Out of My League (27 page)
Authors: Dirk Hayhurst
Chapter Fifty
I took a cab to the park as not directed by my itinerary. Upon my request, it drove me to the players’ entrance of Giants’ stadium. It was a small, unassuming gate. Even so, there were fans staking it out in anticipation of players’ arrivals. Some of them even knew who I was when I got there, shouting my name and holding up my minor league card among other items they wanted signed. I wondered how they knew who I was, not to mention how they knew I’d be there when I myself didn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to be there until this very moment.
A security guard asked me for my ID, even though there were people calling for me by name. He took my driver’s license and searched his sign-in roster. As his finger slid up and down the list, I worried I wouldn’t be on it yet and not allowed in. He found me, though, and directed me inside. I awkwardly gestured to the mysterious people calling for me, explaining I was sorry I had to go pitch and stuff, and couldn’t come sign for them just yet.
Like Portland’s stadium, the Giants’ ballpark had a large service tunnel winding through its underbelly. Supply carts carrying buns and cups and kegs of man-soda zipped around me. I walked along, weaving and dodging until I arrived at a sign that said V
ISITORS’
C
LUBHOUSE. I
stood there for a second and caught my breath. This was it, I thought, it was time to go to work.
ISITORS’
C
LUBHOUSE. I
stood there for a second and caught my breath. This was it, I thought, it was time to go to work.
In all honesty, I don’t remember the order in which things happened next. It came at me like sensory overload, like I was a dog with a million new things to sniff. I pressed through the locker doors and found myself surrounded by new faces, not all of them players. There was a legion of trainers, clubhouse attendants, and non-player personnel. Someone, not a player, came to me, welcomed me, and took my Padres bag, and then disappeared with it. A few players I didn’t know said welcome, while a few players I did know did not. There was some type of computer system that housed several terminals where players sat and looked at videotape. Guys in their underwear milled around with plates of food. A gentleman asked me if I wanted something to eat. Someone asked me if I needed a jacket for the game. Then the food question again. What size pants did I wear? A hat was handed to me. Someone talking in Japanese. Loud laughter. The cafeteria coolers housed beer, and lots of it. A variety of pants options were handed to me. A towel was thrown into a bin just over my head. Cussing at a SportsCenter report: “Can you believe they gave that fucking guy eight million?” More Japanese. Guys on cell phones at their lockers arguing with wives. Trevor Hoffman, standing in front of me, shaking my hand with his huge paws, saying welcome, congrats, good luck, and have fun while I gagged trying to articulate words to him. A trainer told me if I needed anything before the start to come see him. A huge guy with a shaved head poured powder from a canister into a mixer bottle and drank it. A former minor league coach was congratulating me. My stuff was unpacked and organized in my locker. My locker. My name. “Holy shit, that is my jersey! My big league jersey!” Several snaps with my cell phone camera, and then, like someone took their hand off the fast-forward button, a player was standing in front me saying, “Have you talked to Bud Black yet?”
“Oh crap. No, I haven’t.” A cardinal sin I was warned about making. The first thing you always do upon a promotion is talk to the manager.
“You should probably go and check in.”
“Right, of course, where is his office?”
I was pointed in the direction of my new skipper. I took off the new Padres hat I’d put on sometime during the preceding events and went straight to the manager’s office. It felt like I had been in the place for an hour, but when I checked the clock I’d only been there about fifteen minutes.
Bud Black was sitting in his office at his desk when I arrived, knocking at his open door. He looked up to me, realizing instantly who I was, and invited me in.
“Dirk Hayhurst,” he said in a heralding way, as if he’d heard a lot about me. He shook my hand then sat down, inviting me to do the same before shuffling a stack of stat-riddled papers on his desk. Then, sitting back quite relaxed like we were going to have a chat about muscle cars over a can of beer, he said, “Congratulations. Welcome to the club, we’re excited to have you.”
I didn’t really believe he was excited to have me. I don’t know why I didn’t, maybe it was because I was nervous as hell or that I hadn’t done anything to help the club yet. Maybe it was because stuff like, “We’re excited to have you” is traditionally part of the introductory ceremony. Even so, Bud’s face was so intensely affirmative I was starting to believe he meant it. In fact, his ease and interest in me made me relax for the first time in several hours. It also made me realize I was just staring at him, mentally debating his words instead of talking.
“You’re a Golden Flash, eh?” continued Bud.“From Kent State?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“The Golden Flashes,” he repeated. “And you’re a writer?”
“That’s correct.”
“I’ve read some of your stuff.”
This could go badly. “Oh?”
Bud smiled. “It’s good.”
I sighed in relief. “You’ve really done your homework on me, haven’t you?”
I wrote a column for
Baseball America,
one of the country’s premier baseball publications, called “The Non-Prospect Diaries.” I picked the title because I felt it captured the essence of my baseball career. I didn’t want baseball players reading it to think I took myself too seriously, since I was a real nobody when I’d started writing a year ago. Now, however, as the skipper of a big league team who would no doubt be sifting every ounce of my competitive character stared me down at the edge of my debut, it mattered big-time.
Baseball America,
one of the country’s premier baseball publications, called “The Non-Prospect Diaries.” I picked the title because I felt it captured the essence of my baseball career. I didn’t want baseball players reading it to think I took myself too seriously, since I was a real nobody when I’d started writing a year ago. Now, however, as the skipper of a big league team who would no doubt be sifting every ounce of my competitive character stared me down at the edge of my debut, it mattered big-time.
“Of course,” said Bud, “I like to know about my guys.”
“I ... Uh ... Well, that’s great.”
He continued smiling at me in that disarming way. “How’s Randy doing?”
“Good. He sends his best.”
“Good,” remarked Bud. “So, you ready for today?”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. How can anyone be really ready for a day like this? I knew what the smart, patriotic lie answer was, but I also knew what the real, jumbled, emotionally-out-of-control answer was. Thankfully, Kevin Towers, the team’s general manager, knocked on the open door before I had to give either.
As with Bud, I had never met Kevin before and the experience was uncanny. In effect, Kevin had been my boss for years, though we’d never actually communicated before this day. Bud and Kevin were just people, like me, and I knew that. But they were also elite people in my baseball world, people at the top of my profession. I had to earn access to them, and now that I had, I didn’t know how to communicate with them in a way that didn’t let my whirling emotions come gushing out like a crazy person.
“This is”—I collected myself—“this is amazing. I can’t believe I’m really here.”
“Well, I need to get your signature on a couple of things before it’s official,” said Towers. He produced my major league contract and put it in front of me. “This contract will look a little different from your last one,” he said with a wry chuckle.
I started reading the contract, looking for what was so funny. When I found it my heart stopped. I hate math, but on that day I fell madly in love with it. Next to the place my name went was a number so large it meant the end of air mattresses, rusted cars, and red-eye flights. The end of value meals, winter retail jobs, and Goodwill suits. It meant life, flexibility, and freedom. They say you can’t put a number on happiness, but this one made me feel pretty damn happy. I was to be paid $400,000 to play baseball. Divide that over a full season and that meant I made about $1,800 a night—more than I made in a month in Triple A! It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen in my life. All I had to do was remember how to breathe long enough to sign the contract.
Balsley found me shortly after I inked my name to the end of poverty. Our conversation was brief, sterile, and mostly about hitters. He gave me a quick rundown of the Giants’ lineup, who I was going to face and how I should pitch to them. He handed me a sheet that had hitters’ hot and cold zones and tendencies to steal. Then, after he briefed me, he said I would be throwing to Bard and I was basically to follow Bard’s lead. That was the best part of the meeting, actually, as I wasn’t sure what kind of mental state I would be in once I was out there on the hill, but I was pretty certain that calculating swing path data would be the last thing on my mind.
At the end of our conversation, Balsley told me my main priority now was to do whatever I needed to do to get ready, and when I was, we’d head out to get loose. I didn’t tell him I didn’t know what I needed to do to get ready since I wasn’t really a starter. This was only my third start of the year, for a total of five in the last two years. During the other starts I just wandered out to the mound and started throwing to a catcher as if it were mid-game and I got the get-up call to get hot in the pen. That was a routine I knew; however, I didn’t think it would go over very well at the big league level, so I formulated a more starter-centric program on the fly. I got a back rub in the training room, drank a protein shake, walked around looking moody like other starters I knew. I looked over the opposing hitters’ hot sheet, trying to retain any details I could considering my overstimulated brain. In the end, it was all for nothing as all I could really focus on was the clock, and the fact that in a matter of minutes I would be out in front of the biggest crowd of my life for the most important pitching experience of my existence.
Deadtime is the enemy in moments like this. I wanted to be distracted but, when you’re a starter, other players are trained to stay away from you so you can find your “zone.” Some starters can’t stand being interrupted when they are getting their mind right before a game. Me, on the other hand, if I’m left alone with my mind, it will devour me whole. I suppose I could have talked to someone, but how exactly would that conversation have gone down? “Hey, Hoffman, I’m scared shitless right now, would you mind holding my hand and helping me do some Lamaze?”
When the time finally came for me to head out to the field and warm up, I was thrilled. Pitching is about the moment, and it can create a mental shield made from competitive will focused on the task at hand. But when I walked onto the Giants’ field, my defenses were instantly breached.
The stadium was just so big. In fact, the scale of everything was massive. The JumboTron was the size of a house. Seats went on in endless rows. The crowd wasn’t even close to capacity, and yet there were more people in attendance here than any of the minor league games I’d ever played in. Walls stretched up to touch light poles, which reached out to tickle the chins of skyscrapers peeking into the park to inspect the new guy. The sound system was louder, the light boards were brighter, abundant concessions, legions of workers, and dozens of cameras. All of it here just for today, an idle Saturday between two basement clubs. It was all disposable, all routine, all absolutely terrifying.
Nothing felt familiar: the ball, my glove, the earth itself. Everything was new, like I’d never seen or touched it before. But it didn’t matter. I was to pitch today. I would take that San Francisco mound as a pitcher or a sacrifice to this beast in motion all around me, but I would take it nonetheless.
Bard and I started to play catch in right field, which quickly degenerated into a game of trying to get the ball to Bard. All my life I’d been trained to hit my catch partner in the chest and, for the life of me, today I could not square Bard up. I skunked the ball into the grass in front of Bard. I threw it over his head into the stands. Balsley, standing by with his poker face, replaced the ball as needed, but it wasn’t the ball. It was me, and it was labor to even do the simplest of throwing tasks.
When we were finished playing warm-up catch in right field, we went to the mound. Before I threw my first warm-up pitch, I tried very hard to break my funk. I dug out a hole for my feet. Took a deep breath. I marked a place for my landing foot to hit. Took another big breath. I licked the rosin, tried to clear my mind, and focused on my breathing. Coming set as calmly as I could, I gestured for Bard to get down, wound up, and promptly stood Bard up again with a ball over his head.
Usually the visiting starter paces the home team’s starter, but Barry Zito had a very different program from me, which is to say, he had a program—I was just trying to learn how to pitch again.
After about twenty errant throws, I started to get some semblance of myself. I even produced a few good pitches, including a changeup that made Balsley say, “I didn’t realize your changeup was that good.” Understandable, as it’s hard to realize someone has good stuff when 90 percent of their throws are in the dirt or the stands.
Balsley’s words did make me feel a little better, like, if nothing else, I could throw all changeups today. Trouble was, it took me thirty tosses in the pen to find a good one, a ratio that would have me out of the game before the first inning. I worked as hard as I could to replicate my good fortune, but I was running out of time. Indeed, time was up. Zito was done warming and the Giants were about to take the field.
I got the ball back from Bard, flipped it to Balsley. He handed me a towel, and a bottle of water. We walked into the dugout together and took our seats. The next time I would exit that dugout, I would be a big leaguer, for better or worse.
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