HEAT by Mike Lupica
Setting- New York City near Yankee Baseball Stadium
Season: Summer
Characters-
Mrs. Cora- woman who was mugged
Ramon- Thief
Michael Arroyo- Baseball player- main character
Chapter 1
Mrs. CORA WALKED SLOWLY UP RIVER AVENUE IN THE SUMMER HEAT, SECURE within the boundries of her world. The great ballpark, Yankee Stadium, was on her right. The blue subway tracks were above her.
As Mrs. Cora walked, she thought about the two constants in her life- baseball and the thump, thump, thump of the train.
She had her green purse over her arm, the one that was supposed to look more expensive then it actually was. Inside the purse was one hundred dollars, her food money.
He hit her from behind. Suddenly she was falling to her right onto the sidewalk. He pulled the green purse from her arm.
When she hit the ground, she rolled onto her side. She watched a young boy sprint down the street with her purse and money.
Despite the overhead train, she yelled, “Stop.”
Then as loud as she could mange, she cried, ”Stop, thief!”
There were people reading down to help her now, neighborhood people, voices asking if she was all right, and if there was anything broken.
All Mrs. Cora could do was to point toward 161st Street.
She said, “My food money,” her voice cracking.
A crowd started to form, and the policeman who was coming down from the subway platform noticed both Mrs. Cora and a boy who was running from the area with a green purse.
The policeman began to run after the boy with the green purse.
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The thief’s name was Ramon.
Ramon was not the smartest 16 year old in the South Bronx. He wasn’t the laziest either. Ramon hated the idea of working, and he hated the idea of going to school. This is why he preferred to earn his spending money stealing purses like the green one he had in his hand.
Ramon was not worried about the fat policeman that was chasing him. They never caught him before.
Ramon was heading towards Rupert Place and Macombs Dam Park near the basketball courts and the two baseball fields that were near it. He planned on counting his money there.
The policeman yelled, “Stop right there, Police!”
Ramon laughed as he ran. The cop was already falling behind. The cop was wobbling like a car with a flat tire.
Ramon compared his running skills to Alberto Juantarena a Cuban sprinter his father used to talk about.
Ramon thought to himself that it was not even noon, and he had already earned a whole day’s pay.
Then Ramon felt the sharp pain in the back of his head, it felt like a rock hitting him.
Suddenly Ramon went down like somebody tackled him. He fell hard to the ground.
When Ramon, the thief, opened his eyes, he was already in handcuffs.
The fat policeman stood with a skinny boy with long arms and long fingers, wearing a Yankee T-shirt and a baseball glove under his arm.
“What’s your name kid?” the policeman asked.
The one on the ground said, “Ramon,” thinking that the policeman was talking to him.
The cop turned to Ramon and said, “I’m not talking to you.”
The skinny boy with the baseball glove, said “Michael Arroyo.”
The policeman looked at Michael, “And you tell me you got him with this here baseball all the way from home plate?”
“Got lucky, I guess,” responded Michael.
The cop smiled and held the baseball in his hand, and rolled it around in his hand.
The cop asked, “You righty or lefty?”
Michael smiled and held up his left hand.
The cop asked again, “Home plate to dead center?”
Michael nodded.
“You got some arm, kid,” the cop said.
“That’s what they tell me,” Michael said.
The author doesn’t tell you Michael is a great baseball player, but rather shows you. Explain using the details from chapter 1.
How does the author communicate that Mrs. Cora has probably lived in New York all of her life?
Predict what will happen to Michael Arroyo in upcoming chapters.
Chapter 2
PAPI WAS THE FIRST TO TELL MICHAEL ARROYO HE HAD THE ARM.
Michael thought it was something a father would say to his son. But he knew there was a look Papi would get whenever he said it. It seemed as though his father was seeing things that Michael couldn’t, back when the two of them would play ball in the sorry field behind their apartment building in Pinar del Rio, outside of Havana.
The author is using foreshadowing in which they are trying to help you understand the talents that Michael has.
Based on the above paragraphs, what talent do you think Michael has, and who believes in these talents?
Back home- what Michael still thought of home, he couldn’t help himself- everybody knew his father as Victor Arroyo. But he was Papi to Michael and his brother, Carlos. Always had been and always would be.
In the previous paragraph were clues about Michael’s home. Where did he used to live?
What evidence from the above paragraph suggests that Papi was famous?
“You can’t teach somebody to have an arm like yours,” Papi would say as he walked from behind the plate. “It’s something you are born with, a gift from the gods.”
This was when Michael was seven years old or eight, long before they got on the boat that night last year, the one that took them across the water to a place on the Florida map called Big Pine Key....
Did Michael stay in Cuba? How do you know that he is an immigrant?
“Someday,” Papi would say, “you will make it to the World Series. But before that, my son, what comes first?”
Michael always knew what the answer was supposed to be.
“First, the Little League World Series,” Michael would say to his father.
Papi always made it sound as if it was Michael’s dream in baseball, to make it to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Penmnsylvania. Papi would show him on an old globe where Pennsylvania was. The Little League World Series was for the world’s championship of eleven and twelve year old baseball boys.
Michael knew it was more his father’s dream then his own dream. Papi grew up in a time when a star baseball player living in Cuba, which Michael knew his father was, could never think about escaping to America to play baseball. So Papi, a shortstop on the national team in his day, never made it out, never made the great stage of major leagues, because he was not allowed out of Cuba.
Instead, Papi became a coach of Little League boys and was in charge of developing their skills so that they would become stars later in life for Castro’s national team.
Why didn’t Papi play for a professional baseball team in the United States?
Papi had talked endlessly about Michael and his baseball talent. Even now, Michael couldn’t tell where Papi’s dreams ended and his own began.
The dream had moved, of course, from Oinar del Rio, to the Bronx, New York. Papi was no longer his coach and Michael was no longer a little boy. He had grown up to be the tallest player on his team during the regular season, and now was the tallest on his All-Star team.
It was All-Star team from the Bronx that Michael’s left arm was supposed to take all the way to Williamsport in a few weeks.
As long as he didn’t get found out first.
As an immigrant, what secret is Michael hiding?
Michael’s brother Carlos had promised they could have a catch behind the building when he finished his day shift at the Imperial, the market across 161st Street next to the McDonalds, almost directly underneath the subway platform.
This was before Carlos went to his night job, the one he took to bus tables at Hector’s Bronx Cafe. Carlos had he had lied about his age to get the job at Hectors. No one bothered to ask him for a birth certificate, because he was being paid off the books.
Carlos cooked Michael breakfast. He made pancakes and Cuban sausage. Carlos said, “My little brother, Migel, the hero of the South Bronxs. Eat, you are turning into a scarecrow. You are even thinner than a birijita.” A Cuban expression of a thin person.
In the small run down apartment, Carlos and Michael always spoke Spanish and English. Their old life and their new one. It was only here that Carlos called Michael by his birth name, Miguel. To everyone else, he was Michael.
Carlos was proud of Miguel. He teased his brother about crime fighting. He teased him about turning baseballs into guided missiles.
“I told you,” Michael said, “it was a lucky throw. I saw him running. I heard the police officer....”
Michael said, “If I had known it was that purse you gave Mrs. Cora on her birthday, I would have run after him with a bat.”
Mrs. C was telling everyone that Michael was like an angel, and that he was meant to be in the baseball field.
Michael asked Carlos, “How come angels are never around when we need them?”
Carlos scolded Michael and reminded him, “Don’t talk like that.”
The two brothers began to talk about the Yankee’s baseball game that was starting at 4:00 later in the day. El Grande, a famous Cuban pitcher. Carlos promised Michael that they would someday watch El Grande pitch before the season is over.
Michael reminded Carlos that they could not afford the tickets and this made Carlos furious. He slammed his hand on the counter like a burst of thunder, one you didn’t even know was coming.
Carlos apologized, and Michael forgave him.
When Carlos went into the other room to iron his clothes, Michael quietly went back into the kitchen where he saw Carlos hiding an envelope. Michael opened the envelop and it was another bill. This was the same drawer that Carlos had been opening and closing for the last three months.
Michael thought, we really do need an angel.
What evidence do you have that the boys are living on their own and are struggling?
When Carlos left for work, Michael read the sports section of the newspaper and listened to the game on the radio. Michael sometimes went to Mrs. Cora’s apartment to watch the Yankees play on cable. Mrs. Cora always liked the company, even though she did not love to watch the game of baseball.
Carlos had a lot of dreams in the apartment. He told Michael that they would go to a Yankee’s game to watch El Grande. He promised that they would get cable.
Michael liked listening to the Yankee’s game on the radio, which he would bring outside with him and sit on the fire escape facing Yankee Stadium.
The Yankee Stadium just down the street, a world away.
Michael loved when the announced talked about El Grande Gonzalez. They would talk about his windup pitch, the very one that Michael imitated perfectly even though he was left handed.
Sometimes, Michael’s teammates would call him Little Grande even though he was bigger than most of them.
Michael did not know why baseball was so easy for him. He didn’t know why he was able to throw it to the exact place or throw it as hard as he could.
When Michael had the baseball in his hand, and rolled it around in his hand like El Grande, everything felt right in his world.
He wasn’t mad at the world or worried what might happen to his brother.
As always, Michael imagined Papi here with him now, using that soft old catcher’s mitt of his, whispering the ball back to Michael, telling him, “Now you’re pitching, my son.” Then he would say after a few pitches, “Did I just touch a hot stove?”
They would both laugh.
Michael could not remember all of his father’s saying, no matter how hard he tried.
The phone rang.
Michael did not answer the phone- Rule Number One-never answer the phone when Carlos was not there, and let the answering machine, the one with dad’s voice on it, pick up the call.
The voice on the other end belonged to Mr. Minaya, his coach with the Clippers.
“Mr. Arroyo,” Mr. Minaya began, “You don’t have to get back to me right away, but we are going to need the parents to drive once we are in the play-offs. Since, you are a professional driver, we are wondering if you will be able to help out.” Then Mr. Minayo added to his message, “Unless I am talking to Carlos and Michael...well forget it. Just tell you dad to be a call if he ever comes back.”
Michael stood there looking at the answering machine. Did Mr. Minayo suspect something?
Michael grabbed his baseball and baseball glove and headed for the field in Macombs Dam Park.
The field had always felt like his own safe place. But now, Michael wondered if even baseball was safe.
What secret do you think Carlos and Michael have and are hiding?
Based on the passages within chapter 2, what evidence can be gathered to suggest that Carlos and Michael are living on their own?
What gives Michael comfort? Use details to support your answer.
Both chapter one and chapter two have a text feature that needs to be explored. Why does the author use mostly capital letters for the first sentence?
Chapter 3
THERE WERE TWO BALLFIELDS at Macombs Dam Park, A REAL GREEN-GRASS park in the Bronx.
During the regular Little League season, Michael’s first in America, his team was sponsored by the big New York sporting goods store, Modell’s. Now, in the summer, the Clippers also played its home games on these fields. Sometimes they would play games as far away as White Plains and New Rochelle.
On summer days, Michael and his friends usually had Macombs Dam Park to themselves.
On days like this, baseball would make Michael as happy as it ever did. No rules. No empires. No coaches.
When they played with the older kids, and the pitchers mound is further back Michael never pitched. Carlos forbid it, and so did Mr. Minaya, until Michael turned thirteen, which would be next season.