In Shakespeare Bats Cleanup the main character is Kevin a young boy who starts off the story with him receiving a journal from his father when he comes done with mononucleosis. He has just lost his mother, and in not unable to play the first baseman for his baseball team. He is greatly saddened by this, baseball is everything to him. Despite his mono, he decided he will write in his fathers journal and then sneaks into his fathers study and steals one of his fathers books on poems. His father was a teacher, but after the mothers death he inherited the life insurance and decided to follow his life dream of writing. Before mono he and his father didn't didn't have the strongest relationship, and now that his mother is gone, writing can bring them closer together.
When reading the poem book, he starts practicing poetry and the different styles. He tries sonnets, haikus, and many others. Before mono he was popular with the guys, always started first base, had many different girlfriends, went to pizza with the guys. When he regained some health after mono, and they let him come and suit up for one of the games. He had to sit on the bench with the other guys who never played. He then started noticing things he hadn't before. He realized the guys who sit on the bench weren't half bad. He had been not paying attention to the game, and writing. The coach got mad when one of their boys made a hit any everyone stood up and cheers, and Kevin stays seated writing.
Kevin meets a young girl Mira, who asked if he had been keeping score because she saw him writing. He said no he wasn't, she asked what he was writing then. He lied and said nothing. The next day he went on his bike to her house and apologized for lying and said he was writing something. She asked if it was poetry again. He again lied and said no. They exchanged E-mails. He apologized again for lying, and told the truth about him writing poetry.
Kevin and Mira get close, and Kevin has his dad take them to a poetry reading. In return Mira's family invite them to her Grandmother's party. When they go it is a bunch of Hispanics, and they have a good time. There is a pinata, and Mira's older macho cousin talks with Kevin, and then missed the pinata when he swings for it. Kevin is next and he can feel where the pinata is, because of his baseball experience. He purposely misses it, for the cousins sake. His dad can tell he missed it on purpose, and thought it was a nice thing to do.
In the end Kevin is over mono and is playing ball again, but has not given up on writing. He says that writing is actually pretty cool, "almost as cool as baseball."
After all Kevin finds himself, and realises he can be more than a baseball jock. :)
Baseball was his life,
He grieves through his writing, Now
Shakespeare is at bat.
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