It’s All About Toms River — Again.
You have to love the timing: In the same week that Six Good Innings is released in paperback, the town in which the story is set starts making Little League news again.
Toms River, New Jersey, is a place that takes its Little League seriously. Very seriously. Scare-your-children seriously. The Toms River teams have gone to the LL World Series in Williamsport just enough times over the years for the townsfolk to assume they’re always going to produce killer ballplayers from 12-year-old DNA, and it is that pressure – to win it all and add to the legacy – that I wanted to examine when I spent the summer of 2007 there.
The result is Six Good Innings, a real-time account of what it feels like to be in sixth or seventh grade and expected to peak physically … on behalf of your town. I met great kids, well-meaning parents and honorable coaches, but the overall pressure – from wherever it comes – was still with my team on every step of its journey. It’s a burden I wouldn’t wish on my own children, and yet my book is very much a story of how gracefully those players existed in their unique space in the world – in a baseball factory town.
This week, with the book’s release in paperback (Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Good-Innings-Became-Little/dp/0061473588/ref=ed_oe_p), I checked in on the latest edition of the Toms River Little League All-Stars – and sure enough, they’ve won their first three games in district competition. Are they on their way to Williamsport once again? The odds against it are incredibly long, but don’t tell anyone in Toms River about it. They’re already dreaming. After all, Little League championships are what they do.
Visit our website, www.markkreidler.com, for more information on Six Good Innings, and enjoy a great summertime read about the joys, vexations and – sure – multiple-flavored snow-cones that make Little League the treasure it is. Then brace yourself for the usual ESPN onslaught of kid baseball on television. Beginning a few weeks from now, you won’t be able to avoid it.