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By Root 1325 0

a stall, locked the door, knelt down with his face to the bowl. He’d heard of major leaguers who threw up because of nerves. It wasn’t necessarily a sign of weakness or any kind of big deal. Still, he hoped no one could hear him. He hiccuped once, twice, dryly. He wasn’t sure how to hasten the process along. He stuck his index finger into his mouth and rooted around with it, rubbed his tongue, prodded the place where his tongue met his palate. His finger tasted like the pink soap, whose color suggested sweetness but which was warm and horrid. The taste made his stomach churn worse. Finally his finger found the right spot. His gut lurched, he gagged, and his lunch cascaded into the bowl in one long spilling fall. Slumped there on the floor, he felt better, almost sleepy. A happy surge of chemicals hit his brain.

He headed back to the locker room. He was behind schedule now, but he took care not to rush his own ritual preparations, the double-and triple-checking of jockstrap, cup, sliding shorts, pants, Cards T-shirt, jersey, sanitary socks, stirrups, belt, batting gloves, glove, and cap. He tested each part of his body for looseness: wrists, fingers, toes, all the anonymous muscles that surrounded his chest cavity and made up his neck and face. He untied his laces and retied them to the ideal tightness, so that the tops of his feet were pressured but not pinched. He followed his teammates outside.

“They’re baaaa-aaack,” Izzy said, meaning the scouts. Supereconomy rental cars stood in a row in the parking lot, their bright paint jobs dulled by the closet-gray day. Mixed in among them were a few bald-tired sedans, their foot wells littered with fast-food bags and Styrofoam cups. These were the two kinds of scouts: scouts who rented, and scouts who owned.

During warm-ups Henry’s arm felt light and pliant, lively as a bird—but it didn’t matter how you felt during warm-ups. You had to perform when the pressure was on. He hit a double in the first and a long, long home run in the third. But when an easy grounder came his way he hesitated, threw low and wide of first so that Rick had to scoop it out of the dirt. Three innings later, he did it again, only this time Rick couldn’t make the scoop. Another error, his fifth in a week; they were piling up like bodies in a horror movie.

After the game, the sports editor of the Westish Bugler, Sarah X. Pessel, approached him with her tape recorder. “Hey Henry,” she said. “Tough game.”

“We won.”

“Right, but personally.”

“I had four hits.”

“Right, but defensively. It seems like you’ve been struggling. Couple more shaky throws today.”

“We’re fifteen and two,” Henry said. “That’s the best start in school history. We just have to keep improving.”

“So you’re not worried about the way you’ve been throwing the ball?”

“Fifteen and two,” he repeated. “That’s what counts.”

“What about your personal future? Doesn’t that count too? With the draft just eight weeks away?”

“As long as the team’s winning, I’m happy.” Whenever Henry set some kind of record, or was named somebody’s Player of the Week or Month, Sarah would ask him for a comment, and he would tell her, with the practiced blandness of an all-star, that he’d gladly forgo the plaques and stats and trophies, would even be happy to ride the bench, if it meant that the Harpooners, after more than a hundred years of trying, would finally win a conference title. Until today, he’d always been certain he meant it.

“Do you know who Steve Blass is?” Sarah asked.

“Never heard of him,” Henry lied. Steve Blass was an all-star pitcher for the Pirates in the early ’70s. In the spring of 1973 he suddenly, inexplicably, became unable to throw the ball over the plate. He struggled for two years to regain his control and then, defeated, retired.

“What about Mackey Sasser?”

“Never heard of him.” Sasser was a catcher for the Mets who’d developed a paralyzing fear of tossing the ball back to the pitcher. He would double-, triple-, quadruple-, quintuple-pump, unable to believe it was okay to let go. Opposing fans would loudly, gleefully count the number