Rafe Escobar, 53, has been a minor league baseball scout for 22 years, and he’s got one ironclad rule: never fraternize with the families of prospects. He picked it up after a 2017 incident where a shortstop’s dad slipped him a $200 bottle of bourbon at a showcase, and the league nearly suspended him for perceived bias even though he’d already written the kid off as too hot-headed to make it past rookie ball. His other flaw? He still carries a grudge against his ex-wife for leaving him while he was on a 3-week scouting trip in the Dominican, even though he knows he missed 11 of their daughter’s 16 birthday parties before the split.
He’s camped out at a sticky vinyl bar stool in a dive outside Lima, Ohio, 9 p.m. on a humid August Saturday, when she slides into the seat next to him. Every other stool is taken by rowdy parents from the weekend high school showcase, so she doesn’t have a choice, but her elbow brushes his when she sets her glass of seltzer down, and he flinches like he’s been burned. The bar smells like fried cheese curds and flat Bud Light, the jukebox spitting out old Johnny Cash deep cuts so loud the glasses rattle on the counter.
He glances at her out of the corner of his eye. She’s wearing a faded 2008 Ohio State national championship hoodie, jeans cuffed at the ankle, work boots caked with dark mud he recognizes as muck from the honey farms dotting the county west of town. Her left hand has a smudge of beeswax on the knuckle, silver hoop earrings catching the neon beer sign light. She catches him staring at the leather-bound scout notebook splayed open on the bar between them, smirks, and nods at the page where he’s scribbled notes about a left-handed pitcher named Jase Carter, 92 mph fastball, good control, holds runners well.
“That’s my kid,” she says, and Rafe’s jaw tightens. He’s spent all weekend watching Jase, has him slotted as his top pick for the low-A affiliate he reports to outside Dayton, and talking to his mom is the exact kind of thing that could get both of them in trouble. He tries to mumble a noncommittal response and go back to his notes, but she leans in a little, shoulder almost pressing to his, and the scent of peppermint lip balm and wild clover hits him. “I saw you in the stands yesterday. You were the only scout who stayed for the JV game when Jase came in to close after the starter blew out his elbow. Most of you guys bolt the second the varsity game ends.”
Rafe’s resistance softens a little. He tells her he stays for JV games because that’s where you see how kids perform when they don’t think anyone’s watching, and she laughs, a warm, rough sound that makes his chest feel light the way it hasn’t since before the divorce. Her knee brushes his under the bar when she shifts to face him better, and he doesn’t move away. She tells him her name is Lila, she’s run a 40-acre honey farm by herself for 10 years, her ex-husband bailed the day Jase turned 8, decided he’d rather sell RVs in Florida than deal with a kid who wanted to play baseball 12 hours a day. He finds himself telling her about his daughter, 24 now, living in Portland, sending postcards every few months that he tapes to the wall of his pickup. He admits he missed her high school graduation because he was at a showcase in Tampa, and he still kicks himself for it.
When she reaches across the bar to grab a napkin to wipe a smudge of cheese curd grease off his wrist, her hand lingers for three full seconds, her thumb brushing the scar he got from a line drive that hit him playing JUCO ball back in the 90s. The buzz of it is sharp, half guilt, half something hotter he hasn’t felt in years. He knows he should wrap up the conversation, pay his tab, go back to his motel and finish his report, but he can’t make himself stand up. She teases him about the way he chews on the end of his pen when he takes notes, says Jase does the exact same thing working on his math homework.
Finally, he bites the bullet, tells her he’s got Jase ranked first on his list for the upcoming draft, that he’ll push the front office to offer a signing bonus that’ll cover his first two years of college if he decides not to go pro right away. He expects her to get excited, or to start asking for more, but she just nods, like she already knew. “I figured,” she says, her hand resting on his forearm, warm through the thin fabric of his team polo. “You don’t stay for JV games if you don’t think the kid’s worth it.”
He asks her if she wants to get out of there, go get pie at the 24-hour diner down the road, no strings attached, he’ll file his report first thing tomorrow, no special treatment, he swears. She smirks, stands up, slings her canvas bag over her shoulder, and says if he so much as thinks about lowballing Jase’s bonus, she’ll leave a jar of her sourest wild blackberry honey on his motel doorstep, the kind that makes your eyes water for 10 minutes after you taste it.
They walk out into the cool August night, the humidity lifting just enough that the air feels soft on his face. Crickets hum in the cornfields bordering the bar’s parking lot, a distant freight train rumbles down the tracks a mile away. When they cross the street to the diner, her hand brushes his, and he laces his fingers through hers, calloused from 20 years of gripping radar guns and turning notebook pages, against hers, calloused from lifting honey supers and hauling buckets of feed for her chickens.
