BY ANDREW LURIA

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MEET THE CHARACTERS

Charlie Marley

12 years old
105 lbs, 4’11”

If you’re looking for someone to carry a crystal platter across a shaky tight rope without letting it shatter or splatter, Charlie Marley would probably be the last person you’d call—or even think of, for that matter.

To say that Charlie’s kind of clumsy is to say that Daffy Duck has a bit of a saliva malfunction. Charlie’s coordination is as spotty as a leopard’s skin.

The twelve-year-old has messy brown hair and freckles. He is a sixth grader at Eureka Elementary, home of the fighting Dust Devils, and has never been picked first for a recess football game. Ever. Even that one day that almost every kid in the school was home sick with the measles, and there were only two players to pick from anyway, he was still picked last. Charlie tends to melt in clutch situations like a Hershey bar in a microwave.

But what he lacks in sure-handed skills, he makes up for in sports intrigue. Intrigue, however, doesn’t exactly prevent you from getting thumbtacks strategically placed on your seat on a daily basis.

Charlie is responsible for bringing the news to the people of his hometown of St. Albany. He delivers the St. Albany Daily News on his paper route every morning before heading to Mrs. Cooper’s sixth grade class. And he could not do so without the aid of the coolest bike on earth, Charlie Marley’s Gnarly Harley.

At home, Charlie has a younger sister, Sasha, who is nine, and two loving parents who tend to be paralyzed in wonderment at Charlie’s tardy tendencies and mind-boggling gracelessness. Charlie was adopted as a young boy, but never knew who his real parents were.

Emma Mayfield

12 Years Old
95 lbs, 4’8”

The Eureka Enquirer would not be the first-rate elementary school newspaper it is without its lead reporter, Emma Mayfield. The twelve-year-old sixth grader with long red hair and freckles digs for facts deeper than a delving excavator.

Emma is almost as inquisitive as she is environmentally aware. Little gets her colder than the issue of Global Warming. But as focused as she appears on such issues, she has other interests that few people know about. It’s not easy to avoid picking up a few competitive skills with two brothers around the house.

While Emma refuses to waste her time with the Eureka Elementary recess football game, she would probably be the best player on the field.

She has a knack for computers, the curiosity of a cat and a deep determination to uncover the truth. But she refuses to adhere to all of the rules set out by authority.

A wearer of tie-dyed shirts and long skirts, and a scholar of 1960s peace rallies, Emma is well aware of the importance of standing up for what she believes in and not allowing anyone have the upper hand in dictating her actions.

There is little that can be done to throw Emma off her game. But a pair of piercing eyes and a couple of distinct dimples are a good place to start for anyone aspiring to break through.

Midnight McLean

42 Years Old
175 lbs, 6’2”

Few people remember the details of one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. They forget his nasty junk ball. They forget his quirky running style. They forget his ability to hit a ball the length of the Mississippi River. But they don’t forget his one World Series appearance. After all, following a wildly nonsensical swing that lost the 1994 Series, no other player had ever been so brutally beat down by another team’s celebration.

Midnight McLean is now an inventor, who created such useful contraptions as the Ready Steady Confetti Catcher 3000 and the Wham Bam Thank You Mammal 4600. He is also responsible for the advent of the armored padding many professional baseball players wear today that would qualify them for most medieval jousting matches of centuries past.

Midnight’s sleek lab coat and bow tie are in stark contrast to his wildly erratic white hair and whimsically naïve persona.

He is bilingual, specializing in both English and Pig Latin, a skill rivaled only by his expertise in antique automobiles.

While Midnight is best known for his World Series failure, he was still one of the best in the game when he was in his prime.

His quirky rituals on the mound and at the plate were just as distracting as a misdirected knuckleball in a blustery ballpark. To put it simply, for almost anyone who faced Midnight McLean, it was lights out.

Michael Jordan

Born Feb 17, 1963
216 lbs, 6’6”

He was perhaps the greatest basketball player to ever take the court. He was the world’s most recognizable athlete. He redefined his era. His nickname exemplified the very place he most impressively made his mark.

Michael “Air” Jordan won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls and an NCAA championship at the University of North Carolina. For Carolina, as a freshman, he hit the game-winning shot that gave the Tar Heels the national title. He also won two Olympic gold medals—one in 1984 and one in 1992—the latter as part of the original Dream Team.

Michael led the Bulls to championship three-peats twice: 1991-93 and 1996-98. After the first set of championships, he surprised everyone by retiring from basketball and taking up a career in professional baseball, playing for the Birmingham Barons, a minor league affiliate of the Chicago White Sox.

Michael’s toughest challenge, and something that may have led to his first retirement, was the murder of his father, James Jordan, in 1993.

But after a year away from the game, MJ returned to basketball and led the Bulls back to glory. In his first full year back, Chicago posted a record of 72-10—at the time, the best season in NBA history, and the first of three more consecutive championships.

Jordan was a five-time NBA Most Valuable Player, a record ten-time scoring champion, Rookie of the Year in 1984-85, a fourteen-time All-Star (named game MVP three times) and was the NBA Finals MVP in each of the Bulls’ six championships. He finished his career with 32,292 points, an average of 30.12 a game, which is the best in NBA history.

One of the most amazing stories about Jordan is that the young man who would go on to one of the greatest careers in basketball history wasn’t even on his high school’s team his sophomore year. He was cut in tryouts.

Jackie Robinson

Jan 31, 1919 - Oct 24, 1972
204 lbs, 5’11”

Whites played in the Major Leagues, and blacks played in the Negro Leagues. That was before Jackie Robinson.

On April 15, 1947, Jackie took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers as the first African-American in the modern era to play in the Majors, breaking the color barrier that stood in baseball for more than six decades.

When Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey chose Jackie to help integrate baseball, he knew there would be tough criticism and ridicule ahead. He told Robinson that he would have to promise to keep his composure and not fight back when dealing with racism.

Jackie dealt with bigotry not only from fans, but even from many of his own teammates at first. However, the Dodgers stood by him, and he gained the support of his fellow players.

Despite suffering through an 0-for-20 slump during his first two weeks in the Major Leagues, he went on to hit .297 with twelve home runs that season, led the National League in stolen bases and helped the Dodgers win the NL pennant. He was the first person ever named Rookie of the Year.

In 1949, he won the batting title, hitting .342 with sixteen home runs and again led the NL in stolen bases. He was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player.

Jackie stole home plate nineteen times in his career. He helped the Dodgers win six National League pennants and the 1955 World Series.

Before he made it to the Majors, Jackie was the first person to earn varsity letters in four sports at UCLA: baseball, basketball, football and track.

Fittingly, he became the first African-American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. In 1972, the Dodgers retired his number, 42. In 1997, on the 50th anniversary of Jackie breaking the color barrier, Major League Baseball retired his number all across the league.

Babe Ruth

Feb 6, 1895 - Aug 16, 1948
215 lbs, 6'2"

George Herman "Babe" Ruth was the greatest baseball player of his time. He transformed the way the game was played, in part by the astounding number of home runs he hit. The Babe led the Major Leagues in homers a record twelve times, set hitting records that stood for decades and was inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936.

Ruth was a pitcher early in his career—the winningest left-hander in baseball from 1915 through 1917. But he was such a good hitter, he was moved to the outfield so he could play every day. Babe hit 714 career home runs, a record not broken until Hank Aaron in 1974. He hit a record sixty home runs in one season, 1927, which stood until Roger Maris hit sixty-one in 1961. In 1920, he hit fifty-four, which was more than almost every other whole team in the Majors.

The Babe played for the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and Boston Braves in his twenty-two year career, winning seven World Series titles.

Yankee Stadium, opened in 1923, was nicknamed “The House that Ruth Built.”

Ruth’s final World Series came in 1932 as a member of the Yankees. In his second at bat in Game 3, after already hitting one home run earlier, he pointed to center field with two strikes against him. On the very next pitch, The Babe hit a long shot over the center field fence, which many believed he had predicted with the point. The Called Shot only added to the lore of the legendary hitter.

Mary Lou Retton

Born Jan 24, 1968
93 lbs, 4’9”

Mary Lou Retton was only 16-years-old when she made her historic mark on the world of gymnastics. She won a number of big competitions before the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, including the American Cup Championship, the American Classics Championship and the U.S. Championship.

But it was her performance at the ’84 Games that made her the most popular athlete in America.

Trailing Romanian Ecaterina Szabó for the All-Around gymnastics title, Mary Lou executed a performance on the floor exercise that earned a score of a perfect ten, bringing her within 5/100ths of a point of first place.

Needing another perfect ten in her final event to win the gold medal, Mary Lou nailed a flawless vault. Thanks to her two back-to-back perfect tens, she became the first American woman to win the Olympic All-Around title, and the first American woman to win any gymnastics gold medal, for that matter.

She also earned two silver medals and two bronze medals at the ’84 Olympics. Her five total were the most medals won by any athlete in those Games.

Mary Lou Retton was just seventeen-years-old when she retired from gymnastics in 1985. She was inducted into the USOC Olympic Hall of Fame that same year, and into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1997.

John Elway

Born June 28, 1960
215 lbs, 6'3"

The Stanford Band Play has to go down as one of the most incredible and bizarre in all of sports history.

The 85th Big Game between archrivals Stanford and Cal was also the final college game for Cardinal quarterback John Elway. After Stanford kicked a field goal with four seconds left on the clock to take a one-point lead, it looked poised to send their star quarterback out with a big win over the big rival, and earn a berth in the Hall of Fame Classic bowl game.

But on the ensuing kickoff—in those final four seconds—pandemonium took over. Cal’s Kevin Moen received the ball and started a string of five laterals—keeping the ball, the play and the game alive.

On the third lateral, it seemed Dwight Garner’s knee may have been down before he passed the ball back to his Cal teammate. That appeared to be the go-ahead for the Stanford Band to come onto the field to celebrate the victory. Only, it turned out Garner wasn’t called down, and the play continued with the band on the field.

Moen received one final lateral at the Stanford 25-yard line, and then ducked and dodged his way through the band to score the game-winning touchdown, giving the Golden Bears an improbable 25-20 victory.

Elway’s college career was through, but he went on to one of the most illustrious NFL quarterbacking careers in history, throwing for more than 50,000 yards and 300 touchdowns. He was the NFL’s Most Valuable Player in 1987. He also led the Denver Broncos to five AFC championships, winning two Super Bowls in 1998 and 1999, before retiring. In the 1999 Super Bowl, he was named the MVP.

Elway was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2004.

After the controversial play, the announcer of the Big Game, Joe Starkey, called it the most amazing, sensational, dramatic, heart-rending, exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football!

Babe Zaharias

June 26, 1911 – Sept 27, 1956
115 lbs, 5’7”

Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias was a superstar golfer. She was a superstar track and field athlete. She was a superstar basketball player, baseball player, softball player, tennis player, swimmer, diver, skater and bowler too.

She was voted by the Associated Press as the greatest female athlete of the 20th century, and six times was AP Female Athlete of the Year. No one else—male or female—has received the honor in their category so many times.

Babe won eighty-two golf tournaments, but didn’t even take up the sport until after she was a national star in other sports already: as an All-American in basketball and an Olympic track and field champion.

In the 1932 Olympics, she won gold medals in the javelin throw and 80-meter hurdles, and tied for first—but received the silver medal—in the high jump.

She took up golf as a new challenge after the Olympics, and went on to help pioneer the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), winning thirty-one events on the tour. As an amateur, she won seventeen-straight tournaments including the U.S. Amateur, British Amateur and the All-American. She even twice played in the men’s Los Angeles Open. Babe won her tenth major championship, the U.S. Women’s Open, in 1954. That came just one month after cancer surgery. Cancer took her life two years later.

She was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1951, the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1976 and the LPGA Hall of Fame in 1977.

Babe got her name because of her abilities in baseball. In one game, while playing with boys, she cracked five home runs, and earned the nickname of the legendary slugger, Babe Ruth.

How competitive was Babe Didrikson Zaharias? In addition to all the sports she excelled in, she even claimed to have won the sewing championship at the State Fair of Texas in 1931.

Mrs. Pooper Scooper

Age, height, and weight
are a mystery

There is just so much we don't know about Mrs. Cooper the Pooper Scooper. But Charlie and Emma do make quite the discovery in Chapter 11.

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THE ADVENTURES OF
CHARLIE MARLEY

When two elementary school classmates take a time travel adventure to six monumental times in sports history, they find themselves on the run from the intergalactic police. Will Charlie and Emma change the course of history? Or will they get caught and sent to do hard time in a galaxy far, far away?

A fun and informative new middle-grade edutainment series combining history and adventure debuts with this fascinating new title, The Adventures of Charlie Marley.

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HI, I'M ANDREW.

Andrew Luria is a seven-time Emmy Award winning sports and news anchor, and a father of three kids who are just about your age! He played college baseball and football at Cornell University, and has reported on just about every sport there is. He loves stories for kids, which is why he decided to make one of his own—this one! He also loves teaching kids, which he does as a baseball, basketball and football coach, and in the elementary school broadcasting program he runs in his free time. (Wait, I thought you said he had three kids. What’s “free time?!”) He lives in Carlsbad, California with his wife, kids and dogs: Archie and Henry. At one point or another, his family also had dogs named Charlie, Cooper, Emma, Muffin, Oakley, Buster, Dizzle, Rocky and Midnight. Do those names sound familiar?!

PRESS

TV News Feature

A story about the book, Andrew's baseball career, and what got him into the news business in the first place. This is the very station where Andrew got his start!

Livestream

Talked about the book, how it came together, and the inspiration behind it.

National TV Interview

Andrew talks with his former colleague about the book.

Newspaper Feature

Eureka Times-Standard: A book dream born in Eureka.

Newspaper Feature

Sports Talk: Fox 5 TV anchor embraces written word in kids book.

Newspaper Feature

San Diego Union Tribune: The journey it took to put this book together, Andrew's sports background and career through TV, college sports and writing.

Podcast

Andrew joins the discussion to talk about the news business and the creation of The Adventures of Charlie Marley.