The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach

I’m not much of a sports fan, although I appreciate baseball more than any other.  Not as in a George Will Men at Work paean to the pastoral roots and nobility blah blah blah, but as a game which is simultaneously simple and incredibly complex and which comes with beer and a hot dog.  And even though every sports novel ever written or sports movie ever made ends with the underdogs defeating the champs, books like Shoeless Joe or The Natural still grab me in a way other novels with the same themes don’t.

But The Art of Fielding isn’t a baseball novel.  Even though shortstop Henry Skrimshander drives the action, the story feels more like a baseball team working behind a pitching machine instead of a human being.  Henry is a cipher – he comes from a nowhere place and it is only an accident that his skill is discovered before he joins the blue-collar life of his home and family.  His presence on the campus of Westish College (home of the Harpooners!) doesn’t leave a ripple.  He is no scholar, ladies’ man, partier, frat boy.  The only book he owns is The Art of Fielding, a Zen-like meditation on the shortstop’s place in baseball.  He exists only for the season, and there he is a certified genius, playing with effortless intuition and bringing his teammates up to and beyond their potential.  He even starts a streak of error-free games that seems destined to match that of Aparicio Rodriguez, author of The Art of Fielding, and that attracts the attention of agents and Major League scouts.  Even as he becomes the center of attention to people in the story, the story does not revolve around him.

If anything, the novel centers on the almost magnetic appeal of Westish College itself.  Mike Schwartz, Henry’s advocate, coach, and role model, is a dedicated scholar whose skill at sports bought him a ticket out of a Chicago slum to Westish, along with permanent injuries and an addiction to painkillers.  Pella Affenlight, daughter of the college’s president, comes to Westish to escape an oppressive marriage and to find the purpose in her young life.  Pella’s father, Guert, whose academic career began and (he hopes) will end at Westish, has fallen irretrievably in love with a student, who happens to be Henry’s gay roommate Owen.  Only Owen, a  serene and self-possessed scholar-athlete, seems to resist Westish’s appeal and demands,  flagrantly flouting college norms and planning for his post-Westish life.  As Guert learns from Owen about love and about the late-life discovery that he too is gay he also learns Westish can be cloistered and oppressive to some, nurturing and supportive to others.

Either way, the college seems to be an unchanging place even as the characters discover that their lives and purposes are evanescent.  Affairs, dreams, creative expression will all appear and vanish in moments.  But, as one character observes, only Henry’s performances constantly occur in public venues where people are rooting for his failure.  It is at those times that Henry’s intense focus is necessary.  And when Henry loses that focus in a bizarre accident, it seems that his potential professional career will disappear like a fastball into a catcher’s mitt.  Redemption – for Henry, for Mike and Pella, and for Owen and Guert – is possible, and when Chad Harbach achieves it, it is not only organic to the story but points all of the characters to the next act of their lives.

Check the WRL catalog for The Art of Fielding