Manny Rios, 57, has spent the last 31 years as a minor league baseball scout covering northern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. His left forearm bears a pale, raised scar from a 2019 batting practice line drive that caught him off guard while he was scribbling notes on a 16-year-old left-handed pitcher, and he still drives the same dented 2012 Silverado he bought the year his wife, Carol, passed away from ovarian cancer. His biggest flaw, the one his older sister teases him about every Thanksgiving, is that he’s dug himself so deep into his routine he refuses to let anyone new cross the threshold of his bungalow or even buy him a beer at the local VFW fish fry, convinced any deviation from the life he built after Carol died is a betrayal of the 22 years they spent together.
He’s at the Akron farmers market on a humid July Saturday to grab pickled okra from the Amish stand he’s frequented for 15 years, scouting notebook tucked into the back pocket of his faded jeans, Cleveland Guardians cap pulled low against the sun, when he turns too fast around a display of heirloom tomatoes and slams his shoulder into a woman holding a paper bag of peaches. His iced coffee sloshes over the rim of its plastic cup, splattering the front of her pale blue linen button-down and the top of her left wrist. He stammers an apology, fumbling for the crumpled napkins in his pocket, and stops short when he recognizes her face from the photo her 17-year-old shortstop son sent him three months prior. It’s Lena Hale. He’s talked to her on the phone a dozen times about her son’s practice schedule, his grades, the way his deadbeat dad skipped out halfway through his junior season and left the kid without a ride to away games. He’d avoided meeting her in person on purpose, not just because the scout’s rulebook explicitly forbids fraternizing with players’ immediate family, but because every time he heard her low, warm laugh through the phone line, he felt a twist in his chest he hadn’t felt since Carol was alive.
The smell of grilled sweet corn from the food truck at the end of the row hangs thick between them as he dabs at the coffee stain on her shirt, his knuckle brushing the soft skin of her collarbone for half a second before he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned. She laughs, swatting his wrist playfully, and tells him the shirt was thrifted anyway, she’s been meaning to bleach it for a painting project. The vanilla lotion she’s wearing mixes with the scent of her ripe peaches and the vinegar from the pickled okra jar tucked under his arm, and he has to clear his throat to keep from sounding like a flustered teenager when he asks if she wants to sit on the nearby weathered picnic bench to wipe the coffee off her arm properly.
For the first 10 minutes, they stick to safe topics: her son’s batting average, the way he’s been putting on 10 pounds of muscle this summer working for a local landscaper, the offer Manny helped him get to play at Kent State next fall. But when he mentions the tomato row he still plants every year in his backyard even though he hates raw tomatoes, just because Carol loved slicing them on toast for breakfast, she leans forward, her elbow brushing his scarred forearm, and tells him she does the exact same thing with sunflowers, because her grandma used to plant them along her fence line when she was a kid. He fights the urge to pull his arm away, half disgusted with himself for feeling a spark with a woman 15 years younger than him, half giddy that someone actually gets why he still does those stupid little rituals for someone who’s gone. She teases him about the tattered scouting notebook sticking out of his pocket, says her son tells her Manny’s the only scout who sits through all nine innings of every game instead of scrolling his phone in the stands after the first three pitches.
When she mentions her son signed his letter of intent to Kent State two weeks prior, and he won’t be eligible for the MLB draft for another two years, the tight knot in Manny’s chest loosens all at once. There’s no rule to break right now, no professional line to cross. He watches her brush a strand of honey-blonde hair out of her face, the sun catching the tiny silver hoop in her left nostril, and he doesn’t overthink it when he asks if she wants to grab a draft beer at the dive bar down the street once the market closes. She smirks, says she’ll agree only if she gets to buy the first round, to pay him back for wasting his iced coffee on her shirt.
He walks her to his truck first to drop off his okra and her peaches, tucking his scouting notebook into the glove compartment instead of shoving it back in his pocket, for the first time in 30 years not thinking about pitch speeds or exit velocity or upcoming scouting reports. He holds the market’s exit gate open for her, his knuckle brushing the small of her back for half a second, and neither of them mentions the scouting rulebook once for the rest of the afternoon.
