Pitch perfect

The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, Fourth Estate, RRP£16.99, 450 pages

“It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”

– ‘A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A Bartlett Giamatti’ (1998)

Appearing in almost 400 games, 364 of those starts, does not make one an expert but the question I have been asked the most is: how does one make it to baseball’s major leagues?

My answer is invariably the same. It takes about 1,000 things to go right and you need a village of folks to help you along. Coaches and trainers will play a huge role but no more than parents, siblings and others who, at times, give up a piece of their ordained path to allow a loved one the opportunity of getting it all – if there is such a thing.

My path now, as a baseball broadcaster, allows me a small role in being a caretaker of the game, and in that capacity I get to devour book after book relating to the US’s national pastime. Chad Harbach’s debut novel The Art of Fielding is the best I have read in some time. It is, in fact, extremely difficult to review this book purely as a baseball novel because it is so much more than that. The coming-of-age that comes with one’s college years is one of my favourite parts of the book and the friendships forged within those delicate pages will be with me for some time.

The Art of Fielding is to protagonist Henry Skrimshander what The Art of Pitching by Hall of Famer Tom Seaver is to aspiring pitchers – baseball’s version of the Bible to those who believe. Henry, Skrim or Skrimmer, as he comes to be known, takes his trusty Zero (his name for his glove) everywhere with him. The name comes from the question oft-repeated by his Mom: “How many errors today, Henry?” “Zero, Mom.” Henry’s inspiration in the book is the baseballer Aparicio Rodriguez, who preaches stillness, anticipation and a particular zen way of playing the difficult position of shortstop.

There is a part of Henry, with his small-town Lankton roots, that seems destined never to achieve his dream of playing for the St Louis Cardinals, the team he supports. His future, after he puts his glove Zero down for good, will be at the local Piggly Wiggly grocery store. Henry is in need of a push in the right direction, and he gets it from Mike Schwartz.

Schwartz, a bear of a young man and captain of football and baseball at Westish College, manhandles Henry into his college. A perennial doormat, the baseball team needs the next-level player and the Skrimmer is it. Owen Dunne is Henry’s gay roommate who becomes the soul of Westish. Guert Affenlight is the college’s president, who finds love as his daughter Pella comes back into his life.

On the verge of breaking Rodriguez’s consecutive errorless streak, and with agents and scouts putting a dollar amount on his future professional services, Henry gets the “yips”. His perfect throws to first base have been replaced with doubt and uncertainty. “Steve Blass Disease” – an abrupt, inexplicable loss of form named after the real-life pitcher – has struck: Henry’s confidence is shattered, and all of the other characters become unhinged as well.

I always say that the athlete who is performing heroic tasks is the last person who can enjoy them. You are in the moment. To allow yourself a tiny glimpse into any joy you may be spreading is to doom yourself to failure for eternity. The baseball gods ensure this. For example: in 1988, I was pitching a game against the Philadelphia Phillies. Winning would mean the Mets would become the National League East champions. With two outs in the ninth inning and victory almost assured I took a second to locate my parents to see how happy they must be. For the next two pitches I had my Skrimshander moment. The round object in my hand became an alien that I had never seen before.

The essence of the game is what Harbach nails. When a former player watches a film about baseball we always have to ask: “Why couldn’t they get actors who can throw?” (Mr Redford and Mr Costner, you are not in this group.) When reading the majority of baseball books I always sense that the sights and sounds of the game that writers such as Roger Angell capture are somehow lost. This never happens in The Art of Fielding. The Westish dugout – sanctified, slovenly – represents all dugouts everywhere. In my day, scouts had radar guns and Sansabelt slacks; in the novel these are replaced by laptops and cell phones.

Schwartz aches for what we all ache for: “He yearns to possess some single transcendent talent, some unique brilliance that the world would consent to call genius.” In Harbach’s book all of the main characters have brilliance, but it is not for eternity – almost a rental, and time runs out. I got a taste of that when I retired at the ripe old age of 35; Henry comes face to face with his demons and mortality as a college junior. The Art of Fielding teaches you with the words of Thoreau, the presence of Melville and the stories of Emerson. But unlike Steve Blass in 1973 this book delivers strike after strike after strike.

Ron Darling played in the major leagues for 13 seasons and now is an Emmy Award-winning broadcaster