Rooting for Rafael Rosales by Kurtis Scaletta (review)

Rafael Rosales loves baseball and is happiest when playing, but he also recognizes that the sport is his ticket to emigrate from his home in the Dominican Republic to make a fortune in the United States, a goal that gains urgency when his father loses his job as a mechanic on a sugar plantation. Rafael methodically checks all the boxes on his rise through the system, catching the attention of an academy owner who launches him into the minor leagues, where he plays summer ball. As good as he is, though, his performance runs hot and cold, and just when it seems as if he will time out of the minor leagues without ever getting called up to MLB play, he catches the eye of a pair of American sisters, one of whom writes a fairly successful baseball blog, and her younger sister Maya, a would-be environmental activist and all-around bleeding heart with a soft spot for underdogs. Rafael’s story, working forward in time, is on track to converge with that of the sisters, whose tale is grounded in the present. Scaletta carefully sets the stage for some sort of ethical revelations, with Rafael’s friends’ involvement in some shady dealings, Maya’s televised rant about the environmental depredations of the agricultural chemical company where her father works, Dad’s crisis of conscience, and Rafael’s brother’s empathy for the poorest of the sugar cane workers. When the players finally meet, well, nothing much happens, life trajectories remain indefinite, and nothing is really resolved. Those who patiently follow the plot points expecting a concrete outcome will be disappointed, but kids who are content to look beyond the last page and imagine their own ending may find a future for these characters that Scaletta only hints at.