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The Diamond Champs
An aura of intrigue surrounds a baseball coach obsessed with the idea of turning a bunch of handpicked beginners into champions in one season.
120 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
64 people want to read
About the author
Matt Christopher
467 books141 followersMatt Christopher is the writer young readers turn to when they're looking for fast-paced, action-packed sports novels. He is the best-selling author of more than one hundred sports books for young readers.
Matt Christopher is America's bestselling sports writer for children, with more than 100 books and sales approaching six million copies. In 1992, Matt Christopher talked about being a children's book author.
"I became interested in writing when I was 14, a freshman in high school. I was selling magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Country Gentleman, and Liberty, and I would read the stories, particularly the adventure and mystery stories, and think how wonderful it would be to be able to write stories and make a living at it. I also read detective, horror, aviation, and sports stories and decided I would try writing them myself.
Determined to sell, I wrote a detective story a week for 40 weeks, finding the time to marry, work, and play baseball and basketball before I sold my first story in 1941, "The Missing Finger Points," for $50 to Detective Story magazine.
After writing and selling children's sports stories to magazines, I decided to write a baseball book for children. I was living in Syracuse, New York at the time, working at General Electric. I spoke about my idea to the branch librarian. She was immediately interested and told me that they needed sports stories badly. So I came up with my first children's book, The Lucky Baseball Bat. I submitted it to Little, Brown, and the book was published in 1954.
I'm sure that playing sandlot baseball and then semiprofessional baseball with a Class C club in the Canadian-American League influenced my writing. I had my own personal experiences, and I saw how other players reacted to plays, to teammates' and fans' remarks and innuendoes, to managers' orders, etc. All these had a great influence on my writing. My love of the game helped a lot, too, of course.
Out of all the books I've written, my favorite is The Kid Who Only Hit Homers. It's a fantasy, but the main character in it could be real. There are a lot of boys who would love to play baseball but, for some reason, cannot. The only difference between a real-life boy and Sylvester Coddmyer III is the appearance of a character named George Baruth, whom only Sylvester can see and who helps Sylvester become a good ballplayer.
I've written many short stories and books for both children and adults, and find that writing for children is really my niche. Being the eldest of nine children (seven boys and two girls), I've lived through a lot of problems many children live through, and I find these problems excellent examples to include in my books.
Sports have made it possible for me to meet many people with all sorts of life stories, on and off the field, and these are grist for this writer's mill. I'm far beyond playing age now, but I manage to go to both kids' and adult games just to keep up with them, and keep them fresh in my mind.Very few things make me happier than receiving fan letters from boys and girls who write that they had never cared for reading until they started to read my books. That is just about the ultimate in writing for children. I would never trade it for another profession."
Matt Christopher died on September 27, 1997. His legacy is now being carried on by his sons, Duane and Dale Christopher.
Matt Christopher is America's bestselling sports writer for children, with more than 100 books and sales approaching six million copies. In 1992, Matt Christopher talked about being a children's book author.
"I became interested in writing when I was 14, a freshman in high school. I was selling magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Country Gentleman, and Liberty, and I would read the stories, particularly the adventure and mystery stories, and think how wonderful it would be to be able to write stories and make a living at it. I also read detective, horror, aviation, and sports stories and decided I would try writing them myself.
Determined to sell, I wrote a detective story a week for 40 weeks, finding the time to marry, work, and play baseball and basketball before I sold my first story in 1941, "The Missing Finger Points," for $50 to Detective Story magazine.
After writing and selling children's sports stories to magazines, I decided to write a baseball book for children. I was living in Syracuse, New York at the time, working at General Electric. I spoke about my idea to the branch librarian. She was immediately interested and told me that they needed sports stories badly. So I came up with my first children's book, The Lucky Baseball Bat. I submitted it to Little, Brown, and the book was published in 1954.
I'm sure that playing sandlot baseball and then semiprofessional baseball with a Class C club in the Canadian-American League influenced my writing. I had my own personal experiences, and I saw how other players reacted to plays, to teammates' and fans' remarks and innuendoes, to managers' orders, etc. All these had a great influence on my writing. My love of the game helped a lot, too, of course.
Out of all the books I've written, my favorite is The Kid Who Only Hit Homers. It's a fantasy, but the main character in it could be real. There are a lot of boys who would love to play baseball but, for some reason, cannot. The only difference between a real-life boy and Sylvester Coddmyer III is the appearance of a character named George Baruth, whom only Sylvester can see and who helps Sylvester become a good ballplayer.
I've written many short stories and books for both children and adults, and find that writing for children is really my niche. Being the eldest of nine children (seven boys and two girls), I've lived through a lot of problems many children live through, and I find these problems excellent examples to include in my books.
Sports have made it possible for me to meet many people with all sorts of life stories, on and off the field, and these are grist for this writer's mill. I'm far beyond playing age now, but I manage to go to both kids' and adult games just to keep up with them, and keep them fresh in my mind.Very few things make me happier than receiving fan letters from boys and girls who write that they had never cared for reading until they started to read my books. That is just about the ultimate in writing for children. I would never trade it for another profession."
Matt Christopher died on September 27, 1997. His legacy is now being carried on by his sons, Duane and Dale Christopher.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 8, 2024
I read this book as a child and loved it. As I am now older, I still had fun with this book.
June 1, 2016
“Diamond Champs” by Matt Christopher was a great book and I really enjoyed it because it is entertaining, makes you want to not stop reading it, and it keeps you on the edge of your seat but it is kinda boring in the beginning.. This is the type of book that if you love sports especially baseball) then you have to go out and read this book RIGHT NOW!!! The main character of this book is Kim and he is on a travel baseball team but his coach is a little suspicious and Kim wants to know what his background is. He goes and search and that part of the book was kinda boring and so was the beginning because they never played baseball and when they did, they would lose so I would have to give this book a 4 star rating out of 5 because in the beginning it is really boring because all that they do is lose. The middle of the book is really interesting because they go investigating on the coach and find out something you wont BELIEVE!!!!
October 16, 2012
This book is about a coach named Gorman E. Stag. He calls some kids to play on his team,some of the kids have not ever played baseball or wanted to play baseball but Mr. Stag convinced them. The thing about coach Stag is that he is really anxious to win the championship. Some of the kids get really suspicious ecspecially Kim Rollins. He even goes to where Mr. Stag is suppose to live to ask him why he wants the team to win so badly, but apperantly the coach didn't live there. Kim eventually find out all the reasons and the team also ends up winning the championship. Over all I thought that this book was ok but not the best book i've read in my life.
July 1, 2017
This book was definitely not my cup of tea since it was sport book and I wouldn't recommend it to any readers who aren't somewhat familiar with baseball since there is a bunch of baseball terminology.
The reading of the book was short, simple and easy to understand once you got away from the baseball terminology so would make a good book for a younger audience. The one thing that I was disappointed with was the story had an alright plot that followed a short mystery line but the characters didn't have as much dimension. Some had a bit more meat to them but the rest were kind of flat including both the coach and his aide.
Otherwise kind of cute story....
The reading of the book was short, simple and easy to understand once you got away from the baseball terminology so would make a good book for a younger audience. The one thing that I was disappointed with was the story had an alright plot that followed a short mystery line but the characters didn't have as much dimension. Some had a bit more meat to them but the rest were kind of flat including both the coach and his aide.
Otherwise kind of cute story....
April 15, 2007
The team is coached by a man named Gorman E. Stag. What on earth is going on???
December 13, 2012
It's about the main character Kim trying to find out about who his baseball coach is.AS.
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March 12, 2019The book diamond champs is to easy for me and this book is like a 3rd grade level. This book about a baseball coach who wants to take baseball beginners to the championship. I do not recommend this book because this book was not interesting to me.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews