The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [164]
The next batter, Adam Starblind, drew a walk. “Your pitcher seems a bit rattled,” Affenlight noted.
“Trevor? Please. These rich preppy kids couldn’t hit him with a ten-foot pole.”
Affenlight wanted to point out that several of the Harpooners came from extremely modest or even straitened circumstances, and that the team didn’t have a baseball facility anywhere near this luxurious—how on earth did a public school afford it?—but it would be hard to make the case while wearing his best Italian suit, and anyway the game had reached a critical moment, two runners on, the tying run at the plate. The batter was the Harpooners’ replacement for Henry Skrimshander at shortstop—Affenlight prided himself on knowing the students’ names, but the freshpersons often eluded him. The Latino non-Henry, whatever his name, performed several rapid signs of the cross as he stepped into the batter’s box. He took one strike, then another. He gamely fouled off two tough pitches, then slapped a ground ball that glanced off the fingertips of the second baseman’s glove. Bases loaded.
“Almost!” cheered Affenlight, with what amounted to a kind of sneering glee. Remorse quickly followed. What if that second baseman was this woman’s child? In any event, he was somebody’s child.
“Do you have a son on the team?” he asked, trying to atone, but the woman simply shushed him and pointed to the field. Mike Schwartz, his daughter’s cuckolded lover, was walking toward home plate.
The catcher called time and jogged out to calm Trevor, who was storming around behind the pitcher’s mound, talking to himself. Affenlight focused his attention on the lovely Owen, who, while standing with both feet on the tiny island of third base, reached into his uniform’s back pocket and produced a roll of mints. He offered one to Coach Cox, who declined with folded arms, and then to the third baseman, who shrugged and held out his palm.
Mike Schwartz, by comparison to Owen—or, really, to anyone—had a snarling, hyperactive mien in the batter’s box, like a barely restrained bull. His back foot gouged at the dirt until it found a purchase it liked; his hips twisted, screwing his knock-kneed stance more tightly into the ground; his shoulders bobbed while his fists made curt, jerky motions that slashed the bat head through the air. He crowded close to home plate, smothering it with his bulk, daring the pitcher to find a place to throw the ball. Affenlight couldn’t tell whether all this kinetic menace came naturally to Schwartz or was a performance designed to intimidate; probably any such distinction would be false. Only in the instant of the pitch’s release did he quiet himself, and then the swing became compact and dangerous, and the pitch—a high fastball, probably in excess of ninety miles per hour—shot off the bat with a pure loud ping of aluminum. Affenlight leaped to his feet, thrust a fist in the air. The ball landed in the tall firs beyond the left-field wall, and all four Harpooners—Owen, Starblind, not-Henry, and Schwartz—stomped joyously on home plate in turn. Four to three, Harpooners.
Adam Starblind, who had been playing center field, came in to pitch the last two innings. The Titans stranded a runner on third in the eighth, and in the ninth not-Henry and Professor Guladni’s son Ajay turned a handsome double play to end the game. Affenlight wended his way through the stands toward Duane Jenkins, the Westish athletic director, who was standing behind the Harpooner dugout, filming the celebration with his cell phone.
“Nationals,” Duane said, beaming. “South Carolina. Can you believe it?”
“I can now.” Affenlight held out his hand. “Congratulations, Duane. A lot of hard work went into this.”
“I’d like to take the credit. But we all know who to thank.” Duane jerked his head toward the field, where Mike Schwartz had somehow obtained a folding chair and was sitting quietly apart, undoing the buckles of his shin guards while his teammates jitterbugged around Adam Starblind, who thrust the big faux-gold trophy aloft.
Affenlight wrapped an arm around Duane’s schlumpy