Manny Ruiz, 53, minor league baseball scout, slumps on a cracked vinyl bar stool at The Dugout, the dive two blocks from the stadium, scribbling notes in his beat-up leather binder. The air smells like fried cheese curds, stale popcorn, and the sour tang of spilled draft beer, the AC cranked so high his forearms prickle with goosebumps even as the July humidity seeps through the cracked window frames. It’s 10:17 PM, post-game, the stands cleared an hour earlier, most of the players already on the bus to the next road trip. He’s got three pages of notes on Javi Morales, the 19-year-old walk-on shortstop who hit two doubles and gunned a runner out at home from deep in the hole that night, the kind of raw talent that could get Manny the long-shot promotion to the MLB scouting staff he’s been chasing for three years. He’s just circling a line about Javi’s tendency to drop his back shoulder on outside pitches when a woman slides onto the stool two spots down, the scent of vanilla and sandalwood cutting through the bar’s greasy haze.
He recognizes her instantly. She was the one in the front row of the stands all game, yelling so loud her voice went hoarse when Javi made that throw, wearing a faded custom jersey with MORALES stitched across the back. She flags the bartender, orders a pinot grigio, and when she turns back, she nods at the team logo embossed on the corner of his binder. “You writing that he drops his back shoulder on outside pitches?” she says, a half-smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. Manny blinks, surprised. No one but fellow scouts ever picks up on that kind of detail. He nods, and she laughs, low and rough, like she’s spent years yelling over stadium crowds. “I’ve been telling him that for two years. Thinks he knows better than his mom.” She’s Lila, Javi’s mom, moved to town six months earlier from Tucson, driving four hours every weekend for games before that, ever since Javi’s dad bailed when the kid was 10.
The conversation flows easier than any he’s had since his wife died eight years earlier. He hasn’t so much as looked twice at a woman since his wife passed, has convinced himself any kind of personal life would distract from the job he’s built his entire identity around, but Lila doesn’t feel like a distraction. She knows all the inside baseball terms, doesn’t flinch when he talks about how Javi’s going to have to bulk up 15 pounds to make it past high A, even jokes about how she’s been forcing protein shakes down his throat since he was 16. When a group of rowdy college kids pile in the door, yelling about their intramural softball win, she shifts one stool closer, her knee brushing his under the bar, warm through the thin fabric of his khakis. When she reaches past him for a stack of napkins, her elbow brushes his forearm, and he has to fight the urge to lean into the contact. She holds his gaze a beat longer than polite when he teases her about the way she yelled at the umpire for a bad strike call in the seventh, her eyes dark, crinkled at the corners from laughing.
The internal fight hits him hard, halfway through his third beer. The unwritten rule for scouts is clear: you don’t fraternize with players’ immediate family, not even for a casual drink. If word gets back to his boss, the promotion he’s poured every spare minute of the last three years into is gone, no questions asked. He should pay his tab, leave, cut the conversation off now. But he doesn’t want to. This is the first time in eight years he’s talked to someone who doesn’t only see him as the guy who can make or break a kid’s career, the first person who’s asked him what he does for fun, not what he thinks of the next prospect. Disgust curls in his gut at the thought of risking his reputation, but it’s weaker than the warm hum of excitement low in his chest, the way he feels like she actually sees him, not just the binder he carries everywhere.
She leans in a minute later, pulling a crumpled piece of notebook paper out of her purse, her hand brushing his wrist when she passes it to him. It’s her own notes, she says, scribbled during games over the last two years, little details no coach has ever picked up on: Javi hits better when he eats a peanut butter sandwich an hour before the game, he gets tense if he hasn’t talked to his little sister the night before, his swing goes to shit if he’s stayed up too late playing video games. “I trust you with him,” she says, quiet enough only he can hear, and he feels his chest tighten. He tells her then, straight out, that he’s not supposed to talk to players’ families, that it could cost him his shot at the big leagues. She nods, pulls a pen out of her jacket, scribbles her phone number on a bar napkin, tucks it into the pocket of his scouting coat before he can protest. “Call me when the season’s over,” she says. “No pressure. Just coffee.”
The rain is coming down harder when he walks her to her car, holding his beat-up golf umbrella over her, their shoulders pressed tight together under the small space, the cold rain dripping onto the back of his neck. She stops at her driver’s side door, leans up, kisses his cheek quick, her lips warm against his cold skin, before she climbs in. He stands there until her taillights turn the corner, then walks back to his own truck, pulling the napkin out of his pocket. The edge is a little smudged from the rain, but her name, Lila, and the ten digits next to it are clear as day. He tucks the napkin into the front pocket of his binder, right next to his notes on Javi, turns the key in the ignition, and turns the heater up to chase the chill off his skin.
