Players from all 10 teams participating in the Avista NAIA World Series will take part in the “What if Every Kid Read the Same Book?” program for sixth graders in Lewiston and Clarkston schools.

On Thursday, May 24, the players will visit the area sixth grade classrooms and read “Hitting Glory” by Robert Skead with the sixth graders to encourage reading among the students. More than 650 copies of the book were distributed to area sixth-graders and schools libraries to make sure all sixth graders have their own copy of the book.

The players will spend approximately an hour in the classrooms, reading and interacting with the students.

“Hitting Glory” is the heartwarming story of 11-year-old Lou Gibson, who finds an old baseball bat hidden behind some shelves in the school's basement. Mr. Broom, the janitor, has no use for the bat and tells Gibson that he may keep it. When Gibson discovers the initials LG carved on the bottom of the bat, his imagination runs wild with the possibility that the old Spalding might have belonged to Lou Gehrig. Gehrig, known as the Pride of the Yankees during his playing days, had attended Public School #132 and was by far the school's most famous graduate. Gibson immediately sets off on a mission to prove the bat once belonged to Gehrig. The search sends Gibson on a journey of triumph, tragedy, and discovery.

Although the book is fiction, it is based on a person experience the author had when he purchased a 100-year-old wooden bat at a bargain price in 2000. The author displayed the bat on the wall in his family room and wondered about the bat’s history and about the initials, RM, carved on the bottom of the bat.