Rafe Ortega, 53, minor league baseball scout, leans against the side of a fried cheese curd truck at Tampa’s annual fall craft beer festival, half-watching a group of 20-somethings play cornhole and half-wishing he’d bailed on his buddy’s invitation to come. He’s been on the road 312 days this year, bouncing between high school fields and small college stadiums across the Southeast, scribbling notes on pitcher hip rotations and outfielder throw speeds in a tattered spiral notebook he’s had since 2018. His only real routine outside of scouting is avoiding anything that resembles a date, still burnt from his 2016 divorce, convinced every woman his age is just looking for someone to split a mortgage with and listen to them rant about their ex-husbands for 3 hours over dinner.
The air smells like burnt kettle corn and citrusy hops, and he’s just about to text his buddy he’s heading home when a woman carrying a plastic cup of bright pink sour beer stumbles over a kid’s dropped stuffed octopus at his feet, bumping his shoulder hard enough that a few drops of his hazy IPA slosh over the rim onto his flannel sleeve. She apologizes immediately, dabbing at his arm with a crumpled napkin, and he’s about to brush it off when she points to the faded scout patch sewn onto his chest, right over his heart. “You were at the Ocala high school playoff game last Tuesday, right? The one with the left-handed pitcher who kept over-rotating his hip?”
He blinks, surprised. Most people don’t notice the patch, let alone remember a random high school pitcher’s mechanics. She’s 49, he guesses, silver streaks running through her dark curly hair pulled back in a ponytail, a tiny scar above her left eyebrow, wearing a faded Florida Gators softball hoodie and scuffed white sneakers. She says her name is Lena, she’s the athletic trainer for that Ocala high school, she saw him scribbling notes in the stands all game, agreed with every quiet mutter he made about the coach leaving the kid in too long even when his fastball dropped 8 mph.
She stands close enough that he can smell coconut shampoo mixed with the sour raspberry of her beer, and when a group of rowdy college kids push past to get to the beer tent, her knee brushes his, and she doesn’t step back. He finds himself leaning in a little too when she talks, holding her eye contact longer than he’s held anyone’s in years, laughing when she mimics the head coach’s red-faced tantrum when the ump called a balk on his star pitcher. He’s spent years making fun of guys his age who chase casual connections at festivals, convinced it’s a sad look for a man pushing 55, so the lurch of desire in his gut makes him snort internally at his own hypocrisy. The disgust at his own eagerness twists in his gut for half a second before it fizzles out, because she’s asking him what he thinks of the Gators’ freshman closer this year, not about his 401k or if he’s good with home repairs.
By the time the sun starts dipping low over the fairgrounds, painting the sky streaky tangerine and lavender, they’re sitting on the curb sharing a paper plate of fried Oreos, still talking baseball. She mentions she was supposed to drive up to Gainesville tomorrow for the regional playoff game that’s at the top of his scouting list, but her pickup died on her last week, and she was stuck taking a 3 hour Greyhound bus up. The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them: he’s driving up at 8 a.m., he’s got an extra seat, she can ride with him if she doesn’t mind him stopping to get gas and a pack of beef jerky off I-75.
She grins, and he swears his chest feels lighter than it has in years. “Only if you stop at that praline pecan stand just north of Ocala. I’ve been craving those things since last spring.” He agrees, and when she hands him her phone to type in his number, her fingers brush his, calloused from wrapping ankles and taping wrists 40 hours a week, warm, and he feels a jolt run up his arm that has nothing to do with the cold beer he’s been drinking.
They stay on the curb another 20 minutes, talking about nothing and everything, and when she says she needs to head home to pack, she leans in and squeezes his wrist gently, her thumb brushing the scar he has there from a line drive that hit him when he was playing JUCO ball in 1989. He stands there holding the empty paper plate of Oreos, watching her walk to her car, already mentally adjusting his packing list to add an extra coffee cup for her, since he knows bus station coffee is terrible.
