Hope Comes First: Keeping Score by Linda Sue Park

Many of Newbery author Linda Sue Park's novels have had a Korean connection. Her 2002 Newbery Award book A Single Shard is set in 12th century Korea; The Kite Fighters takes place in 15th century Korea, her time travel fantasy Archer's Quest involves a Korean warrior from 2000 years ago, and When My Name Was Keoko takes place in the Japanese-occupied Korea of World War II.

Her just published novel Keeping Score, however, begins in Brooklyn in 1950, with almost 10-year-old Maggie Fontini rooting for the Dodgers. Being a post-war child, Maggie is not allowed to play organized baseball, but being a girl doesn't stop her from being a statistics-quoting fan of "dem bums." When Jim Maine, a new guy in her father's old firehouse crew, introduces her to the craft of keeping a complete box score, Maggie takes to it instantly and is soon keeping a notebook of the 1950's season, with Dodgers such as Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Carl Furillo, and Don Newcombe in their heyday. Since Jim is one of the few Giants' fans in her Brooklyn neighborhood, Maggie listens to his team's games as he teaches her the art of score keeping, and despite her loyalty to the Dodgers, she becomes a secret fan of Giant Willie Mays and soon is the equal of Jim in keeping game records.

Her skills are even more important when Jim is drafted into the Army and sent to fight in the Korean War. Maggie faithfully writes Jim often, with play-by-play descriptions of the Giants' best games, and at first Jim writes her back, even sending a picture of the young Korean tent boy that he's teaching about American baseball. Suddenly, though, Jim's letters stop, and although her dad reports that he's alive, Maggie cannot understand why he doesn't answer her letters. Eventually she learns that something he witnessed in Korea has sent Jim into a silent depression.

Casting about for something that she can do to bring back the friend she knew, Maggie saves up her confirmation money and allowance to buy tickets for her family and Jim's family to see a Giants-Dodgers game at Ebbets' Field. Although he tries, Jim is unable to make himself come along. Maggie feels that all her efforts--keeping score for the Dodgers, praying for them to win the Series and for Jim to recover--have accomplished nothing, and she buries her scorebooks and letters from Jim in the back of her closet.

At last Maggie learns the full story of the traumatic event in which Jim witnessed the "friendly fire" by Americans upon Korean civilians in the No Gun Ri massacre in which his tent boy Jay was killed. Maggie is shaken, but gradually sees that there is always a place for hope:

Maggie sighed. "Hope doesn't do anything."

Another voice spoke up inside her head. "But hope is what gets everything started. When you make plans, it's because you hope something good is going to happen."

"Hope always comes first."

Maggie sees that it's the same as baseball. Every inning, every game, every season, it's hope that keeps the Dodgers and their fans going, and it's hope that will bring Jim back to his old life. Hopefully, she sends Jim a box score notebook for the coming 1955 season.

Park skillfully evokes the Brooklyn of the early fifties, where a young fan could walk to a candy store two blocks from home and listen to the Dodgers' game through open summer windows all the way, a time of closeknit Irish-Italian families, and best friends from babyhood. Although in some ways a time which seems warm and inviting, it was also a wartime world in which people's lives were sometimes destroyed by events beyond their control--a time in which hope was as necessary as it was fragile.