The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [192]
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