Easy Out

Mo Montpetit is better known as Little Mo in the small town of Westlock, Alberta, where he lives. Mo is named after his father, Big Mo. Little Mo usually enjoys playing baseball and being on a team, but he has big shoes to fill. His father helped lead the town’s team to glory by winning the provincial championship many years ago and Little Mo is feeling the pressure to be as good a player as his father.

To complicate matters further, there are not enough kids who want to play baseball, and so the single-A kids who have never played baseball before are combined with a few double-A kids who are more experienced. The worst part is now the team is required to compete with other double-A teams, and Mo’s Westlock team is terrible. Most players cannot hit the ball, especially if it’s pitched at double-A speed; they cannot field balls, and the team just keeps losing. Not only do they lose, they lose badly. The kids, especially Little Mo, feel pressured to get good quickly. The pressure comes not just from Little Mo’s having a famous dad as a champion ball player but also from the coaches. Little Mo, who is beginning to find that he isn’t enjoying baseball very much this year, is thinking about quitting the team.

Told in the third person, this story centres around baseball and the exciting actions of the game. Easy Out is part of Lorimer’s “Sports Stories” collection, books for reluctant readers. These books feature action-packed drama using limited vocabulary. The story is accessible for most readers. Young sports fans will enjoy reading the many play-by-play events that occur during the baseball practices and games.

Easy Out incorporates one diverse character; Mo’s good friend, Remi is Métis. A few times during the story, Remi points out when someone is being racist. He also identifies himself as Métis saying, “When I was growing up it meant half-Indian or part-native or sort-of-First Nations. Now we’re all supposed to say Indigenous.” Although diversity is not a feature of the story, the inclusion of Remi reflects the diverse characters and personalities who would live in rural Alberta.

The author, Steven Sandor, has written many books in the Lorimer “Sports Stories” series, and he understands the game of baseball very well as a reporter and the parent of a young baseball player. Because Sandor has helped with baseball practices for his son’s team, he has experienced some of the events about which he is writing. All of this makes the story and the setting in rural Alberta come across as genuine. As Sandor describes Westlock, readers can feel not only his affection for this small Alberta town and others like it but also his love of baseball.