Mickey & Me: A Baseball Card Adventure
Mickey & Me: A Baseball Card Adventure
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HarperCollins
Just the Series: Baseball Card Adventures Vol. 5   

Series and Publisher: Baseball Card Adventures   

Annotation: When Joe travels back in time to 1944, he meets the Milwaukee Chicks, one of the only all-female professional baseball teams in the history of the game.
 
Reviews: 7
Catalog Number: #196241
Format: Perma-Bound Edition
Publisher: HarperCollins
Copyright Date: 2003
Edition Date: 2004 Release Date: 02/17/04
Pages: 151 pages
ISBN: Publisher: 0-06-447258-2 Perma-Bound: 0-605-33997-X
ISBN 13: Publisher: 978-0-06-447258-6 Perma-Bound: 978-0-605-33997-2
Dewey: Fic
LCCN: 2002005641
Dimensions: 20 cm.
Language: English
Reviews:
ALA Booklist (Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 CST 2003)

In another Baseball Card Adventure book Joe Stoshack travels back in time again to meet a famous baseball player. Joe's father, who has been seriously injured in a car accident, tells Joe where to find a 1951 Mickey Mantle card, which Joe is to use to travel back to the 1951 World Series and warn Mantle of an impending accident. But Joe's friend Samantha switches cards, and the boy finds himself traveling back to 1944, instead, where he meets Mickey Maguire, a star player in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Joe hangs out with Maguire's team and meets more famous players before encountering 13-year-old Mickey Mantle on a train, where Joe warns the confused Mantle about an accident awaiting him years later. Joe returns to the present to learn his father will be okay. Like the other books in the series, this one delivers a fast-moving plot, lots of action, and colorful depictions of famous sports heroes of the past. A good choice for reluctant readers who are sports fans.

Horn Book (Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2003)

Joe Stoshack, who can transport himself into the past simply by holding a baseball card from an earlier era, accidentally time-travels to 1944 Milwaukee, where he meets Mickey Maguire of the Milwaukee Chicks, a women's pro baseball team. The characterizations are limited, and elements of the poorly paced plot seem contrived solely to include historical facts about women's wartime baseball teams.

Kirkus Reviews

Joe Stoshack, known as Stosh, has a special gift. Just by holding a historic baseball card, he can travel back in time to interact with the player on that card. In previous adventures he has met Honus Wagner, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, and Shoeless Joe Jackson. This time, however, there's a bit of a twist. His father has been severely injured in a car accident. Although barely conscious, he tells Joe that he has assured his future education by acquiring a Mickey Mantle Rookie card worth $75,000. He also suggests that much of the pain and "what ifs" regarding Mantle's career could be eliminated if Joe could travel back to the 1951 World Series to prevent an injury that permanently affected Mantle's knees. That's the plan, but a last-minute card switch by Joe's little cousin sends him to the wrong year, the wrong league, and the wrong Mickey. It is D-Day 1944 and he is in the clubhouse of the Milwaukee Chicks of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, where he meets their star catcher Mickey Maguire. What an eye opener for Joe. He sees the dedication that spurs these talented women to accept ridiculous restrictions in order to play the game they love. Forced to wear skirted uniforms that cannot protect them from painful bruises, faced with fines for failing to wear lipstick during games, they manage a level of excellence that amazes Joe, who has always believed that girls could not play baseball. He also witnesses their courage as they wait for news about loved ones fighting in the war, as well as their underlying guilt because they also know that the end of the war and the return of the men will mean an end to their baseball careers, and "back to the kitchen." Like Gutman's previous works ( Shoeless Joe and Me , 2002, etc.) in the series, the plot is teaming with baseball action, photographs, news clippings, a strong sense of time and place filled with sharp insights, and subplots involving Joe and his own problems and emotional growth. In an afterword, elements of fact and fiction are carefully separated and some fascinating information about the AAGPBL and its players are added. A thoroughly entertaining mix of fantasy, baseball, and history. (Fiction 10-12)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Shoeless Joe and Me author Dan Gutman presents Mickey & Me, the fifth installment in the Baseball Card Adventure series, in which Joe Stoshak travels back to 1951 and meets Mickey Mantle.

School Library Journal

Gr 4-8-Gutman has hit on a winning concept, combining sports, time travel, and historical fiction. Joe Stoshack has the remarkable ability to travel back in time using baseball cards. In this fifth book in the series, which stands on its own, Joe's father requests that his son go back to 1951 to stop Mickey Mantle from being hurt in a game. Unfortunately, as Joe is fading into the past, his cousin takes the Mickey Mantle card and replaces it with a Dorothy "Mickey" Maguire card and Joe ends up in 1944, dressed in a chicken suit, playing the role of a mascot for the Milwaukee Chicks. Boys especially will laugh at and identify with the scenes of Joe in a women's locker room and his attraction to Merle Keagle, the Chicks' Blond Bombshell. The chapter in which he meets 13-year-old Mickey Mantle on a train is a stretch, but Gutman gently teaches about women in baseball and World War II and its effects on the home front. Photographs of players and newspaper headlines add realism to the story. A final chapter offers explanations about what is factual and what is fictional in the book. Interested readers can get more information about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from the organization's Web site and from reading one of several books Gutman lists as resources.-Michael McCullough, Byron-Bergen Middle School, Bergen, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Reviewing Agencies: - Find Other Reviewed Titles
ALA Booklist (Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 CST 2003)
Horn Book (Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2003)
Kirkus Reviews
Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)
School Library Journal
Wilson's Children's Catalog
Wilson's Junior High Catalog
Word Count: 28,418
Reading Level: 4.3
Interest Level: 4-7
Accelerated Reader: reading level: 4.3 / points: 4.0 / quiz: 68470 / grade: Middle Grades
Reading Counts!: reading level:4.7 / points:8.0 / quiz:Q33462
Lexile: 630L
Guided Reading Level: T
Fountas & Pinnell: T
Mickey & Me
A Baseball Card Adventure

Chapter One

The Last Request

"Your father has been in a car accident."

I almost didn't hear the words. Or, if I heard them, I chose not to believe them."Did you hear me, Joey? I said your father has been in a car accident."

She used to call him "your dad." After they got divorced a few years ago, she switched to calling him "your father." My mom's voice came over the phone with a seriousness and urgency that I wasn't used to hearing.

Before the phone rang, I had been rushing to put on my Little League uniform. Running late, I was trying to jam my legs into my pants with my spikes on. I stopped.

"Is he okay?" I asked.

"He's alive," Mom replied. "That's all they told me."

"Was he drunk?" Dad always liked his beer, sometimes a little too much, I thought.

"I don't know."

"Was it his fault?"

"I don't know."

"Was he wearing a seat belt? You know the way he hates -- "

"I don't know," my mother replied, cutting me off in mid-sentence. "Joey, listen to me carefully. I need to go pick up Aunt Liz and your cousin Samantha. I'll take them to the University of Louisville Hospital. You know where that is. I need you to ride your bike over there. I'll meet you at the emergency room waiting area. Have you got that?"

"I got it."

"Repeat it back to me."

"I got it, Mom."

"Take your baseball glove and stuff with you. You can go straight to your game.""Okay."

"I'll be at the hospital as soon as I can."

When I hung up the phone, it was like I was in a trance. My game that afternoon -- probably our most important game of the season -- didn't matter much anymore. It's funny how something can seem so important, and then something else comes along that turns your whole world upside down and you feel silly for being worried about the first thing. Just a silly baseball game.

I never expected my dad to live forever, of course. But he wasn't even forty years old! For the first time in my life, the thought seriously crossed my mind that he could die and I would have no father.

Mechanically, I finished putting on my Yellow Jackets uniform jersey, went downstairs, locked up the house, and hopped on my bike. The University of Louisville Hospital was two miles away. I didn't bother taking my bat or glove with me. There was no way I could play ball today.

The emergency room at the hospital had no bike rack. I dropped my bike on the grass by the front door and ran inside. My mother wasn't there yet. When I told the lady at the reception desk that my dad's name was Bill Stoshack, she directed me to Room 114 down the hall. It took a few minutes to find it.

"Your father is a very lucky man," I was told by a tall doctor in blue scrubs.

Dad didn't look very lucky to me. He was unconscious and had tubes running in and out of him, and all kinds of machines were beeping around the bed. His face was banged up and bandaged so I could barely recognize him.

"Is he gonna be okay?" I asked. I felt tears welling up in my eyes but fought them off.

"We hope so," the doctor said. "We won't know with certainty for a couple of days, after the swelling goes down."

My father was not drunk. But the driver of the car that hit him was, according to the doctor. It had been a horrific head-on crash a few blocks from where my dad worked as a machine operator in downtown Louisville. Several other cars had been involved in the collision, and a bunch of people were hurt.

"We believe your father had a subdural hematoma," the doctor told me. "It's a blood clot between the skull and the brain. If he hadn't been wearing a seat belt, he would be dead for sure."

That was a shock to me. My dad always hated the seat belt law. He said it took away people's

freedom.

An emergency operation had already been performed to drain fluid from inside my dad's skull, the doctor told me. There could be other problems. Dad was being given painkillers and drugs through an IV tube. A male nurse came into the room.

"He has been going in and out of consciousness," the doctor told us both as he made his way toward the door. "Don't be alarmed if he wakes up and says something that doesn't make sense. That's just the drugs talking. I need to check on some other patients, but I'll be back shortly."

I pulled up a chair next to the bed and leaned my head close to Dad's until I could hear him breathing softly.

"He'll be in good hands here," the nurse told me. I ignored him. What else was he going to say -- It looks like your father is going to die any minute?

I took Dad's hand in mine. It was totally limp. He didn't squeeze my fingers at all, the way he usually did. But he opened his eyes.

"You okay, Dad?"

"Butch," he said quietly. He always called me Butch. "C'mere. . . . I need . . . to . . . tell . . . you . . . something."

I leaned closer.

"Mickey . . . Mantle," he whispered.

"Is your father a baseball fan?" the nurse asked.

"Yankee fan," I corrected him. "He loves the Yanks. What about Mickey Mantle, Dad?"

"His . . . card," Dad said. He was struggling to get each word out. "The . . . rookie . . . card."

I knew exactly what he meant. Mickey Mantle's 1951 rookie card was the most valuable card printed since World War II. It was worth more than $75,000. My dad had started me collecting baseball cards when I was little, and he taught me just about everything I knew about the hobby.

Mickey & Me
A Baseball Card Adventure
. Copyright © by Dan Gutman . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Excerpted from Mickey and Me: A Baseball Card Adventure by Dan Gutman
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

"This chapter book series by Dan Gutman is a more advanced version of the Magic Tree House series where the historical adventures are all baseball focused. I highly recommend this book to baseball fans and action/adventure fans" (Brightly.com).

When Joe Stoshack's dad ends up in the hospital after a car accident, he has two words to say to his son: Mickey Mantle. For Stosh has a special power—with a baseball card in hand, he can travel back in time. And his dad has a rare card—Mantle's valuable 1951 rookie card. "I've been thinking about it for a long time. Go back to 1951. You're the only one who can do it," Dad whispers.

That night Stosh grips the card and prepares for another magical adventure. But when he opens his eyes, he's not in Yankee Stadium—he's in Milwaukee on June 8, 1944. And how he wound up there is not half as surprising as what he finds!


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