Profiles

An All-American Workout

With more than 60 percent of American adults overweight or obese, and 20 percent of preschoolers overweight, the importance of getting kids moving can’t be underestimated. Many of them are headed otherwise for a lifetime of poor health, heart disease, cancer, stroke, depression, or diabetes.

The Kids’ Baseball Workout (The Millbrook Press, 2002), written by baseball connoisseur and little league coach Jeff Fuerst ’78, aims to improve young bodies and minds.

Designed for kids aged 8 through 12, the book offers step-by-step tips that teach both the fundamentals and fine points of the game, with an emphasis on body conditioning and exercise. Even parents can find straight-to-the-point, illustrated instructions on stretching, sprinting, and upper-body strengthening. But this isn’t a workout for the half-hearted—Fuerst is serious about his baseball and expects his readers to be, too.

This isn’t the first time this Obie has made a buck from our national pastime. As a freshman at Oberlin, he was equipment manager for the campus softball league. “I got paid to play softball”—about $40 a semester, says Fuerst, who is a long-time writer and an editor for the former Zillions magazine for children. He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, with his wife and two children.

–(Catherine) Hope Keller ’79