Funnily enough, I was pretty much OK with this one. I'm not a sports fan, and while watching baseball is fun, there is no way in hell I'd play it. When we played in middle school gym class, I always played right field, mainly because nobody ever hit the ball to right field, and if someone did, the center fielder knew enough to cover me. My teacher never pushed me to play infield either. She knew my athleticism was in the negative. I went to a lot of high school baseball games this spring/summer. (My best friend's son alternated between shortstop, pitching, and catching.)
Alrighty here, enough chitchat. Kristy and Watson are all set to go to a Father-Daughter Dream Camp, coached by baseball great Bill Bain. Watson is over the moon; Bill Bain was the A-Rod of Watson's youth. The camp is in Delaware somewhere, at a fabulous resort.
Meanwhile, the SMS softball team tryouts are held, and since Kristy knows she's such a great player, she sloughs off at the tryout. She knows Coach Wu will give her first base, or at least somewhere in the infield. She walks around with a giant head for a few days till Mary Anne tells her the team lists have been posted. When Kristy goes to find out what position Coach gave her, there's another girl there who's totally bummed about not getting first string. Kristy tells her it's a great place to work on her skills and that she'll have fun anyway; she's still on the team, right? Until the girl tells Kristy, "You're on this list too." Kristy is absolutely gobsmacked that Coach Wu didn't recognize her skillz and has demoted the best player in the entire universe to outfield on the dreaded second string. Coach Wu tells Kristy that since she slacked off at the tryouts, she can't play favorites over the girls who actually worked hard to get on the team. Kristy says she understands and mopes away.
Now Kristy's in a funk and no longer has the enthusiasm to go to Dream Camp. She also wishes that instead of going to Dream Camp with Watson, she's going with her father. In fact, Kristy says that playing ball with her dad is one of her first memories. She's bitter because Daddy should be there, not Watson. Yeah, it got really old, really fast. She alternately misses and bitches about her father through the whole book. The baseball theme I could follow. The Daddy issues, I could not.
Kristy and Watson get to Delaware and check in at Dream Camp. She makes a really big deal about how her and Watson's "room" at the resort hotel is actually more a suite. There's two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and a living room joins everything in the middle. Yes, Kristy, Watson is rich, and besides, he probably doesn't really want to see you roll out of bed with morning breath and crazy hair--he sees that enough with your mom. I'm sure if you were there with your dad, you'd probably be sleeping in a tent, or in the back of a van or something.
At the first night's dinner, Watson brings along all of his Bill Bain memorabilia for autographing. Unfortunately, Bain's a total asshat and gives Watson such a cold shoulder, Watson gets frostbite. Watson sulks for the rest of the week. All the campers (Kristy kept calling the participants that and it bugged the shit out of me the whole book) get their team assignments and find out who their coaches are. Kristy and Watson are on the Blue Team, and what would Dream Camp be if Bill Bain wasn't their coach? Their other coaches are Matt Adamec, who allegedly once played for the Chicago White Sox; and Gloria Kemp, who allegedly played for the Georgia Peaches. (Yay! A A League of Their Own reference!)
Turns out that Matt is a terrible coach, Gloria is a great one, and the Wonderful Bill Bain doesn't even show up to practice. Kristy bullheads her way in and "helps" Gloria manage the team. Things go on like this for a few days, until they announce the Big Game with the other team at the end of the week. Matt's still a terrible coach, but he (sort of) appreciates Kristy's butting in.
Bain finally shows up to practice and is still a total dick. Kristy lets him have it, and predictably, Bain actually listens to her and apologizes to everyone for being, well, the way he is. He takes his head out of his ass long enough to get everyone psyched up for the big game. Kristy, still shook up from her second string demotion, plays like shit all week but finally pulls through for her team at the the big game and wins it for them. (Duh!)
Kristy also takes time out of being herself to
Subplot: David Michael Thomas has a baseball card collection, and starts taking it to the playground for swaps. He's a little embarrassed that his collection is only in an old shoe box, while the other kids have nice binders with card-pocket pages in them. He talks his mom into getting him a Super-Mega Baseball Card Collector's Set. One other kid at the playground gyps David Michael into trading a valuable card for two non-valuable cards on a day David Michael forgot the value card. He's way bummed but Abby makes it all better when she shows off a mint 1978 Reggie Jackson card her dad gave her. A kid wants to trade for it but she says no way, it's special because my dad's not around any more. After that, David Michael decides that his cards are for collecting, not trading.
WTF Moments:
There really aren't any, unless you think about the plot overall. Also, Kristy chewing out the great Bill Bain was a little far-fetched. Understandably, Watson was pretty pissed about it.
Continuity Issues:
Kristy describing Abby and Anna:
They have different personalities (Anna is much more quiet and reserved) and they also wear their dark, curly hair in different styles (Anna's is longer than Abby's).I thought Abby's was longer?
Other Notables:
According to Kristy, these are everyone else's Dream Camps:
Abby-Soccer with World Cup players
Mary Anne-Needlepoint Camp
Dawn-Surfing Camp
Claudia-Art Camp
Stacey-Fashion Camp
Jessi-Ballet Camp
Mallory-Famous Authors Camp (she's been at Riverbend for a few books now, so she doesn't get much of a description anymore)
Seriously, are you all that surprised?
I may take a short hiatus from the blog for a few weeks. It's been a struggle to get posts up on time with everything else going on here at our house. I've been reading different books (and taking notes!) but it's finding the time to actually write the posts is what is getting difficult. I'll think about things over the weekend and see what I come up with. On the good side though, I've got notes on Poor Mallory!, Super Mystery #2, and Jessi and the Jewel Thieves. I just started reading Super Special #3 this afternoon too, and I'm taking notes for it.
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