1. What are some hardships that a farm owner faces that do not exist for city dwellers?

2. What is the significance of baseball to Billy Baggs's life?

3. What does it take to become a serious baseball player?

4. How does Billy Baggs's life in Flint, Minnesota, compare with your own?

Does living in a rural community seem comfortable or scary? Exciting or dull?

5. Billy is fourteen years old and runs his family's farm. Is this a common way of living? What is or may be exceptional about his lifestyle?

6. Do you think that Billy had good reasons for staying with his father when his father decides to destroy the A-l Cars lot?

7. Discuss Billy's relationship with his father. Is it a conventional relationship?

8. Characterize Billy. Consider how he sees his life as compared with how others might view it.

9. Characterize Billy's relationship with his mother. How...