Screaming at the Ump by Audrey Vernick (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Screaming at the Ump by Audrey Vernick Elizabeth Bush Vernick, Audrey. Screaming at the Ump. Clarion, 2014. 256p. Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-544-25208-0 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-544-30669-1 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 5-7. Fortunately for new middle-schooler Casey Snowden, saddled with the first name of baseball’s high-profile poetic loser, he does not aspire to becoming a major league player. His sight is set on sports journalism and taking on the family business, an umpire academy in New Jersey. His plans to cover sports for his school newspaper are stonewalled by the unwritten rule that sixth-graders must pay their dues by selling ad space before they can become journalists. He stumbles across a big story, [End Page 481] however, while helping out at the umpire academy and begins to investigate the mystery behind ump-in-training J-Mac, who retired from the big leagues after a drug scandal. Subplots involving Casey’s relationship with his divorced mother, and the irksome presence of an eight-year-old girl who tags along with Casey and his pal Zeke, are amiable, but it’s the peek into the world of professional umpire training that carries the interest here, culminating in the fictional but tantalizing event, You Suck, Ump! Day, in which students perform under intense pressure of a local crowd recruited to heckle them on the field. The briefest of notes on umpire academies is provided, but any kid who can find the way to the Major League Baseball website can begin to fill in the intriguing blanks. Copyright © 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois