The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [28]
“… and this pitcher I was there to scout, boy, did he turn out to be a dog, but I was too lazy to get up and…”
If he wanted? Of course he wanted. It was the wanting, the incredible strength of the wanting, that had prevented him so far. Affenlight felt afraid to look—afraid, perhaps, that looking might commit him irrevocably. But to what? Commit him to what?
Now, finally, as Dwight paused for breath, Affenlight indulged the desire that had been simmering in his mind. He snuck a peek into the Westish dugout. Oh. His features were indiscernible at this distance, lost in the heavy shadows that shrouded that corner of the dugout. A thin stream of light connected his cap to the book in his lap.
“… that’s what scouting is,” Dwight was saying, more or less. “Following up on tips and notes, ninety-nine point five percent of which inevitably turn out to be…”
Features indiscernible but contours unmistakable: slender-limbed, right knee flipped girlishly over left, torso gently canted in that direction, bundled up against the cold in a hooded Westish sweatshirt with a windbreaker on top of that. Chin at a downward tilt, studying his book instead of the game. Affenlight felt something young swell up in his chest, a thudding pain interspersed with something sweet, as if he were being dragged by an oxcart through a field of clover. He blinked hard.
Dwight shook his head slowly, as if disbelieving his own memory. “I’ve seen a lot of baseball, Guert. But never have I seen someone like Henry, in terms of sheer—what would you call it, L.P.?”
L.P. reclined with his elbows spread wide on the row behind him, his wraparound shades disguising his eyes. He answered as if from the depths of sleep: “Prescience.”
The maroon-clad batter rifled a one-hopper to short. Henry backhanded it without a flourish and threw him out. The ease and power of the throw startled Affenlight; he himself was several inches taller than Henry and had been no slouch at quarterback, but he’d never thrown a projectile half that hard.
“Henry can flat-out play,” Dwight went on. “The only question mark in some people’s minds is competition. It’s tough to guess a guy’s ceiling when he’s in such a lousy environment for baseball. No offense, Guert.”
“None taken, Dwight.” The next batter popped up, and the Harpooners jogged off the field to soft applause. There couldn’t have been more than thirty people left in the stands.
“I’ll tell you one thing, though. After the way he played in Florida last week, the word is out. That’s how scouting works nowadays—you don’t discover guys so much as you take the master list and rank them. And Henry’s on the master list. The only reason this place isn’t crawling with scouts today is it’s so dang cold and we’re so dang far from a decent airport. But they’ll be here.”
Airport. Pella. Affenlight checked his watch.
“As of yesterday we had him rated the third-best shortstop in the draft, behind Vance White, who was first-team all-American last year, and this high school kid from Texas who scouts call the Terminator, because he looks like he was built in a lab.” Dwight paused. “But after seeing Henry today, I’d have half a mind to take him over both those guys. He’s not big enough to be the best, he’s not fast enough to be the best, he doesn’t have the body or the raw numbers to be the best. He just is.”
“Beautiful to watch,” L.P. opined from behind his shades.
Dwight nodded, his pale-blue eyes and pink-rimmed nose glistening in the cold. “He understands the game like a veteran major leaguer. And defensively there’s no competition. Today he ties Aparicio Rodriguez’s NCAA record for consecutive errorless games by a shortstop. Fifty-one and counting.”
Dwight’s BlackBerry bleated. He answered in a hushed, almost childlike voice and wandered off, phone pressed close to his ear. He was wearing a wedding band; Affenlight pictured a perky blond sales rep with a diamond of reasonable size,