Rico Morales is 52, a minor league baseball scout for the Cleveland Guardians organization, three years removed from a messy divorce that pushed him to quit his six-figure pharma sales gig and chase the job he’d dreamed of since he played JV ball in El Paso. His biggest flaw is a self-imposed rule against anything more than a one-night stand in towns he’ll never visit again, convinced attachment will derail the nomadic career he fought too hard to land. He’s been camped in Tucson for three weeks scouting Javi Ruiz, a 17-year-old lefty who throws a 94 mph fastball and a curve that drops like a cinder block off a roof, and he’s days away from driving to Dallas for a high school tournament when he stops at The Slider, a dinky craft beer bar off Oracle Road, after a game.
It’s 9:17 PM, the Diamondbacks are getting blown out on the bar’s only TV, the linoleum under his work boots is sticky with spilled seltzer and old lager, and he’s halfway through a hazy IPA when she slides onto the stool two feet to his left. Her bicep brushes his when she leans forward to flag the bartender, and he catches a whiff of lavender hand lotion, sun-warmed cotton, and faint salt from sitting outside for four hours in 90-degree heat that afternoon. He glances over, recognizes her immediately: Marisol, Javi’s mom, who’d sat three rows behind the backstop yelling at the home plate ump when he called a borderline curve a ball in the sixth inning.
She catches him staring at the thin scar snaking up her left forearm and smirks, tapping the raised skin with one chipped red nail. “Softball accident, 2018. Tore my rotator cuff sliding into third. Javi still teases me for trying to show off to his team.” Her voice is low, rough around the edges from yelling at games all season, and her silver hoop earrings catch the neon BUD LIGHT sign over the bar when she tilts her head to laugh.
Rico freezes for half a second. He knows the rules. No fraternizing with prospect family, not even casual small talk, unless a team rep is present. It’s a fireable offense, and he worked too damn hard to get this role to throw it away for a pretty woman with a sharp laugh. He mumbles a polite response, turns back to his beer, and tries to ignore the way her knee keeps brushing his under the bar when she shifts in her seat.
She doesn’t let him ignore her for long. She pushes a bowl of salted peanuts the bartender set between them across the Formica counter, her knuckles grazing his when she lets go. The jolt runs straight up his arm, the kind of tingle he hasn’t felt since he was 19 sneaking into his college girlfriend’s dorm after curfew. “That ump was blind today, by the way,” she says, sipping her own citrus IPA. “That curve Javi threw in the sixth was a strike, no question. You know it, I know it, even the guy selling chili dogs in the parking lot knew it.”
He can’t help but laugh. She’s right. He’d written the exact same note in his scouting notebook ten minutes after the call. He finds himself talking before he can stop himself, going into detail about the tight, consistent break on Javi’s curve, the small tell of him tapping his cleat twice when he’s stressed on the mound, the tiny adjustments only someone who watches 200+ games a year would pick up on. He catches himself halfway through, tenses up, and waits for the ask: the plea to push Javi higher up the draft board, the request for a meeting with the front office, the demand for a bigger signing bonus. He’s heard it all from dozens of prospect parents, all hungry for the payday, none asking if their kid even wants to play pro ball.
She doesn’t ask for any of that. She talks about how Javi started throwing rocks at soda cans in their backyard when he was 7, how she worked two waitressing jobs to pay for his pitching lessons after her husband left them eight months prior, how she doesn’t care if he gets signed at all as long as he doesn’t burn out before he turns 18. Rico’s chest tightens. He can’t remember the last time he talked to someone who didn’t treat him like a walking access pass to the major leagues, who actually cared about the kid behind the stat line.
The bar empties out around them, the bartender starts wiping down the counters for closing, and Marisol leans in, her face six inches from his. He can smell the citrus of her IPA on her breath, feel the heat of her shoulder pressed to his, and she lowers her voice so no one else can hear. “I know who you are, by the way. Saw your Guardians lanyard hanging out of your truck when I left the field. I don’t want any favors. I just wanted to talk to someone who sees Javi, not just a number on a spreadsheet.”
Rico doesn’t pull away. The paranoid part of him that’s spent three years avoiding attachment, that’s terrified of messing up the good thing he’s built, screams at him to pay his tab, drive back to his motel, and forget he ever spoke to her. But the larger part of him, the part that’s been lonely since his ex-wife moved out, the part that’s sick of eating fast food alone in dim motel rooms, the part that hasn’t had a real, unplanned conversation with someone who doesn’t care about his job title in years, wins out. He admits he was supposed to leave for Dallas on Saturday, already had a hotel room booked for the tournament.
She stands up, slings her faded denim jacket over her shoulder, and her hand brushes his when she grabs her purse off the bar. “Cancel it,” she says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Javi’s got a bullpen session Sunday morning. You can come over for breakfast first. I make chilaquiles that’ll make you forget all about Dallas.”
He walks her to her car, the night air still warm enough that he doesn’t need his flannel, crickets chirping in the scrub brush lining the potholed parking lot. When they get to her beat-up 2016 Honda CRV, she pauses, reaches up, and brushes a fleck of peanut shell off the collar of his shirt, her fingers lingering for half a second on the warm skin of his neck. “I’ll text you my address,” she says, before she climbs in, rolls down the window, and winks at him as she pulls out of the lot.
Rico stands there for a minute, watching her taillights fade down the dark road, then pulls out his phone, shoots his boss a quick text saying he’s extending his Tucson trip a few extra days, that he needs more time to evaluate Ruiz before filing his final report. He tucks his phone back into his jeans pocket, grins, and turns to walk back into the bar to order one last beer before he heads back to his motel.
