Baseball is a superstitious sport. It’s a well-known fact that many major leaguers follow superstitious rituals, including Hall of Famer Wade Boggs, who ate a meal of fried chicken before every game.
If ballplayers are superstitious, fans are even worse, and Danny Gurkin has to be the most superstitious of all. In Paul Haven’s new novel, Two Hot Dogs With Everything, the 11-year-old middle-schooler is trying his metaphysical best to help his hometown team, the East Bubble Sluggers. He eats special hot dogs before every game, sits in his favorite chair while he watches the team on television, crosses his fingers and his toes, and sometimes stands on his head. It’s not doing much good the Sluggers haven’t won a championship in 108 years, which was back when chewing gum magnate Manchester Boddlebrooks owned the team. When Danny and his friends hear about a plan to tear down dilapidated Boddlebrooks Mansion and replace it with a shopping mall, they decide to visit the place and try to find a way to save it. What they get is a meeting with a mysterious caretaker and a way, maybe, to save the Sluggers’ season. Two Hot Dogs With Everything is a baseball novel with everything: a whimsical, exciting plot; cool illustrations by Tim Jessell; and most of all, a full set of crazy characters, including Danny’s dad’s boss, Mayor Frompovich, Willie the hot dog man, the fierce history teacher Mrs. Sherman, the mysterious caretaker Seymour Sycamore, and the villain of the book, the powerful owner of the champion Texas Tornadoes, Diamond Bob.
Can Danny overcome the machinations of Diamond Bob to give the Sluggers the championship? What luck you’ll just have to read the book and find out! James Neal Webb carries a buckeye in his pocket for luck at all times.
