I'm not a big baseball fan - but I was riveted by this middle grade sports novel. Twelve year old, Nick Garcia, is the star pitcher on his baseball team, The Blazers. If his team does well this summer and they win the championship and he gets the MVP award he would get to throw out the first pitch at a Yankee's game! But instead of focusing on sports - he keeps finding his mind wandering towards his family. His older sister suffers from Lupus and neither of his parents are American citizens. They could get deported back to the Dominican Republic at any time. His parents try to tell him to let them do the worrying and he can just stress about baseball, but he isn't having it. Especially not when people in his Bronx neighborhood keep getting taken by ICE. Riveting, and eye opening for kids. A wonderful story about hope, dreams, and baseball (albeit a little gut wrenching at times!). ( )

I'm not usually a big reader of sports books, but this one caught me with the side plot involving the protagonist's family of undocumented immigrants, living in fear of ICE. The baseball game parts were less interesting for me, but I realize that has plenty of draw for plenty of people. ( )