Guide to Juvenile Baseball Books: D

Dadey, Debbie, and Marcia Thornton Jones. Mummies Don't Coach Softball. Illustrated by John Steven Gurney. New York: Scholastic, 1996. [The Bailey School Kids #21] The new coach keeps wrapping himself--and everyone else--in bandages; could he be an honest-to-Karloff mummy?

Part of a series of soft-horror chapter books with mystery plots.

Day, Alexandra. Frank and Ernest Play Ball. New York: Scholastic, 1990. The title friends--an elephant and a bear--manage a baseball club in its owner's absence.

Weird, evocative illustrations enhance the story, as Day gives the reader ordinary scenes where two large animals interact with people.

Decker, Duane. Good Field, No Hit. New York: Morrow, 1947. A third baseman fitting that description makes good on the Blue Sox, despite the shenanigans of his rival for the position, a spoiled, slugging college boy.

A cut above other juvenile fiction from this period, this novel kicked off a long-running and still fondly-remembered series. Its harmless themes (the final confrontation involves the hiring of rival hecklers) recall the innocence of early-20th-century magazine fiction, though the novel draws its inspiration from the grittier novels of John R. Tunis.

Deuker, Carl. Heart of a Champion. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993. Two teenage boys become friends, rivals, and baseball teammates; one takes up drinking and is tragically killed in a car crash.

Routine Young Adult material, using themes familiar from many other treatments of baseball and young men's growing up.

De Vries, Julian. The Strike-Out King. Cleveland: World, 1948. A college pitcher wins a spot in the starting lineup and the heart of his best girl, despite the efforts of an obsessed rival to do away with him.

Bizarre juvenile that verges on paranoid Gothic.

Criticism: Morris.

[Dixon, Franklin W., pseudonym] Foul Play. New York: Pocket Books, 1990. [The Hardy Boys Casefiles No. 46] Frank and Joe Hardy crack a case involving a scarce and valuable baseball card and embezzlement from ballpark ticket and concession accounts.

Series novel with the usual formulas; this one does not seem to have much of an acquaintance with its baseball setting.

"Captain Alan Douglas, Scout Master." Fast Nine, or, A Challenge from Fairfield. New York: New York Book Company, 1913. [The Hickory Ridge Boy Scouts] Scout troop fends off rivals.

While preparing for the big game, our heroes solve a mystery involving stolen peaches and a found cap, rescue a trapped parachutist, and foil would-be arsonists.

Dygard, Thomas J. Infield Hit. New York: Morrow Junior Books, 1995. The son of a big-leaguer must learn to make his high-school baseball team as himself, not as his father's kid.

Routine in every way, from a prolific sport-juvenile author whose main interest has been football stories.