The Natural: Batter Up! Part 5 Summary & Analysis

Hobbs plays well at the game that day, despite his injury, and leads the Knights to a second-place position in the league. After the game, Hobbs meets Memo, who lies to him about her breast injury, telling him that she has been to the doctor (though he is sure she has not). Hobbs feels restless and bitter about Memo, yet he continues to dream about her, imagining her breast bruised green—but still desirable.

At the next game, Hobbs plays badly, entering into a severe batting slump; he becomes obsessed with finding out if he caused a hit-and-run accident during the night on Long Island, but he cannot find any mention of a similar incident in the newspapers. Even with Wonderboy, Hobbs continues to bat poorly, and he becomes worried about his own abilities. Red tells Hobbs that he needs to “relax” to play better, while Pop urges him to stop hitting “bad,” or poorly pitched, balls and to consider bunting balls to get on base. Hobbs proves to be a bad bunter, however, and refuses to give up Wonderboy, which Pop speculates might be contributing to his slump.

Memo and Hobbs rarely see each other during this period, though when they meet briefly, she suggests that he consult a fortune-teller in Jersey City, Lola, whom Bump used to visit during his own slumps. The fortune-teller once told Bump that he would be left money by someone, and his father died and left him property shortly thereafter. Lola, “a fat woman of fifty,” tells Hobbs that he will “meet and fall in love with a darkhaired lady,” but is unable to reveal anything more about his future.

Disappointed with his visit to Lola, Hobbs tries a few superstitious practices “to see how they would work;” his teammates revive their own superstitions as well. Nonetheless, the team continues to lose games, and many of Hobbs’s teammates blame him wholeheartedly; the Knights’ fans also lose confidence in the players and start to heckle Hobbs when he is up to bat. Even Pop becomes hostile toward Hobbs and benches him until he promises to give up Wonderboy.

Hobbs wakes up in the locker room after being benched and is “paralyzed” by longing—for a “friend, a father, a home to return to.” He imagines getting on a train and throwing Wonderboy out of the window after the first stop; years later, as an old man returning to the city, he would look in the mud to see if it was still there. In the train that he imagines, Hobbs feels safe, and he laughs out loud; he then gets up from the locker room bench, wraps Wonderboy in flannel, and wanders through the streets of New York, disoriented and doubtful.

Hobbs returns to his hotel, and in the hallway, he feels a “driblet” of fear, afraid to enter his room. The telephone inside rings, and he opens the door; something moves in the corner of the room, and when he turns on the light and walks into the bathroom, he hallucinates Bump’s face in the mirror. His own face returns, and he feels “an oppressive sadness” about his future.

The Knights travel to Chicago for a game against the Cubs, and Pop cracks down on the team, insisting that they follow strict rules about conduct. Pop has invited Memo to the game, assuming that Hobbs has decided to stay away from her; Memo declines the invite. On their way to a hotel in a cab, Red notices that a black Cadillac is following the cab in which he, Pop, and Hobbs are riding. Pop explains that the Cadillac belongs to a private eye he hired to watch Hobbs, and that the detective was supposed to stop working a week before.

When the men reach their hotel, a “frantic”-looking man, Mike Barney, runs up to them and asks Hobbs if he will win the Knights’ next game for his sick child, who idolizes Hobbs. Hobbs is bewildered and “bitterly” responds that he is hitting poorly. Ultimately, though, promises to do the best that he can.

During the game, Hobbs—still benched by Pop—thinks about the “kid in the hospital,” imagining the triumphant feeling of healing the boy by “clobbering a lone one into the stands” during the game. For some reason, he feels better in his body than he has in a while, and he feels that things might go well for him if he were able to play. Hobbs spots a young black-haired woman in the stands and is intrigued by her; she wears a red dress and a white flower on her bosom, and she seems to be craning her neck to look at him in the dugout.

The Cubs and the Knights are tied. Hobbs feels that he wants to help Mike Barney’s boy, but that he won’t be able to hit well without Wonderboy. Begrudgingly, Pop asks Hobbs to go play with “any decent stick.” Hobbs refuses. In the stands, the woman in the red dress rises; she bows her head to the dugout, as if trying to “communicate something she couldn’t express,” but Hobbs doesn’t notice her. The game proceeds poorly, and Mike Barney, watching in the stands, does “exercises of grief,” disturbing Hobbs, who places Wonderboy on the bench and stands before Pop. Pop allows him to bat with Wonderboy.

Hobbs goes to bat and strikes out twice. The woman in the stands rises for the third time, and a photographer takes a picture of her; she is around thirty, perhaps older, and is ”built solid.” She refuses to give the photographer her name or explain why she is standing. Hobbs steals a look at her and begins to feel that she is standing for him. He bats for the third time and succeeds, hitting a spectacular home run. The woman puts on her gloves and leaves while Hobbs circles the bases.