SUMMER BALL

THEME

The theme of Summer Ball is that even if you are small, you

can still be good at sports. Danny Walker, a really short 8th

Grade point guard, goes away to a basketball camp called Right

Way over the summer. His dad is a former pro Basketball player.

Danny loves basketball, and his travel team won the travel team

championship. Since his dad play college basketball at Syracuse

with a man named Josh Cameron, he got Danny into his 5 star

basketball camp. When they got put into teams, Danny was put

on Coach Ed Powers Team. Coach Power’s is a really mean guy,

and only cared about winning. He picked on Danny a lot. Even

when Danny won a game for his team running his own play,

Coach Power’s was still mad at him. “Next year tell your dad to

send you to a camp where the boys get to coach the

teams”(Lupica 188). Coach Powers doesn’t feels that Danny is

way too short to be a good basketball player. “I just can’t teach

you to be as big as you need to be”(Lupica 103). Then Coach

Powers tells him to consider to go for soccer which completely

destroys Danny. “You’re telling me to . . . to find another

sport?”(Lupica 104). It hurt Danny so much that he tried to fake

an injury so he could leave the camp. “When I say fine, Dad, it

means I was never really hurt. . . I wanted an excuse to get out

of here”(Lupica 157). Danny takes what Coach Power’s says and

it brings him down a while until his team wins the

championship. He gets enough courage to tell his coach “I could

play soccer if I wanted, but I’m a basketball player”(Lupica 244).

Author’s Purpose

I felt that the author, Mike Lupica, tried to change people’s

opinion that taller people are better at sports than shorter

people. I would think that taller people would be better

because in basketball if you are a lot taller than the guy

guarding you, you can shoot over him, and get more

rebounds, and in football if you can catch passer over a

shorter corner. He showed that small people are needed in

sports, because when Danny’s teams star point guard,

Rasheed Hill, pretended to be hurt so that Danny would get to

play, the coach didn’t put Danny in and the team didn’t have a

good point guard and suffered for a while until the coach put

Danny in the game.

Author’s Purpose

TEASE!!!!!!!

Summer Ball is about a boy named Danny Walker who is

the son of a former NBA player. School has just got out, and

Danny is going to a 5 star basketball camp, called Right Way,

managed by another former NBA player named Josh

Cameron who played college basketball at Syracuse with

Danny’s dad. As soon as Danny gets there he sees a guy

named Rasheed Hill, who played against Danny’s travel

basketball team in the Finals. Rasheed Hill has cornrows, a lot

of tattoos, and is often called A.I. When they played in the

finals for travel basketball it was a close game, but when

Rasheed fouled out with a charge on Danny, his team had no

chance of winning. At the camp you get put into teams, and

compete for a championship. He gets put on Coach Ed

Power’s team called the Celtics. Coach Powers’ is really mean

and Danny can’t stand him. He finds a way to make himself

stay at the camp, and his team makes it to the championship

to face a bully named Lamar’s team, the Lakers.

Author’s Page

Mike Lupica has written many books, even though he is a

newspaper columnist. He writes books on different kinds of sports.

He is on ESPN every Sunday on a segment called The Sports

Reporters, and hosted a show called The Mike Lupica Show on

ESPN2. Two of his books Travel Team, and Heat have reached #1

on the New York Times Best Sellers List. He co-wrote Bill Parcells,

the Executive Vice President of Football Operations for the Miami

Dolphins, and Reggie Jackson, a former MLB player,

autobiographies. He has written 27 books from 1984 until now. He

was born in Oneida, New York but raised in Nashua, New

Hampshire. He Graduated from Boston College. His next book

called The Batboy is going to be released March 9, 2010. He

currently lives in Connecticut with his wife and four kids.