Playoff! DUGOUT: The Zombie Steals Home by Scott Morse

Wouldja listen to that crowd today!
A sold-out stadium!

All to see the Rookie sensation!

Stacy is, as we say, a legend in her own mind. But one boast is true!

This is a kid that's been breathin' baseball since she was born!

Stacy and her sister are both baseball crazy, but Stacy's team is on a losing streak, and her twin Gina's team is on fire going into the playoffs. It's embarrassing! Trying to summon up some spirit on the way to the game, Stacy bumbles into just that, summoning up the spirit of a long-dead local baseball sensation while "practicing" a little of her Grandma's magic on her pitcher's glove.

He's not exactly good-looking, kind of a zombie, really, but he clearly loves the game and it seems he's still got the right stuff to get the bottom-of-the-league Rooks on the winning side of the ledger. After scaring the bejeezus out of the kids, their ghostly manager is disguised in a size XXXL tropical shirt and hat and manages to steer them, after many spirited adventures, toward victory on the diamond, but not, however, without a little off-field assistance from the sisters' magical Grandma....

"I had to cast a memory spell on the whole town!

You've got a ways to go, ladies."

It's all in good spirits, in Scott Morse's Dugout: The Zombie Steals Home (Graphix/Scholastic Press, 2019). Artist Morse has all the right stuff for this comedic cartooned graphic novel that combines a gnarly but helpful zombie and a playoff baseball game series, in a no-doubt novel approach to that favorite summertime sport that has the Rooks considering changing their team name to The Zombies!

School Library Journal's call: "This madcap tale of strikeouts and sibling rivalry will do well in most young graphic novel collections.