The Left-Handed Shortstop — Patricia Reilly Giff

What is Walter Moles to do? A budding ecologist,  he'd rather pick up bugs with his pooter than  field baseballs. But the honor of the fourth grade is  at stake because the fifth grade had challenged it  to a baseball game.



In the  excitement, Goony, the hotheaded captain of the  fourth-grade team, chooses Walter as his star shortstop.  And Goony won't give Walter a chance to confess  that he's a lousy ball player or to tell him that  there hasn't been a left-handed shortstop since 1892.  Walter has got to become a great shortstop in a  hurry or else find a way to weasel out of the game.  Can his good pal Casey Valentine scheme up a  surefire strategy that will keep Walter from striking  out?