Center Field

     Mike Semak seems to have it all.  A popular athlete at Ridgefield High School, he is surrounded by friends, has an adorable girlfriend, and is about to be named starting center fielder for the varsity baseball team.  Math is his favorite subject because "there's always an answer, right or wrong" (Lipsyte, pg. 19).  Mike likes to think that baseball is like math; "You play or you don't" (Lipsyte, pg. 19).  And he thinks that life should be "simple, not complicated" like math and baseball (Lipstyte, pg. 19).  Then Oscar Ramirez arrives and suddenly center field is no longer a sure thing.  Kat Herold starts occupying his thoughts and she isn't even his girlfriend.  Mike and Zack Berger, a cyber savvy student, have a confrontation that further divides the cool kids from the unpopular ones.  In Center Field, Mike discovers that life isn't always so simple and people are not what they appear to be either.
     There are two figures in the novel whom Mike reveres.  One is his baseball coach, Coach Cody, who also serves as the school's vice principal.  The other is Billy Budd, center fielder for the New York Yankees.   Coach Cody represents the tangible hero, someone accessible that Mike can go to for guidance and advice.  Billy Budd is the man that Mike strives to be, constantly thinking to himself, "What would Billy Budd do in this type of situation?"  He refers to his website, even using the "Buddline" to ask him for help in baseball.  As the novel unfolds, Mike discovers that his role models are far from what he believed them to be.  It's a telling sign of Coach Cody's duplicitous nature when he calls Mike to his office under the pretense of discussing his fight with Zack Berger.  At one point he tells Mike, "There are lots of things people don't know about me.  Don't need to know" (Lipsyte, pg. 124).   Mike is confused when Coach Cody gives him instructions to spy on the Cyber Club and dangles center field as the incentive for reporting back on the club's doing.  The coach's actions and requests seem to contradict the moral code that he holds for his baseball players and the rest of the students at the high school.  Coach Cody even buys into the notion of cliques at the school.  "You know, there are basically two kinds of guys in the world, jocks and pukes.  We're jocks.  We want to live by the rules, win fairly, work hard, and be rewarded for it.  The pukes want to rebel and disrupt so they can slide through the chaos" (Lipsyte, pg. 126).  Mike's character shows growth by his uncertainty over his coach's directive.  If he were an immature character, he would just accept his coach's order to spy on the "pukes" and report back to him.  Mike realizes that Coach Cody is toying with him to get what he wants, and begins to question why the coach wants the information so desperately.  Eventually Mike teams up with his nemesis, Zack Berger, and the two unite to reveal Coach Cody's fraudulent identity.
     Another way we see Mike's character grow is when he meets his idol, Billy Budd.  Mike wins a contest to spend a day with Billy Budd at Yankee Stadium.  It is not what Mike has expected.  At the their initial meeting, Billy Budd mistakenly shakes the wrong person's hand and addresses Mike's guest, Zack,  as "Mike"; the public relations man corrects the error, telling Mike, "Billy hasn't had a chance to study the video carefully" (Lipsyte, pg. 233).  Mike pictured himself enjoying the day with his hero, but winds up spending most of the day with public relations people.   Mike's disenchantment grows when he learns that it's a media team who creates the answers for the Buddline web page and not Billy himself.  At day's end, Mike still admires Billy for his athleticism and dedication to the game, but is let down Billy's shallowness.
     Center Field was probably my favorite book so far.  The teen characters in the novel seemed very real to me in terms of their thoughts, dialogue, and actions.  While I didn't always like some of the choices Mike made (dating Lori while pursuing Kat, for example), I enjoyed his character and the growth he showed.  While a main focus is on baseball, Robert Lipsyte provides enough teen romance and drama to make it appealing for both boys and girls.
     Chapter 2 of the textbook focuses on thinking about books on paper.  Laura Robb believes that using notebooks to record ideas, particularly using fast writes, is a beneficial strategy (Robb, pg. 34).   I can envision my students using Center Field to discuss how cliques are presented in this book.  The athletes are given top billing in the school, while the computer kids are labeled "pukes" and looked down upon.  Cliques are present in middle school, and it is a topic that students would have experience with.  Another fast write that could provoke discussion would be heroes versus false idols.  Students could debate what are the true characteristics of a hero and do their idols meet those criteria or is their image based on a facade.  Teens are impressionable, and like Mike, they can discover through book discussion that their heroes might not live up to their expectations.