Extra Innings (Barber Game Time Books) - Hardcover

Barber, Tiki; Barber, Ronde

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1442457260 ISBN 13: 9781442457263

Verlag: A Paula Wiseman Book/Beach Lane Books, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Batter up! Football, basketball, and now baseball—is there anything the Barber brothers won’t try their best to do? The Barbers join the baseball team in this home-run adventure from NFL superstars and bestselling authors Tiki and Ronde Barber.

Tiki and Ronde have their sights set on a big diamond—a baseball diamond! Sure, they’re experienced athletes, but they’ve never played baseball before. Do they have what it takes to make the team?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Tiki Barber is a record-holding retired running back for the New York Giants. He married and is the father of four children.

Ronde Barber is a record-holding cornerback who retired after fifteen seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He is one of only two cornerbacks selected to the Pro Bowl five times. He is married with two daughters.

Paul Mantell is the author of more than 100 books for young readers, including books in the Hardy Boys and Matt Christopher series.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Extra Innings

1

A NEW TEAM

“. . . Kirby Puckett at the plate. . . . The pitch is on its way . . . and he hits it high and deep! That ball is going . . . going . . .”

Tiki Barber followed the flight of the ball he’d hit as it arced its way high over Amherst Street. His identical twin, Ronde, who had been backpedaling, turned around and broke into a run, trying to catch up to the long fly.

“And that ball is . . . Aw, man, come on!”

Tiki winced and shook his head as Ronde somehow came down with the ball, did a smooth somersault, and came up flashing it in his mitt.

“Rickey Henderson’s got your ball right here!” Ronde shouted. “Take that, Kirby Puckett!”

The twins were out early this morning. The school bus wasn’t due for another ten minutes, it was mid-April, and the sun shone down on the streets of Roanoke, Virginia, making it seem warmer than it really was.

Baseball season had started the week before, and the twins were already getting into following their favorite team. True, that team played in Minnesota, nowhere near Roanoke, Virginia, but Tiki and Ronde couldn’t resist a team called the Twins!

Ronde lobbed the ball back in. “Hit me another one, ‘Kirby’, my man,” he said. “And this time put a little muscle into it!”

Tiki laughed, knowing Ronde was just sweating him. “You asked for it. See if you can run this one down, ‘Rickey’!”

Ronde was still getting back to his spot near the manhole cover. “Hey! Wait till I’m ready, yo!”

Tiki would have gone ahead and hit one anyway, but a car came down the street, forcing him to wait until it had passed.

Most of the year the twins were preoccupied with football, not baseball. But since they’d finished their last football season at Hidden Valley—and the basketball season too, for that matter—baseball was the only game left in town from now until graduation.

By September their high school football careers would begin, and all thoughts of any other sport would vanish from their heads. But for now there was baseball—and tryouts for the team were this afternoon!

Tiki threw the ball up into the air, took a violent swing at it—and missed completely.

“Come on, ‘Kirby’!” Ronde hooted. “If you want to get a candy bar named after you, like Reggie and the Babe, you’ve got to hit the ball!”

Tiki swung even harder this time. The ball went high and to the right. Ronde raced after it but had to pull back before hitting the front wall of the nearest house. The ball bounced off the porch roof with a loud thunk, and Ronde caught it before it hit the ground. “Yer out!” he cried happily, then took off running as the front door opened.

“Hey, you kids!” yelled the man who emerged. “Go play somewhere else! Get out of here before you break a window!”

“Sorry. Sorry,” Tiki and Ronde both said. They were sorry too—but not as sorry as they’d been the day before, when each of them had broken a window with a badly placed fly ball. Repaying the neighbors would mean the boys would have to kiss most of their savings good-bye.

Still, that was the price of playing ball when there was no playground or park nearby. What were they supposed to do—stay home and watch TV all weekend?

Ronde came up to Tiki and handed him the ball, then took off his glove and stuffed it into his book bag. Tiki put the ball in his book bag, and the two of them sat there on the curb by the corner, waiting for the school bus to come by.

“You can hit pretty well,” Ronde told him. “The problem is, you never know where it’s going to go.”

“So what?” Tiki shot back. “On a baseball field it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s fair.”

“You think you can hit it out of the park at school?”

“I know I can,” Tiki said. “Look how far I hit that second-to-last one just now.”

“Yeah, but that was you playing fungo. What about with real pitching?”

Tiki shrugged. “How should I know? We’ve never played organized baseball. Never. Neither one of us. Not Little League, not in school, never.”

“I know,” Ronde said. “It’s hard to get enough kids together to play a pickup game. Not like with football or basketball. You get four guys, you can play those sports.”

“We had no real basketball experience either,” Tiki said. “Still, even though we weren’t the big stars on that team, we made a pretty big difference.”

“I’m sure they’re glad we joined the team,” Ronde agreed. “I know I am.”

“Me too.”

The basketball team, which had been a complete mess before they’d joined it midseason, had finished up well, with a winning record, though not well enough to make the play-offs. It was the first team either of them had ever played on that hadn’t made the play-offs, and it was a weird feeling for them. It made them both want to finish off their junior high school years on a high note.

“I think Coach Raines might have a pretty good team this year,” Ronde said. “Especially if we’re on it.”

“Hey, we do have some baseball skills,” Tiki went on. “It’s not like we stink at it or anything.”

“And we’ve watched plenty of games on TV,” Ronde said. “So we know the rules and the strategies and stuff.”

The twins fell into a long silence. Ronde broke it by saying, “You know, I’m a little scared about this tryout, actually.”

Tiki gave a little laugh. “Me too,” he said. “I think I can play, you know, but I have no proof. It’s just in my head.”

“Well, not totally,” Ronde pointed out. “We’re both pretty good at football.”

“Yeah,” Tiki agreed. “But who knows how today is going to work out?”

They’d decided to try out only last Friday. Before that they’d been figuring on keeping their jobs at Mr. Lanzberg’s department store. But their mom had said, if they wanted to quit so they could play on the baseball team, it was okay. She was doing better at work now, she told them, and had gotten a raise at each of her jobs.

“The worst would be if one of us makes the team and the other doesn’t,” Ronde said.

“That would be bad,” Tiki said, nodding.

“If you don’t make it, I’m not gonna be on the team either.”

“Why? I wouldn’t be mad if you did. Not that it would ever happen. But if I made it and you didn’t . . .”

“Don’t even go there, yo,” Ronde said. “That is not happening. I am not worrying about that one bit.”

Tiki gave him a playful shove. “Quit flossin’,” he said. “You know I’m better than you.”

“Only at the plate. In the field I rule.”

“You rule? You rule? Give me a break!”

Their playful back-and-forth was interrupted by the arrival of the school bus. They got on...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: A Paula Wiseman Book/Beach Lane Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1442457260
• ISBN 13: 9781442457263
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Vaiana; https://www.ravensburger.com/; ; Robert-Bosch-Str. 1; Ravensburg; 88214; Deutschland