Eighteen-year-old Jill Cafferty just made history. Her high school's star pitcher, she is now the first woman drafted by a major league baseball team. Only days after her high school graduation, she'll join the Pittsburgh Pirates' Class A Short Season team ...but not everyone is happy to have her there. On top of the pressure heaped on every pitcher, Jill must deal with defying conventions and living up to impossible expectations, all while living away from home for the first time. She'll go head-to-head against those who are determined to keep baseball an all-male sport. Despite the reassurance of coaches and managers alike, a few of her teammates are giving her trouble. The media presence following her at each game is inescapable. And to top it all off, Jill is struggling with the responsibilities of being a national hero and a role model for young women everywhere. How can she be a role model when she's not even sure she made the right choice for herself? Didn't baseball used to be fun?
This literary and engrossing story of a young woman trying to mark out a place for herself in a male-dominated world will captivate fans of Friday Night Lights, The Art of Fielding, John Corey Whaley, and Laurie Halse Anderson.
I love sports book, and this one had an interesting take on it. Jill had been preforming at an elite level for years. Though she was considered a great pitcher, she never expected her career to go beyond college, but when she was drafted in the third round, she decided to take a chance, and see if a life as a professional ballplayer was right for her.
Early on, she was labeled a "trailblazer". Not only was she on her own for the first time, she was far away from her family, trying to handle the pressures of preforming at an MLB level, as well as dealing with the weight of so many expectations. Not only did I find this an interesting look into the life of a young, professional athlete, I appreciated the differences examined between how men and women are received in the sports world.
This was about the burden of living up to other people's expectations, while navigating adulthood, and making difficult decisions about the future, and I enjoyed getting to be a part of Jill's season.
