Fast Pitch

Jack Lockwood is Shenice’s great uncle and JonJon’s brother. Stone characterizes him as a cautious individual who foresees problems before they happen. When he tells Shenice about JonJon’s experiences with recruiters, he says, “He didn’t listen to me because I was young, you see. Only sixteen. But I knew something bad would happen if he went. And it did” (79). His warnings go unheeded, and because of this, he assigns Shenice the task of making history right, though he lives in a retirement home and cannot guide her to the extent he might wish to.

Jack has a limited character arc in the novel, but Stone characterizes him with two distinct mental states: coherent and absent. Shenice’s parents do not discredit Jack when he is absent or elsewhere; rather, they frame it so that Jack simply perceives reality differently than they do. This reframing introduces a growing interest in Nic Stone’s writing. She has publicly spoken about her next steps being to write novels that honor and discuss the impacts of mental health on the Black community, and Jack’s character shows the seriousness with which she plans to take that work. She does not allow her characters, or her intended audience, to discredit Jack because of his mental state; instead, she encourages empathy and understanding by portraying multiple perspectives about Jack and how he views the world.

As a character archetype, Jack fills the role of the novel’s sage, or mentor, character. His primary function is to instruct Shenice about the wrongs of the past, present his knowledge of the truth, and guide Shenice to discover the truth about the past and herself. He does this by providing her with all the information she needs—including exactly where he hid Carlyle’s belongings—but he does not give her the context she needs to understand his clues. Instead, his mental state creates a gap for Shenice to fill by learning and growing in the space he leaves. She must learn to contextualize and interpret the information she discovers to use it effectively.

JonJon Lockwood is Shenice’s great-grandfather and Jack’s brother. In the novel, he begins the Lockwood legacy relating to baseball, having played in the Negro Leagues. Jack describes JonJon’s skill on the field as incredible: “Wasn’t nary another player better with a bat or quicker on his feet. It was darn near impossible to steal a base when he was at catcher” (52-53). However, JonJon’s disgraced history—stemming from a theft for which he was framed—acts as a shadow looming over the family. Though each generation remains skilled at baseball, JonJon’s fall creates an ominous tone in the narrative and makes his family feel as though their skill does not matter when others look for any reason to tear them down.

JonJon has an extremely limited character arc in the novel conveyed entirely through secondhand accounts of his life. Shenice reads his journal, but his reflections share little guidance about the challenges Shenice must overcome in the narrative. His character arc makes him a fallen character: Though he had the skill to succeed and was on the rise, one event took everything away from him. Though the act was unjust, JonJon could never recover, and his spirit broke in the aftermath.

JonJon’s two primary functions in the novel are to parallel Shenice and to serve as the novel’s magician archetype. The role of the magician is to appear more than human despite their innate humanness. JonJon fulfills this archetype in his role as a larger-than-life baseball player. Jack’s description of him demonstrates a few ways JonJon rose above his peers: His speed, dexterity, keen eye, and quick wit set him above the rest. He falls only because another character, Jacob Carlyle, uses deceit to bring JonJon down. His fall makes him an example of pitfalls for Shenice to avoid should she want to succeed in her growth journey and her softball career.

Jacob Carlyle is a white Minor League baseball player who brings down JonJon’s career and tarnishes the Lockwood family’s baseball legacy. He used manipulation to gain a reputation by stealing Joe DiMaggio’s glove from a memorabilia display and using the glove as a status symbol. However, his plan backfires, and the authorities trust him when he pins the theft on JonJon. After an injury, Jacob’s baseball career comes to an end. Stone uses Carlyle’s story as a cautionary tale about the negative impacts of being braggadocious—Carlyle’s story shares many characteristics with the fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” a tale where an individual tells lies to the extent nobody believes him when he finally tells the truth.

Carlyle has the most limited character arc in the novel. He is a static character who, to common knowledge, does not self-reflect and grow, as his granddaughter reveals to the Firebirds when she explains she never met him, because “he and [her dad] stopped speaking due to ‘differences of opinion about Black people’” (171). He also functions as a flat character—there is limited depth to his personality beyond greed and ambition. While his character is filtered through years and biases, several characters corroborate the type of person Carlyle was.

Narratively, Jacob Carlyle serves as the novel’s antagonist. Though his actions were against JonJon rather than against Shenice, the Lockwood family carries the generational impacts of Carlyle’s actions. Jack holds the evidence, but Shenice carries the burden of finding it and bringing it back to light to clear her great-grandfather’s name. Therefore, even though Shenice never comes into contact with or directly engages with Jacob Carlyle, her primary function in the novel is to reverse his impact and, more broadly, counter the ideology that allowed him to get away with his crimes for so long—the belief that Black people did not deserve a place in Major League Baseball solely because of the color of their skin.