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Tackle Without a Team
Unjustly dismissed from the football team for drug possession, Scott learns that only by finding out who planted the marijuana in his duffel bag can he clear himself with his parents.
145 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
About the author
Matt Christopher
451 books146 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 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 29, 2017
A boy named Scott on the Grayhawks football team led the team to victory in a game around the middle of season. As he went in to the locker room to shower, marijuana is discovered in his bag and his dream of playing football any more with the Grayhawks is shattered. Scott had never even touched marijuana in his life. After being kicked of the team he joins a small non league team with the thought of finding the someone who framed him. Scott finds away to find out who but he must have evidence to come back on the Grayhawks team.
I think that the theme of Tackle without a team is; You should never give up on your dream and never have the instinct to come out and do your own thing. After being kicked off the team he does not just go and beg the coach and try to get himself back on the team. All he does is find another team then plan on a way to get evidence that it was not him. He gets his own ideas and bring them to come true. He did not go crying and he did not blame himself for someone else's doing.
I do not like sports book much, but I have found a few good ones and this one is not one. I could not follow along well of what was happening. It was an easy read and I would request it to young readers. It is about cigarettes so it would not be the best also for young reader that are too young. It just talks about some things I don't like and maybe you have been around it so it's fine. I would say two stars for how it was written and what it talked about.
I think that the theme of Tackle without a team is; You should never give up on your dream and never have the instinct to come out and do your own thing. After being kicked off the team he does not just go and beg the coach and try to get himself back on the team. All he does is find another team then plan on a way to get evidence that it was not him. He gets his own ideas and bring them to come true. He did not go crying and he did not blame himself for someone else's doing.
I do not like sports book much, but I have found a few good ones and this one is not one. I could not follow along well of what was happening. It was an easy read and I would request it to young readers. It is about cigarettes so it would not be the best also for young reader that are too young. It just talks about some things I don't like and maybe you have been around it so it's fine. I would say two stars for how it was written and what it talked about.
February 15, 2022
I overall enjoyed Tackled Without a Team. The story feels a little outdated, as does the writing--you can definitely tell it was written in the '80s--but it's a quick read, and the detailed descriptions of the football games are really fun.
September 30, 2022
Unjustly dismissed from the football team for drug possession, Scott learns that only by finding out who planted the marijuana in his duffel bag can he clear himself with his parents.
September 5, 2023
East Read: Main character gets caught with drugs that were placed in his bag by a mysterious person. He gets kicked off the football team and tries to figure out who would do that to him.
May 13, 2008
Tackle Without a Team is a great book it is about a kid that is doing drugs and he got caught and the coach kicked him off the football team. He has been taking drugs for a while and he hasn't got caught till know and all of his friends found out and the got in trouble with the law. Some of the books that Matt wrote are "Fighting Tackle", "Fairway Phenom", "Red-Hot High-tops", "Face-Off", "Ice Magic", and many more.
March 14, 2013
This is a juvenile book about a kid named Scott who gets kicked off of his high school football team because he gets caught with a couple of joints in his locker. The story follows Scott's journey of discovering who framed him. I really enjoyed this 'easy-to-read' novel, and finished it fairly quickly (excellent bathroom book!). Will definitely be reading more Matt Christopher books in the future.
February 1, 2011
I think it was a very interesting mystery. The only way Scott could get back on the team was to prove someone else put the marijuana in his bag, so the whole book was about the mystery. It is suspenseful the whole time, from when Scott was found with the marijuana to when he proved Bill Lowry had put it in.
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January 22, 2009JAR4-Chr
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January 10, 2019 The book I read for the month of December was Tackle Without a Team by Matt Christopher. I really enjoyed reading this book for the reason that it wasn't only about football but it was heavily influenced by teamwork, and resiliency. My favorite character to follow was the main character Scott, the reason i liked to follow him in everything he did was because he was real in a sense. He's been through things other haven't had to go through but still had to prove to everyone that he was just as good as them if not even better. One of my favorite quotes that I read in the book stated, "I'm here to play clean, hard football. and to have fun. Mainly, to have fun. That's all. Say what you want to, but that's the way I'm going to play." The reason I like this quote is for the reason that is shows how he's being independent and only going to play fair, no dirty shots, no cheats, no anything, and nobody could persuade him not to and I really respected that. A very interesting structural element that the author put into the book that I really liked was realism. It made the book so much more interesting because not only is it in a book but it could also happen to anyone at anytime and to me that element makes the book just stand out more to me.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews