The Natural: Batter Up! Part 3 Summary & Analysis

Bump dies in the hospital, and Memo becomes “wild with grief,” dreaming of his dead body and crying non-stop. Pop, who finds her in her bed, is frightened and tries to send her to a doctor, but she refuses. In dreams, she kisses Bump’s corpse, and his “mouthless mouth” blows back “the breath of life;” her womb “stirs” at the image. Yet Memo also dreams about his body in a “dark corridor,” gripping the “glowing ball” he caught before hitting the wall; she begins to think of him as dead instead of alive, though she continues to see his “shade.” Eventually, Memo drags herself out of bed and looks through souvenirs that remind her of him: an autographed baseball, an old kewpie doll he had won for her, and pictures of him as a player.

Among these souvenirs, Memo finds pictures of her parents, now deceased; her father’s picture is torn up and reminds her of her own “heartbreak,” since he “had not been truly hers when he died,” and her mother’s image is “sadeyed.” When it becomes too hot to stay in her room in July, she comes down to the hotel lobby; her hair has turned a “lighter, golden shade,” “as though some of the fire had burned out of it.”

Hobbs is still struck by Memo, whom he sees from time to time in the Midtown Hotel lobby, where they have both continued to stay: he believes that she wants to be with him, despite her grief for Bump, and hopes that he will have a chance with her once she has stopped mourning. He begins to send her gifts, which she returns to him. Soon, however, she begins to wear white instead of black, and she sometimes glances at Hobbs when he looks at her as she passes in the hotel lobby. Eventually, her “dislike of him” fades.

Not long after Bump’s funeral, Pop tells Hobbs not to worry about what happened to Bump, and Hobbs says that he has never felt guilty about the incident—though some say that if Hobbs hadn’t joined the team, Bump wouldn’t have died. Hobbs reflects that he only once wished for Bump to die—after his accidental night with Memo—and he tells Pop to tell Memo that Bump’s death wasn’t his doing.

Nonetheless, Bump weighs heavy on Hobbs’s mind, and he constantly compares his own performance to Bump’s, even as fans begin to praise him. The crowds make “no attempt to separate his identity from Bump’s;” whenever Hobbs makes a “hot catch,” he hears praise for Bump—“Nice work, Bumpsy”—and feels frustrated. Even Otto Zipp uses his honker to applaud him, as he did for Bump. The newspapers compare Bump and Hobbs for their batting averages, statistics, and even their measurements and stances.

One day, Hobbs notices Memo walk into the lobby of the Midtown Hotel with a newspaper turned to the sports page. He realizes that she has been reading articles that compare Bump with Hobbs, and he begins to feel that the comparisons might be useful—that she might want to initiate a relationship with him because of his similarities to Bump. He begins to play for her, using Wonderboy—which flashes gold in the sun, sometimes warranting complaints from pitchers blinded by its glare. (Hobbs rubs some of the shine off with a hambone, but the bat continues to appear brilliant.) Hobbs performs admirably, yet he does not feel satisfied by his accomplishments: only winning Memo, it seems, will bring him true satisfaction.

Pop and the Knights believe that Hobbs has “beginner’s luck,” and Hobbs becomes a controversial figure: he does not interact with the team frequently, yet his talents are useful to the Knights, which begin to work their way up the pennant, defeating higher-ranking teams, “like a rusty locomotive pulling out of the roundhouse for the first time in years.”

Judge Banner looks down on the crowds from his office in the tower he inhabits, positioned above the main entrance of the ball park; at first, he feels uneasy about the team’s success, since he believes that their winning streak will make it more difficult for him to push Pop out of his job. Eventually, though, he provides more funds for stadium upkeep, motivated by the wealth to be gained by an increase in game attendance.

New fans visit the team to offer support for the Knights, jeering their opponents (though an old fan, Otto Zipp, does not return, for some unknown reason). The weather clears up around the Knights’ field, and Pop’s hands heal; cheerful and calm, he begins to treat his players with more gentleness, patience, and respect. Bump is gradually forgotten, and Hobbs becomes a celebrity in his own right, though he refuses to divulge any details of his background to the newspapers. Nonetheless, Memo still rebuffs Hobbs’s advances, even when he approaches her at the hotel and admits his feelings for her.

Hobbs realizes that he needs to earn more money to attract Memo’s attention. A newspaper columnist writes an open letter to Judge Banner demanding that Hobbs’s salary be raised, given his popularity, and Hobbs goes to negotiate with Banner, a “massive rumpled figure” smoking a cigar, whose office is extravagant despite his own cheap tendencies as a manager. It is rumored that the Judge never leaves the office, and no photographer has ever entered the room. A motto on the wall reads, “All is not gold that glitters,” among other phrases, and the floor is slanted, forcing visitors to sit down rather than stand. Hobbs has been warned about the Judge by Pop, who tells Hobbs that the Judge took advantage of Pop’s financial troubles to buy shares of the team—and that Banner has been making deals that harm the team but benefit him, profit-wise.

Banner was “impoverished” before he became a judge, and he uses his power in New York City to run sideline activities. Hobbs asks Banner for forty-five thousand dollars a year, and Banner responds by telling Hobbs the story of “Olaf Jespersen,” a farmer he knew from childhood, who traded a beloved cow, Sieglinde, for another cow from a neighbor. Sieglinde collapses on the way to the trade, and Olaf suffers a heart attack from shock; the cow recovers, but Olaf never does, becoming a “doddering cripple.” The moral of the story is to “be satisfied with what you have,” but Hobbs pushes back on Banner’s moralizing. He drops his price to thirty-five thousand, put off by Banner’s insistence on negotiating in the dark—he blows out a match casting light, noting that he prefers a “dark to a lit room”—and his discourses on good and evil.

Hobbs drops his price to twenty-five thousand; in the dark, he isn’t sure that Banner is “there anymore” but then realizes that he can “smell him,” and that Banner would still be in his office if Hobbs came back later. Banner refuses the proposal, criticizing Hobbs’s tendency to bet on horse races, and dropping a pamphlet about “The Curse of Venereal Disease” onto his desk. When Hobbs drops his price again, to fifteen thousand, Banner asks him to fulfill the obligations of his contract and charges Hobbs for the destruction of his uniform earlier in the season. Hobbs refuses to pay the bill—ripping it and the pamphlet up—and leaves Banner’s office.

Mercy confronts Hobbs as he leaves Banner’s office, but Hobbs refuses to tell him anything about his background, even after Mercy offers him five thousand dollars in cash for articles about his past life. Max convinces Hobbs to come with him to a night club; on the way, he mentions that he thinks he has seen Hobbs before, but Hobbs deflects. At the night club, where “half-naked girls” are “chased by masked devils with tin pitchforks,” Mercy and Hobbs meet with a bookie with a glass eye, Gus Sands, who has come to the club with Memo. Hobbs dislikes Sands immediately, feeling that he “belongs in the dark with the Judge.”

Sands describes his betting strategies—he bets “on anybody or anything”—and makes a bet with Hobbs that he will get four hits in the next game. Hobbs and Sands also bet about the names of drinks being served across the bar, and Gus guesses correctly; Hobbs loses, to his dismay, since he is hoping to impress Memo. Gus loses another bet, about how much money Roy has in his wallet, but wins the next one—about a number Roy is thinking of. Ultimately, Hobbs owes Gus six hundred dollars.

Hobbs promises to get the money for Sands and comes back to the table with a white tablecloth, which turns different colors, and puts it over Gus’s head. He grabs Gus’s nose and pulls it, and silver dollars fall out of the cloth; Hobbs then pulls a dead herring out of Max’s face and a duck egg from Memo’s bosom, among other items (a long salami, more silver, a white bunny, a pig’s tail). Memo laughs uproariously, and Max records the events in his black notebook; Gus’s one eye looks around “for a way out.”