The main question [in Last Sunday] is whether Sober McGinty will sober up long enough to finish the game for Canby. As twelve-year-old Ruth Babson narrates, we follow her from helping the drunken pitcher to fidgeting through Sunday church and dinner, eager to be with the team for which she is mascot and bat-girl…. When the fickle fans turn on McGinty, our gusty heroine learns there are more important things than winning a ball game. In picturesque Vermont vernacular and with baseball savvy, Peck makes one hysterical afternoon a metaphorical comic/tragedy of the human condition.
Ruth M. Stein, "Book Remarks: 'Last Sunday'," in Language Arts (copyright © 1977 by the National Council of Teachers of English; reprinted by permission of the publisher and the author), Vol. 54, No. 7, October, 1977, p. 808.
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