Brady's apprentice

When you hear everything you don't want to in your life and nothing is going your way, all you could ever hope for is some luck and a little miracle.

In Mike Lupica's Million Dollar Throw, eighth grader Nate Brodie, who is nicknamed "Brady" not only because Tom Brady is his biggest idol, but also because of his amazing talent behind center at quarterback for his schools football team. Football is really the only way to escape his crazy messed up life that he's living. Football is Nates passion and is what he wants to do for the rest of his life but the rate at which he's working in school he doesn't have too big of a chance to go to a division one college for football. It isn't that he doesn't try hard in school, he just never seems to understand what's going on in class but when he's on the field, he knows everything like it's the back of his hand, meaning he understands very well what's going on which is one of the biggest reasons why he is so talented. Despite his extreme talents and amazing throwing arm, his problems in life effect his playing season in the worst of ways. From going from seasons with the lowest amount of interceptions in the league, he's throwing picks every game. Eventually Nate overcomes these issues as well as possible and gets better than ever.

The issues in his life go from school, to his family, to his best friend. First off, his father gets  laid off from his job and struggles to find a new one to support his family, which forces Nates mom to work two jobs which puts a huge amount of stress on her and the whole family. Once Nates Dad finds another job, he gets fired from that one too and he doesn't try to get another one even after that. One of the most emotional parts about this book is Nate has a best friend in which they have known each other their entire lives who's name is Abby. Nate and Abby have a super close bond and have done everything together since they were young. Abby was very passionate about art and was getting very good at it until she went to the doctors and received bad news. The news was that she was eventually going to lose eyesight in both her eyes turning her completely blind. After she shares that with Nate, they get the other news that once she goes blind she has to move away and go to a special school for blind people.

Luckily before all of the madness began, Nate had had his eyes on a signed football at a nearby Olympia sports by his favorite football player, Tom Brady. It costed 500 dollars and he had saved up his money for years to buy this ball when he and Abby finally went to go buy the ball, the person at the desk wouldn't allow them to buy it without a parent there. Both of them were very mad at the employee but he later then pointed out a lottery like raffle for the chance at 1,000,000 dollars. The raffle was if your name gets called out of the people that enter, you go to a Patriots versus Jets game and go on the field at half time to throw a football 50 yards into a target for the prize money. Nate luckily wins the chance to win and gets to the field at halftime surrounded by loud roaring of the fans. Nates idol Tom Brady then comes from the tunnel to give Nate a speech about how to be a hero and take advantage of every moment that you get in life. With the chance to turn his life around, Nate chucks the ball from 50 yards into the Olympia target and gets handed the check with the prize money. Nate comes to the decision to give the money to Abby to pay for a sight saving surgery so that she would never go blind.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes to read about sports, emotional stories, and happy endings. The author, Mike Lupica also has a large expansion of sports books which are award winners which is another reason why you should read Million Dollar Throw.