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| Image via the Indianapolis Public Library |
Baseball season is underway, and while the Reds are off to another tremendous start (a 3-0 loss to the Boston Red Sox on Opening Day), it seemed fitting to publish this review.
When it comes to sports fiction with a literary bent, you'll be hard-pressed to find many suggestions aside from The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.
This book was a sensation in 2011. It only took me 15 years to get around to reading it.
The novel is about baseball. Growing up. College life. Relationships. The burden of expectations. The fear of success.
Henry Skrimshander is an immensely talented shortstop, a human vacuum cleaner with a rocket arm at the most challenging defensive position in the infield. Brought to Wisconsin's Westish College at the behest of his mentor and (mostly) friend Mike Schwartz, Henry excels at his craft. He's obsessed with a fictitious book called The Art of Fielding by equally fictitious MLB player Aparicio Rodriguez, one of the all-time great defensive shortstops.
Though slight in stature, Henry excels and attracts the attention of professional scouts, who travel from all around to the remote Wisconsin college to see the kid play. He eventually closes in on the errorless streak set by his hero (Rodriguez) before encountering the worst case of the yips ever recorded. Suddenly and without reason, Henry loses confidence. His first career error is a throw that sails wide of first base, clocking a teammate in the head as he sits in the dugout.
The error doesn't count thanks to a technicality (it ends up being a shortened game, and the results revert back to the previous inning, meaning Henry's error didn't happen), but Henry is a mess. While he's still a capable hitter, he can't throw the ball to first base, double- and triple-clutching as he tries in vain to do something he's done thousands of times before. He's Steve Blass and Chuck Knoblauch and Rick Ankiel and Steve Sax, all major leaguers who suddenly and inexplicably developed "the yips," the inability to locate the strike zone and/or make routine throws.
He can't escape that moment. The perfection he chased, and the big-league interest he attracted, are gone. Henry's not humbled. He's humiliated and eventually hangs up his cleats. In the meantime, the Westish Harpooners, a perpetual punching bag in their conference, make an unlikely championship run with their best player sidelined by doubt and inutility.
Various subplots include Henry's strained mentor-mentee relationship with Schwartz, the team captain and catcher who creaks when he walks and finds comfort in various painkillers and sedatives; the tragic relationship between college president Guert Affenlight and an exceptional male student named Owen (at first a rarely used player on Henry's and Schwartz's team and also Henry's gay roommate); and Schwartz's growing attraction to Affenlight's daughter, Pella.
This is a sprawling, lengthy novel (maybe even slightly overstuffed) that demands a lot from the reader. The text can be dense, filled with literary allusions and wordplay. It is definitely a literary novel that screams "I'm a literary novel that's not just about baseball but existential stuff, too!" Overall, though, the small college setting and baseball scenes won me over.
I do think Henry is a bit of a cipher. You like the kid and you root for him, but you just don't feel like you know much about him. Other characters, especially Schwartz, are more convincingly drawn. It also overreaches at times and becomes bogged down in its many subplots, stealing momentum away from the main narrative.
That said, it's a memorable book with solid characters and, at times, some inspired humor. Let's call it a ground rule double.
