The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [163]
“Excuses, excuses,” said Affenlight, half joshing.
“Oh, we’ll come to play,” replied Owen. “Mike wouldn’t have it otherwise. The real problem is pitching. We’ve never played so many games in so few days. Remember the old poem Spahn and Sain and pray for rain? For us it’s Starblind and Phlox and then get rocked.”
“And lots of walks.”
“And poor Coach Cox. I don’t know how long we can keep it up. Adam has already pitched two complete games. His eye contains that crazed I-can-do-anything look, but I don’t know if he can lift his hand above his shoulder.”
For as many games as Affenlight had attended this season, he’d yet to see Owen actually play. Now, as he settled into his seat, that beautiful creature was settling into the left-handed batter’s box, a clear plastic face-mask attached to his batting helmet to protect his damaged cheek from further injury. Owen had complained vociferously about the contraption, which he considered unflattering and potentially performance-disrupting, but Coach Cox—good man—turned a deaf ear.
Whereas some hitters twitched and stomped while awaiting the pitch, chopping their bats into the strike zone, Owen exuded a listless calm. He might have been standing in the quad, pursuing a postlecture discussion, holding an umbrella against a light spring rain. The first pitch blazed past the inside corner, inches from his hip, and struck the catcher’s glove with a sound more powerfully percussive than any Affenlight had heard at Westish Field, even when Adam Starblind was pitching. Affenlight flinched in fear for Owen’s safety, leaving fingerprints in his hot-dog bun; Owen merely turned to watch the pitch go by, cocking his head in contemplative disagreement when the umpire called it a strike.
The second pitch came in just as fast but more toward the center of the plate. Owen, after waiting what seemed to be far too long, dropped his hands and swung. It was a baseball commonplace, dimly remembered from Affenlight’s childhood days as a halfhearted Braves fan, that left-handed batters had more graceful swings than righties, long effortless swings that swooped down through the strike zone and greeted shoe-top pitches sweetly. Affenlight didn’t see why this should be so, unless the right and left sides of the bodies possessed inherently different properties, something to do with the halves of the brain, but Owen’s languid, elliptical swing did nothing to deflate the hypothesis.
The ball looped over the third baseman’s head and landed squarely on the left-field line, kicking up a puff of chalk. Fair ball. The home crowd let out an anguished sigh that seemed all out of keeping with an empty-bases hit in a three-run game. As Owen loped safely into second base, they rose, almost in unison, and began to clap. Affenlight thought them very magnanimous to cheer so heartily for an opponent; somehow Owen inspired that kind of behavior in people.
Affenlight stood to clap as well, but it was the pitcher who, as the noise continued to mount, sheepishly tipped his cap. Affenlight, flummoxed, asked the woman beside him, who was wearing a gold-and-navy CHUTE YOUR ENEMIES sweatshirt, what happened. “That lucky twit,” she said, indicating Owen, “just broke up Trevor’s no-hitter.”
Out on the electronic scoreboard in center field, the 0 in the Westish hit column had changed to a 1. Affenlight reproached himself; a real fan would have noticed that immediately. He reproached himself again; he’d gotten a dab of mustard on his Harpooner tie. Not that he didn’t have three dozen more at home. “I don’t know,” he said. “I thought it a rather skillful play.”
The woman chuckled. “I’m pretty sure his eyes were