The Art of Fielding and Scotch - Caramel Cracker Jacks

When I flipped open the paperback version of Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding I found a several paragraph blurb from a glowing review by tough New York Times critic Michiko Kakitani.   The book was also listed on multiple best books of the year lists, making it to the number one spot in some instances.  Needless to say, I had high expectations for this book.   I had first read about The Art of Fielding about a year ago in a Vanity Fair article.  The article is written by one of Harbach's friends and it chronicles the long and winding road Harbach endured to get The Art of Fielding published.  Harbach worked on the book for ten years.  The book was rejected by many agents, but eventually it became the subject of a bidding war by the big publishers and after his years of toil, Harbach is now a well paid literary darling.  Well I am happy to report that for me, the book truly lived up to the hype.  I loved it and Harbach has created a group of lovable and indelible characters that to some extent are extraordinary for their ordinariness.  Some may describe this as a book about baseball, but for me this book was a loving portrait of a small liberal arts college - here, called Westish.  Having gone to (and loved!) such a college, the book really struck a cord with me.  I was surprised to read that Harbach went to Harvard undergrad, since he creates such a realistic and detailed depiction of the small liberal arts college experience.  Baseball is a big part of the book though - it follows the story of a young South Dakotan baseball phenom who becomes the unlikely star of the Westish team.   The baseball theme of the book led me to attempt to make homemade crackerjacks.  More about the popcorn and book after the jump.

Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding is the story of Henry Skrimshander, a teenage baseball prodigy from South Dakota who, without any effort really on his part, ends up as a student and athlete at Westish College, a small somewhat prestigious Wisconsin liberal arts college that is located on the banks of Lake Michigan.  In addition to telling Henry's story, the book is about others who are part of Henry's life at Westish - the kid who discovered Henry - his teammate, mentor, and only friend, Mike Schwartz; the dapper college president, Guert Affenlight, and his wayward daughter, Pella.  The book is narrated by these five characters throughout.  Another major character of the book, though not a person whose perspective the reader gets to experience (unfortunately) is Owen, Henry's brilliant, eccentric and gay roommate (and teammate on the baseball team).  The novel opens with a description of Henry's artful and mysteriously perfect fielding as shortstop of his high school team, playing in a tournament somewhere in the Midwest.   The person watching Henry play is Mike Schwartz, the captain and catcher of the Westish baseball team.  Schwartz is a big lug of a guy, a committed athlete and student who came from an extremely poor and troubled background in Chicago and has made himself essentially into the king of the school at Westish.  Schwartz is a big character, and more than anything a great motivator of those around him.  I must admit I fell in love with Schwarz as a character rather quickly - I am not sure if this is what Harbach intended, but his star of the book Henry is a bit of a snooze, as sometimes the supremely gifted tend to be.  Henry is untouchable and Schwartz is so human, he is irresistible.   Schwartz is what you wished that cute college jock was actually like.   Anyway, Schwartz notices Henry, after all his games are over, practicing fielding ball after ball like a machine - perfect every time, and so Schwartz, ever the booster of Westish sports, figures out a way to get Henry, who was probably headed to the local South Dakota community college, to Westish.  Henry arrives at Westish and immediately feels isolated and out of place.  His roommate, Owen, is brilliant, sophisticated and gay - three things Henry has not had much experience with.  Schwartz, who lured Henry to Westish, is nowhere to be found - he is entirely immersed in football season.  Henry is shy and intimidated by Westish. While he knows baseball as well as anybody in the world, that is pretty much the limit of his world experience - he obsessively reads the same book over and over - the  "The Art of Fielding" a book by the fictional baseball great Aparicio Rodriguez.  Henry knows the book by heart and apart from his identity as a shortstop, Henry does not really have much of a sense of self.    Eventually, baseball season gets started, and Schwartz becomes Henry's Svengali - he is with him always, trains with him starting at 5AM everyday and eats with him every meal.  In the Westish baseball team, Harbach has created a familiar and likable cast of characters - the no nonsense working class coach, the privileged, womanizing players, the big gross belching boys.  Into this he throws Owen, who his teammates nickname Buddha, who in addition to being an accomplished scholar and lover of the arts also loves baseball.  This, for me, was something extremely unique to the small liberal arts college experience - a sense of people having an extremely well rounded experience  - a drama geek could also be play on the varsity soccer team.  Of course the team was mostly made up of jocks, but there were also a few others on the team as well.  Off the baseball field, the story is also narrated by Guert Affenlight, the president of the college and his daughter Pella.  Guert is a handsome, scholarly bachelor.  After years of aimlessness he became a start professor at Harvard but jumped at the chance to return as president to his alma matter, Westish.  Affenlight loves the school and loves his role as its leader.   His daughter Pella is beautiful and lost.  Despite her academic accomplishments at an East Coast prep school, she dropped out in her senior year and instead of college decided to marry an older architect and move to San Francisco.  While she was somewhat estranged from her father, when she finds herself in a bottomless depression, her marriage stifling, she comes home to live with her father in his apartment above the president's office at Westish.  Rather than give his daughter the attention she needs, Affenlight finds himself utterly and hopelessly in love with an entirely in appropriate person.  He is consumed by this relationship and Pella is left to muddle through on her own.  She becomes involved with both Mike Schwartz and eventually Henry, and finds her way back to herself in an unlikely way - by working as a dishwasher in the college cafeteria.   The key event in the book is a game where Henry, who has never made an error, makes an errant through that ends up hitting his roommate and friend Owen in the face as he sits in the dugout.  This spectacular error throws everyone in the novel off, but especially Henry, who immediately becomes unable to make a proper throw.  All of this just as he was being scouted as a major league player.  As Henry's life falls apart, Mike Schwartz's does as well, and it is his relationship with Pella that is the only thing that shows promise in his life.  I found Henry's complete mental breakdown fascinating (though sad) and felt like I understood Tiger Woods' downfall (on the golf course, not off) a bit better.  While only about a year or so of people's lives, The Art of Fielding is a hefty book (it weights in at around 500 pages).  The book is full of detail which I found interesting and through which Harbach created characters and a place that were really three dimensional.   I cannot pinpoint exactly why I loved this book so much - for sure I loved Westish and reading about the school and all the people who loved it made me nostalgic for my alma matter.   I think if you love baseball you will love this book, but for me baseball was just a small part of it.  I loved that it made real people's problems seem somewhat epic.  And of course, I loved that big lug Mike Schwartz - a character with more heart than any character I have experienced in a while.  My verdict is that The Art of Fielding lives up to the hype, go and read it!


Scotch Spiked Cracker Jacks, adapted from the Kitchn
 (printable recipe)

I wanted to do something baseball themed and cracker jacks seemed like a good idea since there was no way I was going to attempt making my own hotdogs!  I spiked the Cracker Jack Caramel with scotch here as a tribute to President Affenlight, who was an avid scotch collector.   The smokey scotch paired really well with the molasses caramel and was a barely detectable taste in the finished product.  I would suggest freshly popping your corn for this rather than microwave popcorn. I grew up on microwave popcorn and have recently become obsessed with making it the old fashioned way with hot oil.  Not as low fat, for sure, but much tastier popcorn.
Ingredients
16 cups popped popcorn
1 and 1/2 cups roasted and lightly salted peanuts
1 stick unsalted butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons scotch
2 tablespoons molasses
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Note: You should use a candy thermometer for this
Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 250.  
2. Spray two large cookie sheets with cooking spray.
3. Combine the popcorn and peanuts in one really big bowls or two more reasonable sized bowls.  You want to have room to toss the popcorn in the caramel, so two bowls may be necessary.
4. To make caramel, melt the butter over medium heat.
5. Whisk in the brown sugar, scotch, molasses, corn syrup and salt.
6. Bring to a boil and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally until a candy thermometer reaches 230 degrees.  The caramel will be a medium to dark brown color.  This took me about 6 minutes.
7.  Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla and the baking soda.  The addition of baking soda will turn the caramel into a milkier brown.
8. Pour over the popcorn and peanuts and toss with two spoons to coat completely.
9. Lay the popcorn out onto the cookie sheets.
10. Bake for 50 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes or so.
11. Take out and cool for 20 minutes.
12. Break up into pieces and serve.
13. Best when eaten day it is made.  Store in airtight container for another couple of days.  This stuff is like crack though, it won't last a couple of days.