Manny Ruiz is 51, spent 18 years crisscrossing the Midwest for the Kansas City Royals’ minor league system, scouting high school pitchers who can hit 94 on the radar gun and don’t melt down when the bases are loaded. His worst flaw, one he’s carried like a chip on his shoulder since his ex-wife left him for a college baseball coach she met at a scouting dinner eight years prior, is that he extended the league’s “no fraternization with player families” rule straight into his personal life. He doesn’t chat up strangers at bars, doesn’t let anyone sit next to him if he can help it, doesn’t stay in one place long enough to learn a waitress’s name or a local bartender’s favorite whiskey.
He walks into the Tap Room on Tulsa’s 11th Street at 8:37 PM, work boots caked with red Oklahoma dust, scouting notebook stuffed in the pocket of his faded navy windbreaker, left shoulder sore from hunching over bleachers for seven hours straight. The place smells like fried pickles and oak-aged bourbon, the jukebox spitting out Merle Haggard’s *Mama Tried* so loud the vinyl booths rattle a little. He grabs the last open stool at the far end of the bar, orders a Bulleit on the rocks, pulls out his notebook to jot down notes about the lefty he watched that afternoon: 17-year-old Jase Holloran, throws a slider that breaks so sharp it makes batters look like they’re tripping over their own feet, composure so steady he didn’t even flinch when a line drive whizzed two inches past his ear.
Ten minutes later, a woman slides into the empty stool next to him, no apology, no ask if the seat’s taken, just a wave at the bartender and a soft huff of laughter when she knocks her elbow into Manny’s bicep reaching for the wine list. She smells like lavender and menthol and the faint, sweet tang of clove cigarettes, wears well-worn Levi’s and a faded Jase Holloran travel ball hoodie, silver hoop earrings catching the neon beer sign light, fine laugh lines fanning out from the corners of her hazel eyes when she glances down at his notebook, sees Jase’s name scrawled in block letters across the top.
“That’s my boy,” she says, nodding at the page.
Manny’s chest goes tight enough to make his bourbon catch in his throat. He knows the rule. No talking to a prospect’s family before the draft, no personal connections, no hint of impropriety. One wrong move and he loses the job he’s built his entire adult life around, the only thing that kept him upright after his wife left. He should lie, say he’s just a local fan, shut his notebook, pay his tab, drive back to his soulless motel off the interstate. He doesn’t.
She tells him her name is Lena, she’s 48, a dental hygienist who works out of a small clinic east of town, raised Jase alone since her husband died in an oil rig accident when Jase was five. She leans in a little when he admits he’s a Royals scout, her knee brushing his under the bar, warm denim against the worn canvas of his work pants, and he has to fight the urge to shift closer instead of pulling away. When she drops her paper napkin and they both reach for it at the same time, her fingers brush his, calloused at the tips from years of gripping dental tools, and he feels a jolt run up his arm that has nothing to do with the cheap neon lighting.
They talk for two hours, the bar thinning out around them, the jukebox shifting from Haggard to Patsy Cline to old Johnny Cash. Manny tells her about scouting trips in small Iowa towns where the only place to eat is a gas station that sells pickled eggs and beef jerky, about the time he watched a 16-year-old pitcher throw a no-hitter in the rain with a broken cleat, about how he hasn’t let himself care about anything other than the next prospect in almost a decade. He’s half-disgusted with himself the whole time, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for someone from the league to walk in and see him laughing with a top prospect’s mom, but Lena doesn’t push for inside info, doesn’t ask for special treatment for Jase. She just listens, her shoulder pressed fully to his now, the soft fabric of her hoodie rubbing against his windbreaker, and when she laughs at his bad joke about umpires who can’t tell a strike from a grapefruit, her hand rests on his forearm for three full seconds before she pulls it away.
The bartender calls last call at 11, dimming the overhead lights so only the neon signs glow. Manny’s first thought, the one he’s ashamed of even having, is to ask her to come back to his motel. He knows she’d say yes, can see it in the way she holds eye contact half a beat too long, the way she tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear every time he talks about baseball. Instead, he pulls out his official Royals business card, slides it across the bar to her. “Tell Jase I want to meet him for coffee tomorrow at the diner down the street, 10 AM,” he says. “Official. No tricks. You can be there too. I want to tell him both what we’re offering for his contract, and how I’ve never seen a kid with his level of head on his shoulders.”
Lena blinks, surprised, then smiles, the corner of her mouth tucking up the same way Manny saw Jase smile when he struck out the last batter of the game that afternoon. She tucks the card into the pocket of her jeans, her fingers brushing his again when she takes it.
He walks her to her beat-up Ford F-150 in the parking lot, the air cool enough to raise goosebumps on his arms, crickets chirping loud in the patch of weeds by the curb. She leans in before she climbs in the truck, kisses his cheek soft, her lips warm against the three days of stubble he’s got growing there, and says she’ll see him tomorrow.
He stands there for a full minute after she drives off, the taillights fading into the dark down Route 66, his hand pressed to the spot where she kissed him, notebook open in his other hand, Jase’s name circled twice in blue ink.
