Abner and Me: Chapters 1–6

by Dan Gutman
Young Stosh has time-traveled before…but this time he and his mom find themselves in the midst of the Battle of Gettysburg, searching for Abner Doubleday—a Civil War general. Stosh wants to find out for certain if Doubleday invented the game of baseball.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Chapters 1–6, Chapters 7–9, Chapter 10, Chapters 11–14, Chapters 15–19
15 words 59 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. snicker
    laugh quietly
    “Yeah, right,” I whispered. “Do you think that if I could travel through time and go to any year in the history of the world, I’d be sitting here listening to this?”
    Kenny snickered.
    The fact is, I can travel through time—with baseball cards.
  2. grudge
    a resentment strong enough to justify retaliation
    Bobby Fuller sure could hold a grudge.
  3. delinquent
    a young offender
    Fuller and Kenny were on the same team. They’re a couple of prejuvenile delinquents.
  4. pathetic
    inspiring scornful pity
    Fuller used to really get to me. He could make some stupid comment and rattle me just enough to throw off my swing a little so I’d strike out or pop up or something. But he didn’t bother me anymore. Now he just seemed pathetic.
  5. deception
    the act of misleading
    If you know baseball, you know that infielders are trained to be masters of deception.
  6. outrageous
    greatly exceeding bounds of reason or moderation
    Maybe he was bluffing. Maybe he just made up something to be outrageous and it was just an amazing coincidence that it was true. Or maybe he knew.
  7. coincidence
    an accidental event that seems to have been arranged
    Maybe he was bluffing. Maybe he just made up something to be outrageous and it was just an amazing coincidence that it was true. Or maybe he knew.
  8. dugout
    a shelter beside a baseball field for players and coaches
    She slipped a card into my hand when I was about to go back and meet Mickey Mantle in 1951, and the next thing I knew, it was 1944 and I was sitting in the dugout of an all-girls team in Milwaukee.
  9. exaggeration
    making to seem more important than it really is
    I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Uncle Wilbur is alive thanks to me.
  10. influenza
    an acute febrile highly contagious viral disease
    Mom had told me that he died from a disease called influenza when he was a boy. I gave him some of the flu medicine I had brought with me, and when I returned to the present day, Uncle Wilbur was alive.
  11. homer
    (baseball) a base hit on which the batter scores
    “You will have in your hand the only baseball in the world that was signed by the man who actually invented the game! Remember when Barry Bonds hit his seventy-third homer in 2001? That ball sold for around half a million. A ball signed by Abner Doubleday should be worth twice as much as that. The sky’s the limit!”
  12. induct
    admit as a member
    “Hey, maybe you’ve been inducted into the Hall of Fame, Joe,” Uncle Wilbur joked.
  13. clueless
    totally uninformed about what is going on
    "...This has been so educational for you. I guess I’ve come around to thinking that these trips are a good thing. I want to see what it’s like.”
    Educational? Ha! My mother is clueless.
  14. psychotic
    characteristic of or suffering from a severe mental disorder
    I’d never told Mom how educational it was when I went to meet Jackie Robinson in 1947 and a psychotic batboy chased me through the streets of Brooklyn, swinging a baseball bat at my head.
  15. crucial
    of extreme importance; vital to the resolution of a crisis
    There were two crucial things I needed to bring with me on a trip to meet Abner Doubleday.
Created on Mon Feb 09 20:10:32 EST 2026 (updated Fri Jun 12 15:58:36 EDT 2026)

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