Bookshelf Review: The Body Scout

The Body Scout: A Novel, by Lincoln Michel

I was going to hold off on this until I finished A Mound Over Hell, the first book in a trilogy by Gary Morgenstern, because both were about baseball in a dystopian world. But then I came across an article posted on The Athletic — “Why the Padres partnered with a local university to create a biomechanics lab” –and thought the time was now. Because who knows what the real future will bring?

The Body Scout looks at what might happen if (when?) biomechanics indeed starts to play a role in the game. We now have Tommy John surgery, but what happens if baseball turns a player into The Six Million Dollar Man, with parts that can be swapped out when they start to fail? It’s like steroids on steroids.

Kobo is a former major leaguer who has gone through a series of modifications in an effort to prolong his career to little effect. So he finds a way to stay in the game by becoming a “body scout,” looking to see not which players can help his team, but which team of scientists and engineers can offer the best in new tech.

His best friend from childhood remains one of the game’s brightest stars, and when he ostensibly dies on the field Kobo goes on the offense to find out what really happened and who was responsible.

The story goes through a number of twists and turns, including an anti-tech political faction, loan sharks determined to collect from Kobo for past “enhancements,” and a number of deceptions from likely and unlikely characters.

Those who have been following this blog for a while know I’m not a big fiction guy. I never felt educated or qualified enough to offer an opinion about the genre, knowing how hard the authors work. But, as the saying goes for art, I know what I like. The Body Scout is a sad indictment about environment, corporate greed, and the value of baseball in a future that has bigger fish to fry, but it kept me turning the pages, and these days, given the multitudes of things to read, that’s saying something.

I must admit, I mistakenly thought this was written by Lincoln Mitchell (Bookshelf Conversation here), author of such books as The Giants and Their City: Major League Baseball in San Francisco, 1976–1992; Baseball Goes West: The Dodgers, the Giants, and the Shaping of the Major Leagues; and San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third-Place Baseball Team. But no, Lincoln Michel is a fiction guy; science fiction specifically, seemingly very good at it.