The Art of Fielding

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and cursing.

“He remembered a line from Professor Eglantine’s poetry class: Expressionless, expresses God.”

As Schwartz watches Henry for the first time, the shortstop’s potential and sense of power on the field fill him with awe. Henry seems to occupy a transcendent state in which earthly concerns can’t affect him. This foreshadows Henry’s eventual downfall and makes it even more troubling as Henry is plagued by worries about his friends.

“He wished that college required you to use your body more.”

Henry feels uncomfortable at Westish, where he considers himself too small-town to fit in with the intellectuals. He worries that his conservative background will set him apart and tries to minimize discussion of Lankton, his hometown. Henry finds his classmates’ conversations daunting and feels most comfortable on the baseball field.

“Coach Cox could afford to treat him as an equal. Much the same way, perhaps, that a priest appreciates his lone agnostic parishioner, the one who doesn’t want to be saved but keeps showing up for the stained glass and the singing.”

Coach Cox and Owen have an unusual relationship: Because Owen doesn’t try to assert his authority as a player, Cox views him as an objective contributor. The metaphorical comparison of Owen to a “lone agnostic parishioner” reveals that he doesn’t worship at the altar of baseball to the extent that his teammates do.