The Art of Fielding: A Novel (61 page)

“Don’t know, Coach. I can sure give it a shot.”

Coach Cox was staring at Starblind with fervid intensity, as if trying to see through his pinstripes and into his soul. “Meat,” he said. “Take Loonie down to the bullpen, play a little catch.”

“Right, Coach.” Arsch grabbed his chest protector, and he and Loondorf headed down the foul line. Starblind toed the rubber, checked the runners, and threw a fastball that the batter clobbered off the left-field wall. One run scored easily. Quisp held the other runners to second and third: 2–1 Amherst, nobody out.

“Goddamnit.” Coach Cox picked up the bullpen phone and waited for Arsch to answer. “Get Loonie ready quick.” He signaled for time and strolled out to the mound to chat with Starblind, though Henry knew that the real purpose of his visit was to give Loondorf a chance to get loose. As Coach Cox spoke, Starblind nodded forcefully and slammed the ball into his glove. Everyone on the Westish bench could read his lips.
I’m fine. I’m fine.
“He ain’t fine,” Suitcase grumbled, spitting a fragment of sunflower-seed shell between his front teeth. “He’s out of gas.”

The next Amherst hitter walked to load the bases. Up came a lefty, thin as a toothbrush, who held the bat straight over his head as if trying to catch lightning. With the count 2 and 0, he hung back on a big slow curveball and punched it the other way, just past a diving Boddington.

The runner from third scored, the runner from second scored, and here came the runner from first, rounding third as Quisp dug the ball out of the left-field corner. Quisp rose with the ball and took a momentum-gathering gallop, lifting his right knee and then his left high in the air like a Cossack dancer. He fired with all his might toward home plate, tumbling forward into the grass as he let go.

It was a throw you could dry laundry on, head-high all the way, and only a step off target. A one-in-a-thousand throw. Schwartz snagged the ball on the infield side of the plate and dove back to slap a tag on the arm of the sliding runner.

The umpire swept his hands out, palms down. “Safe!”

“What?!” Schwartz leaped to his feet, stared wildly at the umpire, fell into the baffled, beseeching, knee-buckled, disbelieving, palms-up, how-can-you-do-this-to-me crouch of the wronged and righteous athlete. He grabbed the ball from his mitt and shook it, a menacing display, as if he intended to bash the umpire over the head with it.

“Three!” Henry yelled as he saw the base runner break. “Three three three!” Schwartz whirled toward third, but it was too late, and the guy who’d hit the ball, the toothbrush-thin lefty, slid in without a throw. Schwartz slammed the ball into his mitt. His negligence had given Amherst an extra base, but at least the ugly tableau with the umpire had been broken. Another half-second and he would have done something to get himself ejected, if not arrested. Now he stalked down the third-base line, away from the ump, fuming. Coach Cox jogged out, ostensibly to argue the call, but mainly to intervene if Schwartz got riled again.

Quisp was lying flat on his stomach in left field. “What’s wrong with Q?” Henry asked. Before anyone could answer, the bullpen phone rang. Henry was the nearest to it. “Hello?” he said.

“Was he out?” Arsch asked.

“Sure looked that way.”

“Shit.” Arsch’s voice sounded soft and doomed. “Loonie can’t go. He’s throwing like sixty.”

“Okay,” Henry said.

“Coach has already been to the mound this inning. If he goes again, he’ll have to change pitchers.”

“Right.” Henry dropped the phone, sprinted onto the field, and latched onto the arm of Coach Cox, who was headed toward the mound to pull Starblind from the game. “Phil can’t go,” Henry said. “Dead arm.”

They were standing halfway between home plate and the pitching rubber. Henry wondered how close you had to get to the mound before it qualified as a trip to the mound. “Then we’ll go with Quisp,” Coach Cox said.

Henry pointed toward left field. “Quisp is down too.”

“Jesus F. Christmas,” Coach Cox muttered. “What the goddamn is going on?”

Two trainers jogged out to look at Quisp, who’d put so much power into that gorgeous throw that he’d torn an abdominal muscle. Eventually he was able to stand and limp back to the bench, supported by Steve Willoughby and Coach Cox. Sooty Kim grabbed his glove and jogged out to left, goose-stepping to stretch his cold legs. Five to one, Amherst. Runner on third, nobody out, cleanup hitter at the plate. The A-M-H-E-R-T girls leaned out over the railing like purple Furies, screaming through their makeshift Pepsi-cup megaphones. Albatross, Henry thought. These guys will never forgive me.

The game had already been paused for what seemed like an eternity, but just as the batter settled into his stance, Schwartz asked for time. The umpire granted the request with obvious reluctance. Schwartz hustled out for a quick word with Starblind, who nodded once and mopped the sweat from his forehead.

Starblind stared down the runner at third, fired a four-seam fastball right at the chin of the hitter, who jerked his hands toward his face as he flung himself to the ground to get out of the way. The ball caromed off the neck of the bat and toward the Amherst dugout. The Amherst coach, who was already charging onto the field to scream at Starblind, detoured to give the spinning ball a petulant kick. The umpire could easily have ejected Starblind—and also Schwartz, who’d clearly ordered the pitch—but instead, and perhaps in compensation for missing the call at home, he simply issued a warning and sent the Amherst coach back to the dugout.

The batter dusted off his jersey and stepped gamely back into the box, but a disastrous thought had been planted in his subconscious. The next pitch, a slow curve, buckled his knees for strike two, and then Starblind threw a mediocre fastball, high and outside, which he waved at unconvincingly.

Starblind hopped off the mound, pumped his fist. He looked suddenly revived—shoulders thrown back, jaw relaxed. He jammed the next batter with his best fastball of the game, inducing a pop fly to Ajay, then struck out the Amherst first baseman, stranding the runner at third. As the Harpooners ran off the field, shouting to one another that they weren’t through yet, never say die, time to put some runs on the board, Henry marveled, not for the first time, at Schwartz’s uncanny ability to orchestrate situations. How did he know that the ump wouldn’t eject Starblind, leaving the Harpooners totally pitcherless? How did he know that that particular batter would be so readily intimidated? How did he know that one strikeout would rejuvenate Starblind, at least for the moment?

The answer, presumably, was that Schwartz didn’t know any of that. But he’d thought of a plan, something to try, and he’d been bold enough to try it.

Loondorf and Arsch returned from the bullpen. “Loonie,” Henry said, draping an arm around the freshperson’s drooping shoulders, “I need you to go coach first.”

“Okay, Henry.” Loondorf trotted out toward the A-M-H-E-R-T girls. Owen sat down beside Henry and produced a library copy of
Fear and Trembling
from beneath the bench. “Protect me from errant balls,” he said, tucking his bookmark under the lip of his navy cap. “I have fragile bones.”

“I thought Coach Cox wasn’t letting you read anymore.”

“He’s not. Protect me from Coach Cox too.”

Neither team threatened to score until the bottom of the eighth, when Starblind and Izzy singled, putting runners on the corners with nobody out. Owen lined out to first, a bit of bad luck on a well-hit ball, and trotted back to the dugout to resume his reading.

Henry could feel a quiet, electric idea slithering through the ballpark as Schwartzy strode to the plate and pawed at the chalk-swirled back line of the batter’s box with his size-fourteen spike. He was Westish’s all-time home-run leader, and he looked the part. The Amherst fans, except for Elizabeth Myszki, fell quiet. The tiny contingent of Westish parents stood and whistled and clapped. The other six thousand people slid a few inches forward in their seats, together producing a subtle shift in energy that was evident throughout the park. The Harpooners, except for Henry and Owen, leaned over the lip of the dugout, yelling mild profanities to distract the pitcher while inwardly they prayed, contorting their fingers and toes into whatever configurations they felt would produce the most luck. There was a lot of superstitious fidgeting and shifting—nobody wanted to move around too much, which was itself unlucky, but nobody wanted to get stuck in an unlucky pose.

Henry too, as he sat two steps behind his antsy teammates, inches from Owen’s elbow, tried to find a pose that would help. Deep down, he thought, we all believe we’re God. We secretly believe that the outcome of the game depends on us, even when we’re only watching—on the way we breathe in, the way we breathe out, the T-shirt we wear, whether we close our eyes as the pitch leaves the pitcher’s hand and heads toward Schwartz.

Swing and a miss, strike one.

Each of us, deep down, believes that the whole world issues from his own precious body, like images projected from a tiny slide onto an earth-sized screen. And then, deeper down, each of us knows he’s wrong.

Swing and a miss, strike two.

“Rally caps!” yelled Rick O’Shea from the on-deck circle. Everyone—except for Owen, who continued to bury his nose in his book—flipped his hat inside out so the skeletal white underfabric showed. Henry followed suit.

But it wasn’t to be. Schwartz took a third massive swing, glared angrily at the untouched barrel of his bat, and stalked back to the dugout, head down. The Amherst fans roared. Two outs.

Rick O’Shea strode to the plate to try to redeem Schwartz, settled into his left-handed stance.
Come on,
Henry thought.
One time.
Izzy, who’d gotten a sneaky lead at first, took off. The pitch was a fastball down and in, right where Rick liked it.
One time.
Rick dropped his hands and torqued his hips mightily, his pinstriped belly trailing behind. The pitch was ankle-high, but Rick’s looping swing caught it square on the fat part of the bat. The clear loud peal cut through the crowd’s noise. The ball described a parabolic arc through the dark Carolinian air, climbing and climbing still higher, high above the light stanchions, so high it could only come straight down, and would either clear the fence or be caught. The right fielder drifted back, back, until his back was pressed against the wall. He flexed his knees, intent as a cat, and leaped, hooking his free arm over the top of the wall as he stretched his glove toward the plummeting ball…

“Yes!” Owen, who’d seemed not even to be watching, flung his book aside and vaulted the dugout stairs. “Yes yes yes yes
yes!
” The ball landed in the Amherst bullpen, a yard past the wall. Owen, the first to arrive at home plate, beat madly on Rick’s helmet with both hands, leapfrogged onto his shoulders as the whole team, Henry included, danced around.
“Yes!”

The Harpooners trailed by only one. When Boddington followed with a sharp single to right, the Amherst coach finally signaled to the bullpen for a fresh pitcher. The righty who jogged to the mound looked more like an accountant than a star pitcher—he was Henry’s height, pale-haired and sunken-chinned, with slouched and flimsy shoulders. “Name’s Dougal,” Arsch told Henry. “Pitched a two-hitter against West Texas the other day. He is
filthy.
”

Henry nodded. The ability to throw a baseball was an alchemical thing, a superhero’s secret power. You could never quite tell who possessed it.

Sooty Kim stepped to the plate. Dougal checked the runner at first, slide-stepped expertly off the mound, and drilled Sooty in the shoulder with a ninety-plus fastball. Sooty dropped to the ground and writhed there for a while. He climbed to his feet and walked down to first, wincing as he kneaded his upper arm.

“Did he do that on
purpose?
” Arsch wondered aloud, not without a whisper of admiration in his voice, as the now thoroughly disgruntled umpire warned both benches.

Henry shrugged. It certainly looked purposeful. It looked like Dougal was exacting revenge for the brushback pitch Starblind had thrown three innings before—a reckless, almost crazy thing to do in such a close game.
You want to throw at my guy? Fine. I’ll put the go-ahead run on base, and then I’ll get out of it.
Which is just what he did, striking out Sal Phlox on four pitches.
“Filthy,”
Arsch reiterated. “Just plain filthy.”

Top of the ninth. As Starblind warmed up, Coach Cox kept scanning the length of the dugout, frowning all the while, the way a hungry person keeps opening an empty refrigerator on the off chance he might have overlooked something. He needed a pitcher, but he didn’t have one. Starblind was finished, was basically lobbing the ball to home plate, but he was going to have to do that for one more inning.

The leadoff hitter smoked a double into the gap between Sal and Sooty Kim. The next batter yanked a long drive down the left-field line, bringing the Amherst players surging happily out of their dugout, but it curled just foul. Starblind’s whole body looked limp, spent. Schwartz lifted up his mask and looked beseechingly toward the dugout.
Even me,
his eyes said.
Even I might throw better than this.

Maybe I should volunteer, Henry thought. I can throw as hard as Starblind. Harder, even. Get in there, fire a few fastballs over the plate, stop the bleeding. We come back and win it in the bottom of the inning. Storybook ending. So what if I haven’t eaten in a while?

Before he could indulge the fantasy any further, Starblind threw another wobbly pitch. The hitter lined a head-high shot up the middle. The Amherst players surged toward the field again, ready to celebrate another score. Izzy came flying in from nowhere, stretched full-out in midair. The ball vanished into his glove. He landed on his stomach and reached out with his right hand to touch second base, doubling off the stunned runner. Two outs. Starblind, somehow, induced a fly ball to end the inning. The Harpooners sprinted off the field, shouting nonsense. Down by one, one last chance.

“Arsch,” barked Coach Cox. “Get a bat. You’re hitting for Ajay.”