Up until now, Billy Baggs' life has been loaded with nevers. Never been to a movie. Never played baseball with a real team. Never got over feeling guilty for the loss of his brother. But change is in the air. Billy discovers he has a natural talent for baseball, especially as a pitcher. Maybe, just maybe, there's more in store for him than life on the farm. But can Billy convince his father of that? Or is he destined to spend the rest of his life pitching nothing but hay?Teenager Billy Baggs is desperately needed on his family's struggling dairy farm, but he's also an extraordinarily gifted natural baseball player. How he struggles to reconcile his father's desire to keep him on the farm with his coach's interest in getting him on the field is at the heart of this ‘meaty story.… The complex characters grow and change in profoundly real ways.''K. ‘[With] flashes of humor, a wealth of lovingly recounted details evokes the difficult daily life on a small dairy farm.''Publishers Weekly. 1994 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA) 1994 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library) 1993 "Pick of the Lists" (ABA)

Farm Team VS. Town Team Milking, haying, and planting leave Billy Baggs very little time for the thing he loves most—baseball. So when his mother suggests building a baseball field in their cow pasture and inviting the neighbors to play, Billy is willing to give it a try. After all, a farm team has to be better than no team...or does it? With Gina Erickson in right field, Big Danny Boyer is left, and Skinner, the aging Labrador retriever, in center, the team's lineup is a joke. But who'll get the last laugh when they play the big game—Billy, or his arch rival, King Kenwood?

Battle in the Bullpen For as long as Billy Baggs can remember, rich townie and ace pitcher Archer "King" Kenwood has been his nemesis—both on the field and off. And the summer before they enter high school, their long-standing rivalry explodes into violence. Desperate to keep the peace between his two star players, Coach Anderson comes up with a If they want to play, they have to pay—by spending a week together, twenty-four hours a day. But will Coach's plan make things better? Or just a whole lot worse? After a family tragedy on the farm, Billy Baggs’s life is finally back on track. He’s starting high school. He’s caught the eye of the baseball coach and even a few college scouts. He has prospects for a girlfriend—Suzy Langen, the catch of the ninth grade. But blocking Billy’s path is King Kenwood, town rich kid and ace pitcher. As the two boys’ rivalry turns violent, it is left to Coach Anderson to find a solution. In the process, both Billy and King come to find their real problems might lie closer to home—with their own fathers.