Three boys. Three stories. And one sport that unites them - and maybe not the one you’d expect.For as long as they can remember, best friends Mario and Carlos have talked about playing professional baseball one day like one of their idols, Rafael Soriano of the Yankees. Though they have only played the game on the streets of the neighborhood, growing up the boys often repeated the same conversation about someday wearing the pinstriped uniform and giving post-game interviews to the press - in English and Spanish! It was wishful thinking, to be sure, but common for many young boys raised in the Bronx. It’s not until one fateful day when the boys are on the block with Carlos’s older brother that the trajectory of each of their lives changes - one for the better, and the other...well, not so much. The third boy, Elvin, lives in a smaller town in Nicaragua and has dreams of playing baseball in La Liga Nicaragüense de Béisbol Profesional. At school one day he learns of an opportunity to hone his skills by participating in a free camp organized by a youth baseball academy. With the permission form in hand and the excitement of learning more about the sport he loves, he arrives home only to be confronted with a family issue that will surely prevent him from attending the camp. A dream deferred. Adolescence anywhere is already hard enough without additional pressures. Will the friendship between Mario and Carlos survive? Will the opportunity for Elvin materialize? Will the boys get to play the sport they love? Find out how each of them endures his own challenges and how the three get to know one another through the love of the game.This is an advanced level book, in terms of quantity of vocabulary, complexity of grammatical structures and challenging themes.
