The Hector Quesadilla Story by T. Coraghessan Boyle
"The Hector Quesadilla Story" by T. Coraghessan Boyle is a poignant narrative that explores themes of identity, aging, and the enduring nature of passion through the life of its titular character, Hector Quesadilla. Once a celebrated baseball player, Hector now finds himself in the twilight of his career, serving as a pinch hitter for the Los Angeles Dodgers while struggling to accept the passage of time. His wife, Asunción, encourages him to embrace his age and retire, yet Hector clings to the allure of baseball, a game he perceives as timeless and eternal.
The story unfolds during a memorable game against the Atlanta Braves, where Hector's internal conflict reaches a climax. Despite being sidelined for much of the match, he is eventually called to bat in an extraordinary 31-inning game, an event that symbolizes both the unpredictability of life and his own relentless pursuit of relevance. As Hector grapples with his past and present, the baseball game transforms into a broader metaphor for life's ongoing challenges and aspirations. Through Hector's journey, Boyle artfully captures the complexities of aging and the human spirit's desire to linger in moments of glory.
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The Hector Quesadilla Story by T. Coraghessan Boyle
First published: 1984
The Work
“The Hector Quesadilla Story” is one of several tales in T. Coraghessan Boyle’s second collection of short fiction, Greasy Lake and Other Stories (1985), in which identity and experience are so closely intertwined that they achieve a magic fusion. The title character is an aging baseball player whose profession has consumed his life. A “saint of the stick” during his teenage years in the Mexican League, he enjoyed a respectable career as a utility infielder with several major-league teams. Hector serves as a last-resort pinch hitter for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He refuses to acknowledge his forty—possibly fifty—years, although “he hasn’t played regularly for nearly ten years and can barely trot to first after drawing a walk.”
Hector’s long-suffering wife, Asunción, pleads with him to give up the game and accept his age gracefully, but Hector—who is a father of two and grandfather of four—is intoxicated by the timelessness of the national pastime: “How can he get old? The grass is always green, the lights always shining, no clocks or periods or halves or quarters, no punch-in or punch-out; this is the game that never ends.” Each year, Hector promises Asunción that the next will be his last.
On his birthday, with his family in attendance at a game with the Atlanta Braves, Hector finally senses his “moment of catharsis. The moment to take it out.” It is the bottom of the ninth inning, and the game is tied with two men out and a relief pitcher who has struck out Hector twice before that year on the mound. Another pinch hitter is summoned, and when he strikes out the game goes into extra innings.
Hector stays benched while the game continues for a record-setting twenty-two more innings. Although the fans have left and the players are collapsing from exhaustion, his manager knows that putting Hector in the batting lineup means he will have to play him on the field if the game does not end. Hector finally gets his chance to bat in the bottom of the thirty-first inning but fails to bring in the winning run and is asked to substitute as pitcher, a position he has not played since the Mexican League.
As Hector’s past and present merge, the ball game becomes more universal and symbolic. With its ethnically diverse teams, repetitive tasks, and undetermined endpoint, the game becomes a metaphor for life. The aging Hector, who has lived from one year to the next on the promise of what tomorrow will bring, realizes that for him this game will never end.
Bibliography
Boyle, T. Coraghessan. “T. Coraghessan Boyle.” Interview by Alexander Neubauer. In Conversations on Writing Fiction: Interviews with Thirteen Distinguished Teachers of Fiction Writing in America. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
Dee, Jonathan. Review of Greasy Lake and Other Stories, by T. Coraghessan Boyle. Village Voice, July 30, 1985, 49-50.
McCaffery, Larry. Review of Greasy Lake and Other Stories, by T. Coraghessan Boyle. The New York Times Book Review, June 9, 1985, 15-16.
Walker, Michael. “Boyle’s Greasy Lake’ and the Moral Failure of Postmodernism.” Studies in Short Fiction 31 (Spring, 1994): 247-255.