Heart of a Champion

“Whenever I’d asked my mother questions about my father, she’d described him as a saint, a perfect husband and father. I don’t blame her—what else could she do? But I didn’t have a strong sense of who he was. I’d hoped to learn from the trial what he was really like, good and bad. But to the doctors and the lawyers, my father was nothing but bones and blood and tissue. I hadn’t learned anything.”

Throughout the novel, Seth’s references to his father express a void. He faintly remembers his father’s voice and an expression they shared. Speaking about his father typically summons thoughts like these, indicating a yearning for his father’s presence and a desire for an understanding of who he was, how he would have interacted with Seth, and even what it was like when he died. Generic descriptions of his father are unsatisfying.

“For the next half hour Mr. Winter showed me how to field a ground ball, set my feet, and throw. He didn’t yell once, or act bored, or make me feel stupid.

After that he hit Jimmy and me fly balls and pop-ups. It was the same thing again. Mr. Winter got all over Jimmy if he made the slightest mistake. But he never barked at me. He treated me a thousand times better than he treated his own son, which is one of those things that makes no sense at all, but is true anyway.”

While Mr. Winter can be patient and forgiving with Seth, who is far less learned and talented than Jimmy, he expects perfect performance and consistency from his son. This is because Mr. Winter is set on Jimmy achieving the professional athletic success that Mr. Winter never did. Seth enjoys the attention and friendship but is ambivalent about the way Mr. Winter treats Jimmy. Meanwhile, Jimmy wants Seth to come to practice to mitigate the harshness of the treatment he receives.

“Jimmy talked baseball the whole afternoon. Earned run aver ages, slugging percentages, walks-to-strikeouts ratios. It was all new to me. But I wasn’t bored. They say that baseball is like a fever, and that once you catch it, you never recover. That day I caught it.”

When Seth visits Jimmy’s house for the first time, he sees that Jimmy’s bedroom is a shrine to baseball. Seth is introduced to the intricate inner world of the game as well as its esoteric history—and becomes hooked. Unlike other addictions in the