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Mike Lupica's first young adult novel, "Travel Team," spent three months on the children's best-seller list in 2004. His latest one, "Heat," landed there last month. There are plenty of men and aging boys who would rather go to a Yankees game with Lupica, the veteran sports columnist of The Daily News, than go fishing with the great DiMaggio: The success of these two books suggests that he may yet achieve that elevated status with young fans as well.

"Heat" is about a 12-year-old Little League pitcher whom other coaches gang up on for being suspiciously good for his age. "Travel Team" is about a 12-year-old point guard who considers abandoning the sport he loves after ambitious parents decide their team needs to "get bigger," and cut him for being too small. Both books truly resonate when their heroes confront distressingly real problems closer to home. In "Travel Team," Danny Walker needs to escape the shadow of his 3-D dad (divorced, drinker, deadbeat), a local basketball legend, while in "Heat" Michael (Miguel) Arroyo, of the South Bronx, is terrified that what he and his 17-year-old brother, Carlos, call Official Persons will discover they're orphans. Their beloved dad, a gypsy-cab driver, had a heart attack after intervening in a street argument, and the boys have had him secretly buried to avoid being sent into foster care.

Lupica has coached Little League and youth basketball, so he can authenticate this turf.Thirty years writing a sports column that has never stopped evolving helps, too. Early on it wasn't clear if he wanted to be Breslin or Hamill or Kempton or a sportswriter like Jimmy Cannon or Red Smith or something in between, but it was a reader's privilege to watch him decide from column to column. Then later he wanted to be Letterman - when Billy Martin got beat up in a john in a nightclub, Lupica called it "perhaps the most exciting single trip to a men's room in baseball history" - and the "Heat" kids get off plenty of cracks, too.

What he wants to be now may be the catcher in the rye. Disillusioned with the pro sports he covers daily, yet their romancer, Lupica clearly sees peewee leagues as an outpost of innocence. His acknowledgments in "Heat" thank Little League coaches who understand that "the game belongs to the kids playing it," and in "Travel Team," Danny loves to swipe at what he calls "clipboard dads."

Perhaps that's what has drawn him to this genre, though it's good to recall that there was a time when all sports fiction was presumed to be for children. The sports novel for adults is mainly a post-World War II development (it was probably an outgrowth of the years American novelists spent in military service fighting for the home team). John R. Tunis actually wrote his juvenile sports classic, "The Kid From Tomkinsville" (1940), for adults but saw it marketed for young readers because that was then the perceived audience.

"The Kid," about a sandlot pitcher who makes the Brooklyn Dodgers, gets hurt but comes back as an outfielder, reads like a hybrid today: a spiked shoe in both worlds, but it still has the power to move. Lupica's novels aren't up there yet with "The Kid" ("Travel Team" is close) but they impressively inhabit a boy's point of view. In "Travel Team," from the moment Danny's father enters in his T-shirt and Iverson sneakers, laces untied, home for the first time in months, we know that this conflict will be between the dad who can't stop being a kid and the son who needs a dad. And "Heat" hooks us in its depiction of Michael Arroyo, who lives right across the street from Yankee Stadium, can hear the cheering, but can't afford to go inside. Throwing his 80-mile-an-hour fastball is Michael's one delight, but a junta of jealous Little League coaches (bad dads) get him suspended for lacking his Cuban birth certificate and looking over-age - i.e., he's tall, gifted and whiffs their blond sons.

Unfortunately for "Heat," that suspension removes the major character from game action, a Lupica strength, for more than 100 pages. Other crises are plumped up, but some swing through their dramatic possibility. A scene in which an actor dresses up as the brothers' dead father to fool an Official Person, and walks into the Arroyo living room transformed into his double, screams out for more psychological integrity: How would Michael react to a replica of his Papi back at home? Play it for torment or comedy, but play it. An earlier scene in the book just seems wrong: Michael stops a thief with a white-hot throw across Macombs Dam Park from home plate to dead center, then freely tells the cop his name right in front of the cuffed bad guy. This seems, I think the word I'm looking for here is, delusional. A boy in the South Bronx would have more sense than this (so would a boy on Park Avenue), and if he didn't, one would assume he'd learn some the hard way in a later plot turn (no).

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Mike Lupica's first young adult novel, "Travel Team," spent three months on the children's best-seller list in 2004. His latest one, "Heat," landed there last month.

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Michael's father Papi was a big part in his life. When he died it left a big hole in his daily routine, and his heart. This image shows a heart with a hole in it, but the heart is still working. This relates back to the book because even without Papi, Michael manages to go on with his life. This image is also related to the book because Michael loves baseball, and this heart represents that he loves baseball even though he has lost Papi, just like this heart works even though it has a hole in it.

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This image represents Michael. He is happy because he still has his brother. He is also happy because he can still play baseball. Manny also makes him happy because he is a good friend to Michael. He is sad at the same time because he lost Papi.

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When Ellie says that her last name is Garcia, the author is foreshadowing the fact that she turns out to be El Grande's daughter. This fact is emphasized by the next part of the quote when she says that she is from the Caribbean. She also gives Michael and Manny mysterious looks which hints the to the reader that she has secrets. At first Michael thinks this too, but he then passes it of as a girl acting like a girl. Then later he goes back to his original conclusion that she has secrets.

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"She said her name was Ellie Garcia.... 'Oh, I'm from the Caribbean, too,' she said" (Lupica 47 and 49).

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I disagree with most of this book review. It says in the beginning that this book is a tearjerker. I did not cry during this book. I really didn't feel much of a sad emotion at all. Most of the time I was either happy that Michael and his team had won a big game, or on edge trying to predict whether they would win the next one or not. It also says that Manny the catcher almost steals the show. I also disagree with this statement because although there was a lot of dialogue with him, Michael was always in the conversation. The story is about Michael's life, his problems, and how he was dealing with them.

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/*Starred Review*/ Gr. 6--9. Michael Arroyo is a 13-year-old Cuban American who lives in the shadow of Yankee Stadium. Yes, he is a Little League ballplayer, and, yes, he has a dream: to pitch in the Little League World Series. To do so, his South Bronx All-Stars will need to beat the best the greater New York area has to offer in the regional championship, to be played in--you guessed it--Yankee Stadium. This setup sounds like yet another Rocky meets Bad News Bears tearjerker: the immigrants from the Bronx take on the white-bread rich kids from the suburbs. It is that (with some notable twists), but it's much more, too. Michael and his brother, 17-year-old Carlos, have a problem: their beloved father is dead, and the boys are hoping to avoid a foster home by pretending Papi is visiting a sick relative in Miami. Lupica wrings plenty of genuine emotion from the melodramatic frame story, but he sidesteps the slough of social significance by building characters who speak for themselves, not the author, and by enlivening the story with a teen version of street humor . The dialogue crackles, and the rich cast of supporting characters--especially Michael's battery mate, catcher and raconteur Manny--nearly steals the show. Top-notch entertainment in the Carl Hiaasen mold. -- Bill Ott (Reviewed 04-01-2006) (Booklist, vol 102, number 15, p43)

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Michael Arroyo's father died three months ago. This left him and his brother Carlos a problem. Carlos was not eighteen yet. This meant that they had to survive for another three months on their own. Michael thinks that if they fight there is no way that their secret will be discovered before Carlos turns eighteen, but what Micheal doesn't understand is that things don't always turn out they way he wants them to be.

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"A family of three had become, in Michael Arroyo's young mind, an army of two" (Lupica 39).