An echo of Thomas Mann? - in The Art of Fielding

Nearing the end of Chad Harbach's "The Art of Fielding" and am glad that much of this portion of the novel focuses on the struggles of Henry as he tries to come to terms with his sudden and inexplicable inability to throw a baseball - forces him to think about his role on the team, his future prospects, and his waning friendship with one-time mentor, Schwartz. Issue of Henry's sister who got drunk on a campus visit seems to have been simply dropped from the story (wish there were more about Henry's awkward and changing relationship with his family - an important coming-of-age in college theme), and his sexuality, is, oddly, barely developed in this novel that by and large is very frank and open about sexuality - is repressed homoeroticism his issue, after all? I'd glad, even though it's late in the novel, that H expresses concern and puzzlement about Schwartz's abandoning him during his first months on campus - I never understood that and didn't believe it and think H would have been mor puzzled by it than he seems. If he is a latent homosexual, his story does in that way link with Affenlight, the college prez, who wrote his one important book on homosexual themes in literature and who now, in his 60s, comes out as a homosexual and has an affair with an undergrad. This aspect of the novel really troubles me: how would we read this if the affair were with a woman undergrad? (To be fair, one of the characters makes this same observation, but she's just worried that the girl might bring a harassment charge.) Clearly, the relationship is exploitative and unhealthy and verges on abusive and I think we shouldn't just write it off as an old man at last being liberated from sexual taboos. Then again, I'm not sure yet how Harbach will resolve this theme: Affenlight definitely reminds him - his name is almost an echo - of Mann's Aschenbach: both of them pathetic, brilliant men with no self-knowledge or self-awareness, who take on increasingly risky behavior at their own peril.