We all have distinctive memories of our schooldays, a mixture of good, bad, and indifferent episodes that continue to haunt or amuse us (take your pick) well into our later years.
As I remember it, growing up in Medford, Massachusetts, six miles north of Boston, junior high was a hazard-strewn jungle of strutting bullies and overmatched educators, while high school was a teeming metropolis of nearly 4,000 students and teachers crammed into a new (albeit poorly designed) facility on the edge of town.
To borrow a line from George Orwell, summing up his five-year ordeal at an English boarding school: Such, such were the joys.
But there were transcendent moments too.
By far the happiest times I knew in a classroom occurred during my elementary school years, from ages five to eleven. The Dame School – named after a prominent 19th-century educator – was less than a 10-minute walk from our family home and I was an eager conscript, no matter the season. Every day contained unimagined delights as I developed a certain know-how in a range of subjects and slowly picked up a few social skills as well.
During my seven years of primary education – the longest and most formative stretch I've spent in any academic setting – I also learned to enjoy and appreciate the written word, growing into a lifelong reader and booklover. And for that I credit one author more than any other: Matt Christopher, the prolific talent behind such boyhood classics as the American football tale "Crackerjack Halfback" and the baseball-themed titles "The Year Mom Won the Pennant", "The Reluctant Pitcher", and "Catcher with a Glass Arm".
Boston's sports scene gripped me back in my youth. The city's baseball team experienced a worst to first "Impossible Dream" season in 1967, reaching the World Series for the first time in over 20 years, and the town's ice-hockey team featured the mind-blowing talents of a young phenomenon named Bobby Orr (imagine an even-keeled George Best working his magic on an ice rink).
As a result, I devoured every sports-related Matt Christopher story I could get my hands on, either checking out his books at the local library or obtaining a personal copy when our class put in an order with Arrow Books.
I was lucky in some respects, because Matt Christopher was an accidental writer of children's stories, having failed to impress publishers with his adult novels even as he was selling his short stories to the pulp magazines of the 1950s. Speaking to an interviewer in 1992, he recalled: "I decided to write a baseball book for children. I was living in Syracuse, New York at the time, working at General Electric. I spoke about my idea to the branch librarian. She was immediately interested and told me that they needed sports stories badly."
His first of nearly 80 sports books for children, "The Lucky Baseball Bat", appeared in 1954, and his career as a bestselling author was under way.
Matt Christopher’s sports stories aren’t perfect. Measured by today’s standards for children’s literature, they lack a diverse range of characters and life experience and reflect a certain white middle-class sensibility. Which, unsurprisingly, I didn’t notice or object to when I was eight or nine.
Of course, if Matt Christopher himself were writing today –– a teacher friend informs me that the ghosted franchise remains popular among the elementary school set nearly 25 years after his death – his top-selling titles might include the likes of “The Year Mom Went to Court So Timmy Could Play Shortstop”, “Dad’s Bleacher Rant Blows Up the Internet”, or “An Endorsement Deal for Sally”.
Another reason I enjoyed Matt Christopher's stories is that I sympathised with his juvenile characters as they underwent athletic challenges and confronted difficult situations. In fact, "The Reluctant Pitcher" pretty much reflects my own Little League baseball career. One afternoon after practice our team manager approached me and asked if I'd like to pitch. (This honour wasn't accorded to every young player as it required a better than average ability to throw a baseball 50 feet, with unerring accuracy, toward a tightly defined "strike zone".) I wasn't much of a competitor then – I'm still not – so I didn't exactly jump at the opportunity. My older brother Paul sealed the deal, though, when he told me that by pitching for the team, "At least you'll get to play!"
Sometimes a good story trumps literary technique – especially when you’re young. So despite his stylistic limitations, I owe Matt Christopher a debt of gratitude. By fanning my youthful enthusiasm for sports stories, he turned me into a habitual reader and eventual writer.