“I just want to start by saying that it’s a privilege to be in this class with you, to spend this Day of Inspiration with you,” said Tad, taking the empty two seats next to Eric. “It was so inspiring to be able to share one of my big passions in life with you.” He looked genuinely pleased and excited to be there. Marianne had not read his story, and Eric had only shaken his head when she asked him about it.

“Actually, you don’t talk during this part,” said Davonte. “That’s one of our rules we learned on the first day, back in March. You just listen and take notes.”

“Great,” Tad said, opening his leather portfolio and taking out a gold pen. “That’s what politicians need to do more of, in my opinion. Listen and—”

“No talking at all,” said Davonte firmly. “Just listening. Am I right, Eric?”

“Well,” Eric said, looking down at his notes. “Why don’t we start by sharing some of the things we admired about Representative Tucker’s—”

“Tad,” said Tad. Davonte gave him a stern look. “Sorry!” he said.

“About Tad’s work,” Eric said.

The room was quiet. Some people looked at the manuscript, searching for the parts that they liked. Others looked at the walls, the ceiling, as if the virtues of Tad’s story might be found there. What had he written about? A gruesome late-term abortion? A science fiction piece about vengeful, sentient zygotes? Marianne leaned forward in her seat.

Finally Louis, the one-world-government novelist, said, “I was surprised, actually, that Tad wrote a story about baseball. I was thinking that this would be, I don’t know, a kind of political piece. But it was about baseball. I like baseball.”

The other students nodded, grateful for the opportunity to approve baseball.

“Writing about baseball has an excellent literary tradition,” said Eric. “Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, DeLillo—”

Tad’s pen raced across the page as more people offered positive thoughts about baseball.

“Didn’t the story feel sort of … familiar to you, though?” someone asked.

“Yeah,” said Davonte, leaning forward. “The cocky guy that misses and misses and strikes out? I kept thinking, I heard this somewhere before. Don’t talk, man,” he said, pointing at Tad. “You gotta wait.”

“Davonte, Tad is our guest,” Eric chided.

“I thought you said he was a student,” Davonte said. “Same as us.”

“Let’s stick to the work.”

“I will admit, I guess, that I wanted it to be more political,” Louis said, turning the manuscript pages and frowning. “I wanted there to be more at stake. I wanted it to be about something bigger.”

“There is something at stake,” Davonte said. “The pitch. Will he strike out or not?”

“It’s interesting, the way he’s compressed time,” someone else offered.

“It’s ‘Casey at the Bat’!” interjected another student. “That’s why it’s so familiar.”