The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [185]
Coach Cox read the lineup in his usual way, but you could tell by his rapid mustache-stroking that his nerves were up. “Starblind Avila Dunne. Schwartz O’Shea Boddington. Quisp Phlox Guladni.” He paused, examined their faces, stroked his mustache some more. “Big game today. Real big. But you guys are ready. Play together, and you’ll be fine. I’m not one for speeches, as you know, but I just wanted to say that… I’m really proud of you all. You guys are ballplayers all the way.” Coach Cox glanced around, stroking his mustache, embarrassed at his own floridity. “Mike, you got anything to add?”
Last night, as he lay awake in the hotel room listening to Meat snore—at least they had separate beds this trip—Schwartz had developed a strong premonition that Henry would show up today. It made no sense, there was no way, and yet the premonition had only grown stronger as the day went by, so that now Schwartz was surprised not to see the Skrimmer’s blue eyes as he scanned the huddle. Not that Henry had any business here. His presence, even as a spectator, would have been disruptive. Schwartz looked around the circle, cranked The Stare up to a 7, a 7½. He himself was clean-shaven, his razor burn finally gone, but his teammates had been cultivating playoff beards. Individually the beards ranged from wispy and pathetic to lush and shampooable; taken together they made the Harpooners look like a tough, grizzled group. Yes, Henry had helped them get here, whatever they accomplished they owed in part to him, but to win these last twelve games they’d had to fill the gap left by his absence as quickly as possible, and once you healed the Henry gap you had no place for Henry. Even Owen had a layer of soft grayish fuzz on his face.
While Schwartz lay awake, he tried to concoct a pregame speech that would whip his team into a frenzy. A real fire-and-brimstone number, based on his favorite theme, that ageless angelic theme, of the underdog outlasting the favorite, the oppressed bitch-slapping the oppressor. He was going to start by bringing up the namby-pamby Amherst mascot: Their team was called the Lord Jeffs, after Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the eighteenth-century British general who advocated using smallpox-infected blankets against Native Americans. And—so went the speech—not much had changed in three hundred years. The Amherst players were still Lords, still hip-deep in old-school power and privilege—imagine the practice facilities they had! Imagine the jobs they’d be given when they graduated! By comparison the Harpooners might as well have been sucking on smallpox blankets. They were going to answer to guys like the Amherst guys for the rest of their lives. Their average postgraduation starting salaries were miles apart—Schwartz had looked it up. So were their acceptance rates at places like Harvard and Yale and Stanford Law. Their first, best, and last chance for preemptive revenge was here, now, tonight. Crush the Lords or be forever crushed.
That was the sort of convoluted crap Schwartz kept coming up with, as he stared at the ceiling of the surprisingly cushy Comstock Inn while Arsch sawed logs. But pregame speeches didn’t depend on statistics or cute transitions. There wasn’t another Harpooner who cared about the relative socioeconomic status of Amherst and Westish grads, except maybe Rick, who’d beer-bonged himself out of his Ivy birthright and been banished to Westish. None of Schwartz’s teammates had Schwartzian ambitions. They just wanted to win a baseball game. Which was fine, better than fine, perfect, but it left him without a speech. His nerves were shot. It all came down to this.
He tried to take The Stare to an 8, let it level off when he noticed that the stares coming back at him were like 9, maybe 9½. Plus beards. Starblind was pawing a cleat at the dirt like a coked-up bull. Even Owen’s soft gray eyes above his soft gray fuzz expressed a deathly intensity. Schwartz had talked an awful lot of warrior bullshit in his