Burke as a sympathetic character with the courage to be (and become). Maybe Patty Campbell needs to go back to the muffin tin; she might learn something.
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