The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Baseball is the stuff of great stories. It’s somehow noble and mythical and sets an all American stage for dramatic action to take place. I know some people are just fanatical about it and I thought The Art of Fielding might be aimed at those people. Instead, like some of the great baseball movies, “The Natural”, “Bull Durham”, “Field of Dreams”, this book is really not only about baseball, but more about friendship, commitment, and the ability to be really great at something.

The story follows a young shortstop from the day he is noticed by a precocious college ball player who recruits him to play for a small Midwest liberal arts college, through his amazing college career. Henry Scrimshander seems destined for the big leagues, but when a rogue throw ends in disastrous results, all of the characters lives are jilted off kilter and set into motion.

The characters are just delicious – Henry’s best friend and unofficial trainer, his gay roommate, the college president and his daughter and the rest of Henry’s teammates are beautifully rendered. They make one big messy group of people that are in and out of each other’s lives in ways that are hard to imagine when the book begins. I came to love them all for different reasons, but mostly for their eccentricities and their loyalty to each other. Each of them is striving for greatness in his/her own way. Henry’s best friend is convinced that he needs to go to law school while in reality his true talent is recognizing great athletes and helping them reach their potential. The college president is nearing the end of his successful career and realizing that his success has been at the expense of his true self while his daughter is in a failing marriage where her husband has kept her from ever figuring out what her true talent is. All of this is set against the meteoric rise and potential fall of Henry’s college baseball career.

Harbach writes of college life so realistically it reminded me what I had forgotten about the day to day world of the undergrad. The dining hall, the dorm and the student bar are a perfect backdrop for a hopeful story about the life’s potential.

I resisted this book for a while. I saw it in a magazine and thought “another baseball book, not my thing.” Then it showed up on a lot of lists for best books of 2011 and I reconsidered. I’m glad I did. This is Harbach’s first novel and I am in awe of his plotting and craftsmanship, his ability to develop characters and make them believable. I find a lot of parallels between this book and those of John Irving. It has the same feeling of myth and magic while exploring squirmy subjects and real life situations. Like Irving, I envision Harbach with a little smirk on his face as he types away. I, for one, will be watching for Harbach’s future work with anticipation on mine.