In the following chapter, three weeks have passed. We start discovering the passion Henry has for baseball and, above all, the shortstop Aparicio Rodriguez and his book The Art of Fielding -both player and book are a product of writer’s imagination[15]. The art of fielding by Aparicio Rodriguez, the greatest shortstop of all times, is a baseball instruction manual and a “philosophical guide to life”[16] in 233 short mantras, ” some of which are very specific about precise aspects of playing baseball, and some of which are more expansive and have a vaguely eastern philosophical feel to them”, as declared by the author in an interview[17]. Henry never leaves his copy of the book even at college and his craziness about the game reflects also on his glove, the one who chose years before for his birthday only because he had the name of his favourite player. After a sensational career in the Little Leagues, with zero errors on the field, the glove received the name of Zero. “The glove is not an object in the usual sense,” said Aparicio in The Art of Fielding. “For the infielder to divide it from himself, even in thought, is one of the roots of error”[18].
Henry’s shyness and his being uncomfortable outside the field is also caused by the lack of trust he received from his coaches.
Bold nowhere else in his life, Henry was bold in this: no matter what the coach said, or what his eyebrows expressed, he would jog out to shortstop, pop his fist into Zero’s pocket, and wait. If the coach shouted at him to go to second base, or right field, or home to his mommy, he would keep standing there, blinking and dumb, popping his fist. Finally someone would hit him a grounder, and he would show what he could do. What he could do was field. […] After every game his mom would ask how many errors he’d made, and the answer was always Zero. […] For once, he didn’t have to prove himself. His teammates and Coach Hinterberg knew that, even if he didn’t hit home runs—had never, ever hit a home run—he would still help them win.[19]
But in senior year, being the best player on the field wouldn’t be enough to impress college scouts: “College coaches were like girls: their eyes went straight to the biggest, bulkiest guys, regardless of what those guys were really worth”.[20] So, when Mike Schwartz asks him what college he is going to play baseball for, Henry and his family are hard to persuade that their son is really worthy to leave for a college for playing baseball. But Mike is so convincing that Henry finds his father speaking with Mike’s word on the importance of the project is going to be part of. “Henry’s dad, who so rarely strung four words together, […] went on to talk for the rest of the meal about sacrifice, passion, desire, attention to detail, the need to strive like a champion every day. He was talking just like Mike Schwartz.”[21]
Soon after this talk, he is catapulted into a completely new reality. He will spend his university years in Westish College, in Wisconsin, near the Michigan lake. He shares his room with Owen Dunne, a liberal and eclectic guy who is not ashamed of showing to the world that he is gay and has a precise idea on everything. “I was expecting someone larger,” he [Owen] explained. “Because of the baseball factor. My name’s Owen Dunne. I’ll be your gay mulatto roommate”[22]. Henry will have some difficulties in convincing her parents that to have a gay roommate does not be to become gay in a short time. After this shocking starting, Henry is left alone as he is not able to create relationships and Mike seems disappeared. Henry and Mike meet after a few months later, at the doors of the weight room of the gymnasium, in preparation to the tryouts for the baseball team which, unsurprisingly, Henry joins.
After some years, Henry is no more a freshman but a prospect, very close to Aparicio Rodriguez’s NCAA record for most consecutive errorless games. But he soon commits one, making a wrong throw and hitting Owen in the face. At this point, reasoning that at the turning point of his career he had made several mistakes, Henry begins to feel inadequate for the game and begins to have panic attacks, blaming on him the losses of his team. Schwartz tries to help him and his block, showing him how far he had arrived since he arrived to Westish three years before. But nothing, neither a call to his sister Sophie or a night chat with Owen seem capable to save Henry from going down into depression.
In an interview, the author Chad Harbach explains why it seems that Henry cannot recover from his crisis, trying to remove baseball and Aparicio Rodriguez from his life.
I think the book [The Art of Fielding] is about a kind of crisis moment where what the characters have always done and have always relied on turns out not to be enough at these critical moments. Because you can learn from books, but if you’re not constantly transforming yourself for real, at a certain point you get stuck and reliant on a way of thinking about things you do that’s not working anymore. You could argue that for Henry, “The Art of Fielding” has helped him immensely. If he really deeply understood everything that Aparicio was saying, he wouldn’t have any problems, but without the really profound life experiences on his own, he’s not going to reach that deeper level of understanding of the book. After everything he goes through in the course of the book, he’s going to go back and read “The Art of Fielding” in a different way.[23]
After a terrible game, in which for the first time he is replaced with another shortstop, Henry disappears and does not want to participate to the last games. He decides to resign from the team, as this is the best solution for everybody and to avoid Schwartz after having had a relationship with his girlfriend Pella. With a very plane narration, the reader realizes that this love story continues, with Pella and Henry going living together in a shared apartment. But suddenly Pella offers him some psychiatric drug, which he denies and Henry comes to back to the dormitory.
Everything that had ever happened was trapped inside him. Every feeling he’d ever felt. Only on the field had he ever been able to express himself. Off the field there was no other way than with words, unless you were some kind of artist or musician or mime. Which he wasn’t. It wasn’t that he wanted to die. That wasn’t it. That wasn’t what not eating was about. It wasn’t about perfection either.[24]
His last and unexpected possibility to recover comes from president Affenlight, who forces him to go with his team and play the finals. The real happy ending -if we can define it a “happy ending” of the book is between chapter 75 and 76: Henry goes back to the field after receiving the news of the death of Affenlight and, thanks to him, the Harpooners win the national title. But the all final is not narrated during the game, but after, at the hospital, where Henry is recovering from a collapse after scoring the last point for the Harpooners.