Waiting For Teddy Williams (2004)

As a Red Sox fan—and one who delighted in Jason Varitek's pounding of pretty boy Alex Rodriguez the other week—I should have enjoyed Waiting For Teddy Williams. It’s fast-paced, steeped in New England lore, and it follows a young Vermont lad on his way to the World Series with the Sox—and reconciliation with his dad. But Howard Frank Mosher’s book ultimately is a swing-and-miss, a mishmash of olde tyme tropes that in its better moments recalls the baseball pulps of the '40s and '50s, and in its worst, a rejected screenplay for ''Field of Dreams.''

For kids: B+ For adults: C