When I was a young little bean, it was the Atlanta Braves. I was living in Olympia, Washington, but that didn't matter. There was a new TV station, TBS, and every afternoon Skip Carey would do the play-by-play for my beloved Atlanta Braves. Dale Murphy was my idol. He was everything that was good about baseball. He was kind but, at the same time, he belted baseballs with a wicked bat. I collected baseball cards too. The player I collected the most? Dale Murphy. I would fill sheet upon sheet with Dale Murphy. It didn't matter if I had duplicates or triplicates, I just wanted to collect as many Dale Murphy cards as I could. Later, I sold my entire baseball card collection to a card dealer in town. He took advantage of me, as I'm sure he took advantage of everyone. But those days still resound within me, the innocence of childhood, the crack of the bat, watching the baseball fly deep into the air, the flipping through of baseball cards. That innocence and coming-of-age is wonderfully rendered in Mick Cochrane's new novel SPORT.

Cochrane, a professor at Canisius College in New York and winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Competition with his first novel, FLESH WOUNDS, follows up with a delightful tale of youth and growing up. Harlan Hawkins is the title character. He's a sharp boy obsessed with baseball. Whether it be collecting baseball cards (he needs the Tony Olivia card, needs it!), playing first base in the summer league, or watching his beloved Minnesota Twins on the fuzzy black-and-white television, he obsesses about baseball. It's a good life --- a mom, a dad, a brother, food on the table, a roof over their head, baseball on the television.

Then his mother is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. His father, a hard-drinking hot-tempered man, leaves her and the family. Suddenly, it's not such a good life --- his mother gets sicker and sicker, his brother distances himself more and more, the Twins are losing, the bills are piling up, and they're sliding down towards lower middle class, a kind of suburban poverty. SPORT relates Harlan's tale --- his trials and tribulations, and his triumphs.

George Walker is Harlan's baseball coach and neighbor. He's a nice man, a man who does unto others as he would like done unto him. He tries to bring some measure of stability back into Harlan's life, whether it be letting him help in setting up baseball practice, going to a Twins game, or fixing a window broken by his violent father late one night.

What makes SPORT a wonderful book is that it is relatable. Everyone remembers their childhood, those moments that changed them for the better --- or for the worse. Everyone has those instances that moved them ever so slightly from childhood to adulthood. Usually, those instances weren't major events, but the small and seemingly unimportant moments that lit our eyes and our minds. For Harlan, certainly there are difficulties, but he learns just as much from them as he does from drinking Cokes with a neighbor in his kitchen, watching the strategy in a Twins baseball game, and driving with his mother while not knowing the destination. Harlan doesn't need to know his destination, it's the journey itself that's important.