The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [191]
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