Manny Ruiz, 53, has spent the last 17 years as a minor league scout, driving 40,000 miles a year across the Southeast to watch 16 to 18 year olds chase fastballs and dream of the big leagues. He hasn’t let anyone get close since his wife left him seven years prior, convinced his rootless schedule and habit of talking a stranger’s ear off about pitch mechanics makes him unfit for anything more than one-night stands he can forget by the next state line. He’s got a scar snaking up his left elbow from the rotator cuff surgery that ended his own playing career, and a habit of chewing tobacco he swears he’ll quit next month, every month, for 27 years running.
He pulls into the parking lot of a dive bar outside Montgomery, Alabama, at 9:17 PM on a sticky August Tuesday, the leather of his truck seat stuck to the back of his khakis, his scout notebook smudged with sweat and Gatorade stains. The bar smells like fried dill pickles and old beer, the jukebox blaring Tracy Lawrence loud enough that the vinyl stools vibrate under him when he slides into the last empty spot at the bar. He orders bourbon on the rocks, pulls his notebook out to jot down notes on the left-handed pitcher he watched that afternoon, 94 mile an hour fastball, terrible control, throws like he’s mad at the catcher.
He reaches for a napkin to wipe a smudge of dirt off the page, knocks over the giant jar of pickled okra the bar keeps on the counter, brine sloshing over the edge and onto the denim button-down of the woman sitting two spots down. His hand brushes her forearm when he lunges to catch the jar before it shatters, her skin warm, dotted with freckles, smelling like coconut sunscreen and spearmint gum. He stammers out an apology, already digging for his wallet to pay for her shirt, but she laughs, a low, throaty sound that cuts through the jukebox noise, and swats his hand away. “Relax, it’s thrifted. Cost me three bucks. You can make it up to me by buying the next round.”
He agrees, and when she moves down the bar to sit next to him, her knee brushes his under the counter, light, intentional enough that he knows it wasn’t an accident. She’s in town for her niece’s 12U softball tournament, she says, works as a dental hygienist in Birmingham, hates beer, loves peach hard seltzer, has a 10 year old golden retriever named Muffin who eats socks. He rambles about the left-handed pitcher, about the time he scouted a kid who threw 97 but cried every time he gave up a hit, about the weird small town diners he eats at when he’s on the road. She doesn’t check her phone once, leans in when he talks, her elbow resting on the bar an inch from his, eye contact holding half a beat longer than polite, like she actually cares what he has to say.
For 45 minutes, he forgets his rule about not talking to strangers for longer than it takes to order a drink, forgets the voice in the back of his head that says anyone who sticks around long enough will leave anyway. When she checks her phone and says she’s got to head back to her hotel, the streetlights half out on the walk to her truck, she tilts her head at him, her lip tucked between her teeth, and asks if he wants to walk with her. He hesitates for half a second, the old instinct to make an excuse, to say he’s got an early game the next day, to run from anything that doesn’t involve a baseball diamond, before he nods, shoves his notebook in his back pocket, follows her out the door.
The air is thick with humidity, crickets chirping so loud they drown out the distant highway noise, the asphalt still warm under his white sneakers. When they get to her beat-up silver pickup, she leans against the driver’s side door, her hand brushing the scar on his jaw he got from a home plate collision in college, and says she likes that he doesn’t talk like every other guy who hits on her at that bar, all empty lines and no substance. He doesn’t overthink it, leans in and kisses her, her lips soft, tasting like peach seltzer and mint, her hand tangling in the gray strands at the back of his hair.
When they pull apart, she grabs his notebook out of his back pocket, scrawls her number on the back of the page with the left-handed pitcher’s notes, adds a tiny doodle of a baseball next to it, says she’s in town for three more days, if he’s not too busy watching teenagers throw balls, he should call her. He tucks the notebook back in his pocket, waves when she pulls out of the parking spot, stands there for a minute grinning like an idiot, the taste of her lipstick still on his mouth.
He drives back to his cheap motel room, pours a glass of the bottom-shelf bourbon he keeps in his suitcase, sits on the edge of the bed and stares at the number scrawled on the notebook page for three full minutes before he picks up his phone to type it in.
