Out of My League (16 page)
Authors: Dirk Hayhurst
Chapter Twenty-nine
Shawn Estes, the veteran left-handed pitcher whose big league pedigree included the Giants, Mets, and Rockies, got the start the next day. He represented the most experienced player on our team and, in our opinion, was a big leaguer despite his current Triple A uniform. Competing more with his own age than superior talent above him, he missed the big league team’s cut, losing out to a younger pitcher the Padres were hoping would blossom into a franchise player. Shawn consented to being a big league fallback plan since, in his years of experience, he knew it would take more than the twenty-five players who broke camp with a big club to make it through a season. Actually, that was something all of us were counting on.
Shawn’s pitching performance was exemplary, though the weather was anything but. Fortunately, thanks to the backdoor pen entrance, the reliever crew spent most of the game hiding in the confines of the clubhouse and away from the nasty weather. If the team was younger, we would have set up a system of sneaking away from the pen when we thought no one would look down to check on us. We would move in shifts and make sure to exit during inning changes when player activity could mask our escape. However, since most of the relief crew was older guys who didn’t care if anyone noticed if they were there or not, the bullpen sat completely unoccupied for innings at a time.
“I think I’ve put on ten pounds since I’ve been here,” said Ox, casually flipping peanut M&M’s into the bottomless pit that was his mouth. Many relievers did the same as we all reclined, watching television in the Beavers’ training room, although Dallas, thankfully, chose to spend the free time arguing with his wife via text-message in the other room.
The training room was the closest part of the clubhouse to the bullpen’s rear entrance, about forty feet closer in total, which, considering we were indoors and couldn’t see anything happening on the field, didn’t mean much. To keep us loosely up to speed on what was going on in the game, Fish pulled up the game’s radio broadcast via Internet feed on the trainer’s laptop. It was hard to say how much lag there was between what was happening live and the broadcast reaching our ears, but, when Estes himself came into the training room while the broadcaster was announcing the inning’s second out, we realized the delay was substantial, a piece of news that stirred an immediate response from the relievers.
“Hey, Esty, could you wait on needing relief until this show is over? We’re really into it,” said Hamp.
“I don’t know. Depends on what you guys are watching,” Estes responded.
“Uh, we’re watching ... Shit, what are we watching?”
“A Japanese game show where people get the shit knocked out of them. It’s fantastic,” said Ox, who was completely enthralled with Japanese people getting flattened by giant boulders while people dressed like samurai clowns squirted them with fire hoses.
“Why can’t we do shit like this in between innings? Instead, we have people spin around on a bat, or race the mascot.”
“Hayhurst,” Estes called at me, “grab a towel and wipe this off for me, would ya?” Estes turned and looked at me over his shoulder while gesturing to a huge smear of brown stretching across his ass crack.
“Did you shit yourself?” asked Ox.
“Slipped throwing over to first. Not my most graceful moment.”
I hopped up and grabbed a training room towel, dampened the end of it, then started rubbing the spot on his ass.
“Get in there man, get after it,” said Estes, staring up at me with his head between his legs.
“I have some neighbors you should meet,” I said.
When it was clean, he checked himself and said, “You do good work.” Then, instead of heading back out to the game, he plopped down on the floor, crossed his legs and looked up at the television.
“Get the Padres game on,” said Estes. “I want to see how they’re holding up.”
The channel was changed at the senior’s request. We sat with Estes and watched a few pitches in the Padres game. Estes seemed to see different things than us. He had almost ten years in the Bigs. He knew the umpires, the coaches, even the GMs sitting in their luxury boxes. When we asked him what he saw, he’d say things like “So-and-so is making more than so-and-so, but has worse numbers,” or “This umpire loves showing guys up,” or “I wonder how long they’ll let him keep pitching like crap before they make a move.” It made me feel like I knew what the big leagues were, but had no idea how they operated, even after spending nearly a lifetime in pursuit of them.
“Double play situation out there,” said Fish, concerning the state of the minor league game going on outside.
“They might have already turned it,” said Ox.
“Yeah, I suppose I’d better get back out there,” said Estes.
“What’s the rush?” asked Hamp. “We ordered a pizza.”
“I should have been a reliever,” said Estes.
“Still time,” said Hamp.
“Not for me there isn’t,” said Estes, who jogged from the room.
“Go get ’em ...” We lethargically cheered at Estes’s departure, though it was hard with our mouths full of snacks.
“He sees the game pretty different than us, doesn’t he?” I remarked at Estes’s departure.
“Sure, he does,” said Ox, “he’s rich, he’s got Show time and”—more M&M’s went in—“he’s left-handed.”
“The Bigs are a different place, Ox. I believe that’s what Hayhurst means,” said Bentley.
“Yeah,” I said. “It just seems like you guys who’ve been up there look at baseball differently than those of us who haven’t.”
“Of course, we’ve seen the other side of the curtain,” said Bentley.
“What’s it like?”
“It’s”—Bentley paused—“different from what you’d expect.”
“In what way?”
“It’s everything you want, and yet, well, it’s hard to say unless you’ve experienced it, which I have, of course, but that doesn’t make it easy to explain to
you
.”
you
.”
“You sound like Joe Morgan, smart guy. Try again,” said Ox.
We who had not yet ascended waited intently for Bentley to give us the tale of life in the Show. “Well, it’s a lot more individualistic,” Bentley began. “You know that going in, but it’s strange how it shocks you regardless. There is, naturally, more money involved in everything. The lights are also brighter, the expectations higher.
“Stuff like this”—Bentley gestured to us strewn around the training room during a live game—“would never happen up there. Everyone is being measured by everyone else, constantly. Not everyone can make the adjustment to the expectations; that’s why you always hear the saying, ‘Getting there isn’t the hard part, it’s sticking there.’ ”
“Getting there seems pretty hard, if you ask me,” I said.
“For some”—Bentley sighed—“but, compared to being here, it’s like being alive for the first time. The money, the treatment—it’s the way baseball should be played.” Bentley stared off into a far-away land as he talked. “I should be there,” he finished softly.
“Me too, asshole,” said Ox.
“Oh, Ox, I hope you get there, but the Bigs can affect you in ways you didn’t think possible. It’s as much about survival as it is experiencing the dream. It can change you. Those lights can blind you.”
“I’m perfectly fine with becoming a rich bastard, if that’s what you mean,” said Ox, turning his cup of munchies upside down and tapping all remaining food particles into his mouth. “I can’t wait to be hated because I’m rich. I’m gonna be the next John Rocker.”
“I don’t mean the money, Ox, but I doubt it would be worth my time trying to explain to you the other parts of the big league experience.”
“Probably.” Ox burped. “How’s the beef up there?” asked Ox, inquiring about the kind of women a baseball player had access to at the big league level.
Bentley smiled. “You can have any cut you want.”
“That’s enough motivation for me.”
Chapter Thirty
Sunday: another terrible day for baseball. The sun poked out of the clouds long enough to tease the relievers into taking off their winter layers. Then, ten minutes later, the clouds came back and we had to suit up again. Rain delays had the groundskeepers rushing to get tarps on the dirt portions of the field, but once they were covered, the rain would stop. Then, once uncovered, it started raining again.
It was the kind of day when no one wanted to be out there, and it reflected in our play. Chip must not have had any homoerotic serenades during the night because he was a dud at the plate. We were all a mess defensively, and Caesar, the starting pitcher, struggled to find his rhythm, resulting in an early exit. Around the fifth, the game broke into a damage control situation, giving way to a merry-go-round of relievers wherein almost everyone in the bullpen got a turn, including me.
I came in around the sixth inning. Something about the first outing of the year always stands out. Maybe because stats are officially being recorded and evaluated. No, this wasn’t the way I wanted my march to the Bigs to begin, but baseball doesn’t wait to give you optimal circumstances. It gives you what it gives you, like frozen off-season workout facilities or sleeping bags on an unfurnished apartment floor. Then it tells you to make the most of it and be thankful for it. So sayeth Grady, this was my job. This was my first chance to impress, and, like most outings, just how thankful I’d end up being would hinge on how well it went.
I thought if I worked fast enough I would be able to get in and out before the weather, or my luck, went bad. I was wrong. I broke a bat but the ball found a hole. We missed a chance to convert a lifesaving double play. I went deep into counts only to give up hard hit balls, like a line shot that fell just feet in front of Chip in centerfield. Then, as if to prove that everything was against us, Chip made a beautiful throw that would surely have gunned down my first earned run of the year except that when the throw crossed into infield airspace, it bounced off the mushy, wet turf, just in front of the plate, where it ceased to be a threat to the scoring runner. I issued another walk, another hit, and soon, my turn on the merry-go-round was over. Not the start I was hoping for.
Post-game, the defeated Beavers sat around licking our wounds. Though there were nearly 140 games ahead of us, it’s traditional for a team to sulk after a loss: the uglier the loss, the more vigorous the sulking. We know the key to being successful in baseball is moving forward and refocusing on the future, but we don’t sulk because we’re stuck in the past. We sulk out of respect for those who have reason to hang their heads.
Winning is great, but making it to the big leagues is the main focus of Triple A. Playing bad hurts because the proximity of the Show puts the price of failure in perspective. Because we can empathize with what it feels like to take a beating in pursuit of your dream, we pay reverence. How long that reverence lasts depends on the magnitude of the loss, the atmosphere of the clubhouse, and the expectations of the manager.
“Fuck, who died in here?” asked Ready, barely breaking stride en route to his office. “We won the series, didn’t we? Someone turn the fucking music on.”
And with those inspiring words, the first series of the season was concluded.
The boys pretending to be down got some life back in them. For those not quite ready to move on, things moved more slowly. Luke sat at his locker recording notes on some of the other team’s hitters. Stansberry, who made a costly error, was still doing mental gymnastics about how his hands could betray him. Chip and Myrow, who had setbacks at the plate, sat on the couch next to me, all of us still in our wet uniforms, watching television.
Myrow glanced at Chip, then got up and checked to see if the coast was clear. He went over to his locker, opening his personal cubby. Inside was a bottle of vodka masked by a brown paper bag.
“Hey, Chip, you want some Kool-Aid?” asked Myrow.
“Yeah, I could go for some Kool-Aid today,” said Chip.
“How ’bout you, Hayhurst?” asked Myrow.
“I don’t know,” I whimpered. “I’ve never tried vod—”
“Kool-Aid,” Chip corrected me, looking around to make sure the wrong people didn’t hear me.
“Uh, I never tried
Kool-Aid,
” I rephrased.
Kool-Aid,
” I rephrased.
Chip and Myrow exchanged skeptical smiles.
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Chip. “I’ll fix you up right.”
Chip went to the food pantry and got three red plastic party cups, put in some ice and Sprite, and came back. He then added generous servings of vodka to the cups for himself and Myrow, and about a third of that amount for me.
“Mmm.” I took a sip. “That is some good Kool-Aid,” I said to Chip.
“I told you, brother.”
We all sat there sipping away, none of us talking. It was almost like the act of sharing Kool-Aid communicated the sentiment we were sharing telepathically. We all knew why we were drinking and not changing from our uniforms; no need to speak it.
After some time passed and the locker room cleared out, Myrow said, “I used to talk with my family back home after bad games, but they’d always try to coach me and it would just piss me off even worse. They always thought they knew what I was doing out here. They didn’t, of course, but they always wanted to make it seem like nothing I did ever surprised them. They could never just tell me they were proud of me, they always had answers or coaching advice.” He laughed to himself, then took a sip.
“I know what you mean,” I said. I thought back to some of my earlier days in the game. “I’d call my dad from some town in the middle of nowhere and try and talk to him about bad outings. He’d start on about how he knew what I was doing since I did those same things all the way back in high school. I’d get mad and tell him I wasn’t the same pitcher I was back then. He’d start screaming at me, or tell me he didn’t care. All I wanted him to do was empathize with me but ...” I took a sip and thought for a second about things back home. “Now I can’t even talk to him.”
Chip didn’t say anything, he just nodded his head. Myrow talked about how you have to pick the right people to talk to about your career or you’ll just end up frustrated. I agreed; it’s a game you play in front of so many but share with so few.
“How about you, Chip? How does your family handle baseball?” asked Myrow.
“I love my family,” said Chip. “I always play better when they’re around. My kids were the best thing that ever happened to me. When I come home, even after a crap day, I’ll see my little girl walking around and I can’t help but snap out of my funk. She’ll see me and I have to stop being bitter because she wants me to play and I can’t spend the rest of the day being an asshole over something stupid like baseball when my kids need me to be Daddy.”
Myrow nodded. “I hear you there. My girl looks at me so carefree and loving and I have to let it go.”
I finished my Kool-Aid as they spoke. I didn’t have kids, but I thought about Bonnie. I hoped that when I saw her beautiful face I always had what it took to let it go.
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