Part IV begins in a small Mid­west­ern town just as Ivy Keller returns from fin­ish­ing school, filled with pol­ished man­ners and roman­tic day­dreams shaped by poet­ry and nov­els. Her days stretch long and unevent­ful until she notices Rudie Schlach­weil­er, the town’s cel­e­brat­ed pitch­er. With his square jaw and local fame, Rudie quick­ly becomes more than a pass­ing inter­est. Ivy, once indif­fer­ent to base­ball, finds her­self at every game, learn­ing the rhythms of the sport just to watch him pitch. Her admi­ra­tion deep­ens not just from his ath­let­ic skill but the way the crowd cheers him, the way his name lingers in the air like music. For Ivy, Rudie becomes more than a young man; he embod­ies every­thing thrilling and unpre­dictable about sum­mer. She wraps her hopes around his ris­ing career, con­vinced that great­ness awaits him—and by exten­sion, her too.

The town watch­es Ivy’s grow­ing devo­tion with know­ing smiles, though some raise eye­brows, espe­cial­ly her father. Mr. Keller, a prac­ti­cal man with no patience for fan­ta­sy, sees Rudie’s path as shaky at best. A base­ball play­er, to him, is hard­ly a future—certainly not for a daugh­ter raised with books and Parisian French. But Ivy dis­miss­es his con­cerns, swept up in a whirl of imag­ined futures. She believes in Rudie’s tal­ent, in des­tiny, and in the way her heart quick­ens when their eyes meet across the field. Still, her father insists on rea­son, ask­ing for time apart to test her feel­ings. Though reluc­tant, she agrees, hop­ing dis­tance will prove her heart right.

That fall, father and daugh­ter trav­el to Slatersville, Ohio, with Ivy eager for the val­i­da­tion she longs for—a Rudie in pin­stripes and head­lines. But the image shat­ters quick­ly when they find him not on the pitcher’s mound, but behind a shoe counter. Rudie, still charm­ing, explains his sit­u­a­tion with­out shame, though his voice car­ries hints of qui­et res­ig­na­tion. The dis­ap­point­ment crash­es over Ivy like cold rain, not because he has failed, but because the Rudie she loved was built more of dreams than facts. His shoe­store smile, too prac­ticed, doesn’t stir her any­more. She real­izes that she loved the sound of applause more than the man who inspired it.

In the weeks after their return, Ivy replays her time with Rudie in flashes—his grin after a strike­out, his con­fi­dence under pres­sure, the lop­sided way his cap always sat. Yet, she now sees what she once refused to admit. His throws had nev­er been quite steady; the team’s vic­to­ries had more to do with luck than lead­er­ship. Her pas­sion was real, but it was pas­sion born of excite­ment, not com­pat­i­bil­i­ty. She under­stands that grow­ing up some­times means let­ting go of the illu­sions we cling to in our youth. What felt like heart­break becomes a les­son in clar­i­ty, a qui­et turn­ing point that shapes her future rela­tion­ships.

Lat­er, Ivy reflects with­out bit­ter­ness. Rudie did not wrong her; he mere­ly played the part she want­ed him to. In many ways, her first real love was not a man, but the idea of romance itself—painted in bright sum­mer col­ors and scored to the sound of cheer­ing crowds. Her mem­o­ries remain fond, not painful. With this under­stand­ing, Ivy steps into adult­hood more ground­ed, her dreams tem­pered by expe­ri­ence. She doesn’t aban­don hope, only adjusts its lens. The Ivy who once clung to a boy on a base­ball dia­mond now sees val­ue in steady, con­sis­tent kindness—not dra­mat­ic dec­la­ra­tions from cen­ter stage.

Edna Fer­ber paints Ivy not as fool­ish, but as human, caught in a moment of inno­cent long­ing. Through her eyes, read­ers wit­ness the qui­et heart­break of learn­ing the dif­fer­ence between fan­ta­sy and truth. Base­ball becomes the per­fect metaphor for this journey—beautiful in motion, harsh in its rules, and always unpre­dictable. The sto­ry leaves us not with a bro­ken hero­ine but with one trans­formed by insight. In that trans­for­ma­tion lies the heart of the nar­ra­tive: a recog­ni­tion that life’s true heroes are rarely the ones on posters, but those who weath­er dis­ap­point­ment with grace and find mean­ing in the lessons they car­ry for­ward.