Slider's Son — Rebecca Fjelland Davis

Friendship.
Danger.
Murder.
Grant O'Grady wants nothing more than to be a major league baseball pitcher. He's only thirteen, but his dream seems possible . . . until Big Joe turns his life upside down.
Grant and his buddies are no strangers to risk. At the end of the Great Depression in small-town North Dakota, money is tight, so Grant and his friends swipe coal from the coal train when it stops in town to fill its boiler. It's risky to climb the train cars, but so is climbing the water tower to chuck snowballs at passing cars, and so is shooting out Christmas lights downtown.
But risk turns into very real danger every time Big Joe shows up. After an encounter with the man one winter night in 1936, Grant's life will change forever.