The Art of Fielding

It's a novel about college baseball players.  The main character is a shortstop and a significant portion of the action centers around games, practice, training and players on the team talking with each other.

Yet in this debut novel by Chad Harbach, I found some great images and metaphors for the actor's day to day experiences.  I'm having trouble writing much more without giving away big spoilers to what happens.

Here's an image that sticks with me - this shortstop character, Henry, has a post-game ritual.  He goes onto the field w/a coach and a first baseman and fields 50 ground balls.  The coach hits them to him, and he catches them and throws to first.  50 times. 

And his focus, his interest, his reason for doing it, is for the action.  For the love of scooping a baseball off the ground and throwing it to someone else.  It's not about the result, about what happens after that, it's just about doing that one thing, doing it to the best of his ability and then doing it again.

Sound familiar?