Junior Library Guild

• A stirring collection of stories about professional athletes who kept playing even when they just “wanted to dig a hole and hide.” Glenn Stout brings the cringe-inducing moments to life with suspense and humor.
• Provides readers with excellent evidence for ignoring skeptics—or, if that’s not possible, learning to laugh at one’s own mistakes. For example, after running sixty-five yards in the wrong direction, football player Roy Riegels eventually figured something out: “‘Everybody else thought it was funny and I finally decided all I could do was laugh with them.’”
• The St. Louis Cardinals’ defeat of the Texas Rangers in the 2011 World Series emphasizes the way teammates can inspire one another in tough situations. As Stout puts it, the Cardinals may not have had a perfect record, but they had “the most important quality of all—they believed in each other.”