The central action of DIAMOND STARS takes place during the 1934 All Star Game. Here is a short description of some of the action in the book:
The year is 1934 and 11-year-old Solomon (Solly) Manus and his best friend Marco have hatched a bold plan to sneak into the All-Star baseball game to be held that year at the Polo Grounds in New York. With luck, guile and a few saved pennies and nickels squirreled away over the past several months, Solly and Marco hope to evade the ushers long enough to root their National League heroes home and perhaps share a hot dog or two if their meager finances hold up.
Abby Sellers, a baseball-loving girl from the same neighborhood, is attending the game the more traditional way. Her father bought them tickets. And for Abby, on this field of great stars from both leagues, there is only one: the hard-drinking, fireballing Brooklyn Dodgers right-hander with the melodious name of Van Lingle Mungo.
Boy and girl connect in that awkward, timeless ritual of adolescent courtship and along the way witness what remains one of the greatest feats in All-Star Game history: New York Giants pitcher Carl Hubbell striking out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin, five Hall of Famers, in succession.
But there is more to the game than that. There's Earl Averill and Mel Harder. Al Schacht and the pop fly that never comes down. There's Charlie Gehringer, Chuck Klein, Dizzy Dean, Lefty Gomez and Pepper Martin performing their own heroics. And through it all, there's Solly and Abby watching it unfold, inning by inning, pitch by pitch as they embark on their long road together that reaches a crossroads on the occasion of a second All-Star game, fifty years later...
More to come and another game to play! And you won’t have to wait fifty-years for it to start...
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