Manny Ruiz, 59, has scouted Texas League high school and college prospects for 22 years, and he’s got two non-negotiable rules: never fraternize with team management’s family, and never let a distraction get in the way of writing an honest scouting report. He’s stubborn to a fault, still holds a grudge against his ex-wife for bailing on their marriage right when he was up for a major league scouting spot all those years ago, so he’s kept everyone at arm’s length since, content with bad beer, sunflower seeds, and the quiet hum of his beat-up F-150 on backroads. He’s in a tiny town outside San Antonio this weekend to chase a 19-year-old shortstop with a 95 mph throw and a tendency to swing at low curveballs, lingering at the post-game booster cookout after the rest of the scouts bailed for the highway.
He’s leaning against a warped pine picnic table, beer sweating through the paper coozie in one hand, scouting notebook half-crumpled in the other, when her elbow brushes his ribs. He smells lavender lotion cut with hickory smoke and cheap peach seltzer before he looks up, and when he does, she’s holding his gaze like she’s got every right to, silver hoop earrings catching the golden hour sun, a tiny faded scar slicing through the left edge of her top lip. She reaches past him for a plate of smoked brisket on the table behind him, her hip pressing to his for half a second longer than necessary, and smirks when he tenses up. “You’re the scout that camps out in the back of my bar every time you’re in town, right? Always scribbling in that little book like you’re hiding state secrets.”
Her name is Lana, he finds out, and the second she says she’s the ex-wife of the team’s general manager, the guy he’s been locked in a petty professional feud with for a decade, his first instinct is to step back, mumble an excuse, and head for his truck. The GM has made it clear more than once he’s not fond of independent scouts poaching his best players, and if he catches Manny within ten feet of his ex, he’ll lock him out of every team event within 200 miles, kiss that major league promotion goodbye before it’s even on the table. Disgust pricks at the back of his throat first—he’s spent years writing off everyone associated with the GM as entitled, stuck up, more interested in branding than the actual game—but then she sits down on the picnic bench next to him, her denim-clad thigh warm against his through the slats, and asks him what he thinks of the shortstop.
He doesn’t mean to talk to her for an hour. He doesn’t mean to tell her about the way the kid’s left foot drags when he rounds second base, or how he saw him stay after practice for two hours hitting off a tee last week, no coaches around, just him and a bucket of balls. She laughs when he complains about the GM’s habit of overhyping mediocre prospects to jack up their signing bonuses, and tells him she left the guy three months ago, no one in town knows yet, she’s still crashing in a tiny cottage on the edge of town instead of the big lake house they shared. She steals a sunflower seed from the bag sticking out of his flannel pocket, cracks it between her teeth, and winks when he stares at the movement of her jaw. The roar of the crowd from the wiffle ball game a few yards away fades to static, the taste of his beer goes sweeter, and he can’t remember the last time someone asked him about his job like they actually cared, not just what he could do for them.
He glances across the cookout halfway through their conversation, sees the GM red-faced yelling at a teenage umpire over a bad call, and the old instinct to run kicks in hard. He’s got a 3 hour drive back to his apartment in Austin waiting for him, he’s got 12 scouting reports to write by Monday, he’s got every reason to walk away right now. But then Lana rests her hand on his wrist, her thumb brushing the faded scar he got from a line drive back in college, and asks him if he wants to come back to her place for a better beer, no crowds, no GM, no stupid rules.
He hesitates for half a second. He thinks about the promotion, about the grudge he’s carried for 12 years against his ex, about all the times he’s talked himself out of something good just because it felt too risky. Then he tucks his scouting notebook into his back pocket, finishes the last sip of his beer, and nods.
They slip out of the cookout separately, no one looking, and meet in the dark gravel parking lot. She squeezes his hand once, quick, before she climbs into her beat-up Subaru, and he gets in his F-150, turns the key, old George Strait blaring from the radio he’s had since 2007. He crumples up the note he scribbled on a napkin earlier that said NO DISTRACTIONS, tosses it out the open window onto the gravel. He shifts the truck into drive, keeping his eyes on her taillights as they pull onto the two-lane road, no regrets buzzing under his skin like the low hum of the engine.
