The Bad News Bears had come out in theaters more than a decade before, but it was the only sports movie we could name featuring a group of ragtag misfit kids.”
-- Narrator (Danvers vs. Masconomet)

Importance: This quotation makes an indirect reference to how Barry’s novel connects to an element of pop culture. The novel takes place in 1989, and the object of the team’s perceived power is a notebook with Emilio Estevez on the cover. 1992 was the release year of the film The Mighty Ducks, which is both the type of sports movie the team mentions here and about an ice hockey team coached by a character played by Emilio Estevez. This connection is not explicitly referenced anywhere in We Ride Upon Sticks. However, the novel later addresses the idea that teenagers are not capable of being original when attempting to find their way in a world that they did not build, specifically...