47 pages • 1 hour read
Mike LupicaThe Big Field
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
At the Santaluces Athletic Complex in Lantana, Florida, the Boynton Beach Post 226 Cardinals play the Palm Beach Post 12 Braves. The Cardinals are winning 7–6 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. If the Cardinals hold on, they will go on to the South Florida regionals. If they lose, their season will be over. The Cardinals closer, Pedro Mota, pitches badly, so the manager, Ken Cullen, puts in Paul Garner, the left fielder.
Hutch plays for the Cardinals. As Paul warms up, Hutch considers talking to Darryl Williams, the best player on the Cardinals, but they don’t communicate much. Frequently, Darryl looks “bored.” Hutch, however, loves baseball. The Braves batter hits the ball to the shortstop, and Hutch does everything the shortstop should, but Darryl—not Hutch—is the shortstop.
Chapter 2 Summary
Hutch plays second, and Darryl gets the ball and throws it to Hutch just in time to get the batter at first. The Cardinals win, so they’re off to the regionals.
Cody Hester plays right field for the Cardinals, and he and Hutch have been like “best friends” or “brothers” since they were five. Cody used to play second, and Hutch played short, but then Darryl arrived. Hyped as the best Florida baseball player since Alex Rodriguez, Darryl took over short, Hutch moved to second, and Cody relocated to the outfield. Cody doesn’t think Darryl is a good teammate. He calls Darryl “full of himself.” Cody thinks Hutch won the game: Hutch got three hits and four RBIs, and he made a fantastic fielding play in the fourth inning.
Darryl, Cody, and Hutch are 14, and if they make it to the state championship, they will play a three-game series at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida, where the St. Louis Cardinals and the Marlins play spring training games (from 1993 to 2011, they were the Florida Marlins; in 2012, they became the Miami Marlins). Sun Sports Network will broadcast the finals on TV.
Neither Cody nor Hutch come from affluent families, and both their houses are “ugly” colors. In his room, Hutch listens to the Marlins play the Mets on the radio. Posters of shortstops adorn Hutch’s wall. Aside from Derek Jeter, there are posters of Cal Ripken Jr. (the Baltimore Orioles shortstop who holds the record for most consecutive games played) and Ozzie Smith (the St. Louis Cardinals shortstop revered for his defense). Cody’s dad, Carl Hutchinson, played shortstop and almost made it to the big leagues. The experience crushed Carl, but Hutch believes he can succeed. Hutch wants to be a star shortstop and attend a New Jersey boarding school with a prestigious baseball program.
Chapter 3 Summary
Darryl is late for Monday’s practice. His mom’s friend didn’t show, forcing him to take the bus. Darryl looks like he ran from the bus stop to practice. Cullen believes Darryl and tells him he’ll hit batting practice (BP) third. Cody doesn’t think Cullen would be as lenient with him.
Cullen was a star pitcher in high school and spent a few years in the Red Sox minor league system, but he could only throw in the 80 mph range, so he started a real estate company. Due to the company’s TV ads, Cullen is a “local celebrity.” To keep his pitchers rested, Cullen throws BP. Today, Cullen tries to throw tough, but Darryl sees “mattress balls” and effortlessly hits a pitch over the fence.
After BP, Cullen wants them to pick a team captain. Now that they’ve moved on from the county tournament, the players know each other better, so they can make an informed choice. Everyone but Darryl votes for Hutch, so Hutch becomes the team captain.
Chapter 4 Summary
Hutch got his baseball skills from his dad and inherited “dark skin” and eyes from his mom, Connie Hutchinson (formerly Consuela Valentin), who is from Puerto Rico. His mom tends to exclaim, “iAy, bendito!”—a catchall Spanglish phrase for a sad, happy, or in-the-middle mood.
Carl took the East Boynton Little League team to the Little League World Series, which ABC televised. Hutches watches the video. Though Carl’s team lost, the announcers hailed him as a “sure thing.” Carl played in the minor league systems for the Braves and Twins, but by 24, his playing days were over. He sold cars, tried landscaping, and ran the Santaluces snack truck.
Now, Carl caddies at Emerald Dunes Golf Club, and he drives people to and from the airport for Sun Coast limousines. Hutch and his dad don’t speak much. When Carl watches baseball games on TV, he has the sound off and drinks a beer.
When Hutch was little, Carl showed him how to hold a bat, and they played catch. They watched games on TV, and his dad detailed what was happening. By eight, Hutch was throwing balls to the pitchback. He wanted his dad to throw with him, but he stayed inside. Sometimes, Carl shows up at Hutch’s games, but Hutch wishes his dad could be overtly caring.
Chapter 5 Summary
The first team the Cardinals play in the regionals is the Naples Yankees. Before leaving for the game, his dad tells him not to try and do everything. Warming up on the field, Cody can’t stop thinking about Roger Dean Stadium and the three-game World Series, so Hutch tells him to take it one game at a time. Cody mocks Hutch’s cliché guidance. They softly toss the ball as the players chatter and size up the opposing team. Hutch loves the pregame atmosphere and feels more at home on the field than his actual home.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
The title of the novel, The Big Field, hints at The Hopes and Pressures of Young Athletes. The Cardinals want to play on “the big field”—Roger Dean Stadium—and the chance gives them the hope of competing in an MLB spring training stadium and displaying their talents on TV. With hope comes pressure to perform and succeed. Hutch turns the shortstop into a symbol for the hero, stating, “[A] great shortstop was worth his weight in gold” (15). Since Darryl arrived, Hutch isn’t a shortstop anymore, but he feels the pressure to play like one. Hutch has hopes of attending a New Jersey boarding school with a great baseball program, and he believes “in his heart that his best chance to do that was at short” (15). Hutch compounds the pressure by decorating his room with posters of star shortstops, as he feels the need to be like them. Simultaneously, the posters give Hutch hope that he’ll be as iconic as Jeter or Ripken.
These hopes and pressures also extend to Carl. He dreamed of an exciting professional career in baseball, but with that hope came the burden of expectation: “You could never call anybody in sports a sure thing, but this East Boynton kid sure looked like one” (26). Carl wasn’t a “sure thing,” and the hopes and the pressures “broke his heart for good” (27). In a sense, Carl aimed for “the big field,” but instead of a big-league career, his hopes led him to disappointment.
Carl’s and Hutch’s contrasting perspectives on baseball create the theme of Son Versus Father. Hutch loves baseball, while Carl has a love-hate relationship with it. He doesn’t banish it, but when he watches a game, he drinks beer and keeps the sound off. This suggests that Carl struggles to watch baseball when he is sober, as it reminds him of the future he wanted and never had, while turning off the sound prevents the noises from triggering him. Conversely, Hutch loves baseball. He belongs on the field, feeling “more at home here than he did at home” (45). Hutch doesn’t hate his dad, and his dad doesn’t behave abusively toward Hutch, so the conflict is subtle, yet palpable. Hutch wants to bond with his dad over baseball like they did when he was little, but the hopes and pressures Carl experienced tainted baseball for him, setting up a clash between the embittered father and the optimistic son.
The Necessity of Teamwork is tricky in Chapters 1-5, as the main characters don’t overtly embrace teamwork. When Darryl makes a superb, game-ending play against the Braves, Cody complains, “The golden boy makes one play, and people act like he won the game all by himself” (8). While this implies that all team members worked together to win the game—and thus deserve equal credit for it—Cody doesn’t act like a good teammate when he continually mocks Darryl. In fact, Cody reinforces the anti-team discourse when he tells Hutch, “You won the game tonight, not him” (12). The reality is that neither Cody nor Hutch single-handedly won the game against the Braves. The Cardinals won the game together. Hutch wouldn’t have four RBIs without teammates to drive in, and Cody wouldn’t have made the game-ending play if the pitcher didn’t get a ground ball and the first baseman didn’t catch it. Baseball is a team game, with all the active players shaping the final result. This tension foreshadows future conflict as well as character growth.
In this section, Darryl appears separate from the team. For the role of captain, everyone votes for Hutch but Darryl, and Darryl—though he is the best player on the Cardinals—doesn’t play with much passion. The narrator describes Darryl as “lost in his own thoughts or lost in space,” adding, “[B]aseball seemed to bore him sometimes” (3). The characterization makes Darryl look aloof or careless. In Chapters 1-5, Darryl becomes The Other—that is, he is different and separate from the rest of the team members. Since Darryl’s talent and coolness distinguish him, the otherness becomes an unsympathetic trait, turning Darryl into an antagonist. While he is not outwardly a friendly person, his reason for being late to practice in Chapter 3—that his mom’s friend didn’t show and he had to take the bus—hints at the difficulties of his homelife.
Related Titles
By Mike Lupica
