Out of My League (32 page)

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Authors: Dirk Hayhurst

BOOK: Out of My League
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Chapter Fifty-seven
She was pale-faced while blood oozed between her fingers. I snatched a towel from the rack and threw it down on the floor. Using it like a dry mop, I wiped the glass and some of the blood from the floor, pushing it safely out of the way and under the vanity.
I grabbed a clean towel and got down on my knees in front of Bonnie’s bleeding foot. She’d cut the bottom of it, nearly an inch-long gash stretched across the arch. But the wound was deeper than it was long and bled like it went to the bone.
“Turn around and stick your foot under the tub’s spout,” I said, gently. Clean water turned pink as it flowed over the cut. Thankfully, there was no glass in the gash. I pulled her foot free and put the dry towel on it with as much pressure as I could without making her yelp. “Hold it down tight,” I said. She grabbed hold of the towel, and I grabbed hold of her, lifting her up and carrying her into the bedroom and laying her on the bed. I went back and got some extra towels before replacing her hands with my own on the cut.
“It’s not that bad,” I said, though I didn’t really know if it was or not. “It’s a clean slice, so it’s going to bleed, but holding it shut like this should stop it.”
“Do you think I’ll need stitches?”
“I don’t know. Does it hurt much?”
“No, I can’t really feel it,” she said. “I was just scared of all the blood.”
“I’ll bet.” Then I thought about her not being able to feel. I knew how long the slice was, but I didn’t know how deep. “Can you feel my pressure?” I squeezed to check.
“Ouch, yes, I can feel it.” She settled down and tried to act tough. “It’s not that bad.”
“Sure.” I smiled. “Take over for me. I’m going to call the front desk.” Bonnie switched hands with me. I called the lobby and had a first-aid team come up. By the time they got to the room, there was an inkblot test’s amount of blood on the towel, but the bleeding around the wound had subsided. The hotel’s first-aid supply was limited to gauze, Band-Aids, and creams. It would keep the bleeding stopped, but not keep the cut closed if Bonnie were to walk on it. I knew Bonnie hadn’t flown all the way to San Diego to sit in the hotel room while her husband-to-be made his home team debut, so we needed to find a way to get her to the park without opening the wound.
I didn’t know if Bonnie needed stitches, but I wouldn’t be able to escort her to the hospital to find out. I had to be at the park ultra-early for my rookie eyewash time. What I needed was someone with a better read on these things than me; I needed a team trainer.
In the minors, if the children of coaches or players had a boo-boo, it wasn’t uncommon for them to show up in the locker room for trainer attention. Wives, on the other hand, were a very different subject. I never saw any of them in the lockers. In fact, in all my time as a player, the words
locker room
and
wives
never entered into a sentence in a positive relationship. Asking the training crew to treat my wife seemed like a very bad idea, but today was my big day and I didn’t have many options.
I felt bad for leaving Bonnie, but I had no choice. I needed the expertise of the big league training staff, but in getting it, I also needed be discreet. I didn’t want anyone else, not coaches or players, to know I needed to bring my wife into the lockers to get checked out. The last thing I wanted to do was draw any unnecessary attention to myself. If this was for me, I would have gone to one of the assistant trainers I knew from my A ball days. But this was a special request, which meant I’d have to talk to the man in charge of Padre-health, Todd Hutcheson, aka “Hutch.”
I was scared Hutch would chastise me for asking for special favors without so much as a week of big league time under my belt, but, as it turned out, Hutch was saintly about it. In fact, the whole training staff, once they got word of it, seemed eager to help my wife-to-be any way they could. They even formulated a plan to have Bonnie get checked out in a private room, with a separate entrance from the lockers, during the game so no one had to know she was ever there. She would be like a ghost in a sundress with a cut foot.
After I reported the instructions to Bonnie, I tried to put it all out of my mind and settle in for my start. The locker room’s television arrays played continuous loops of the opposing pitcher, Aaron Cook, and hitters strolled around the place, occasionally looking up at the feed and remarking about how they hated hitting off “this fucking guy.” I would have agreed with them, but I hated hitting off everyone. No doubt, Cook would slaughter me; at least he would do it from the right side instead of buckling me with towering left-handed hooks.
I watched some video of the hitters I would face, and after about a half hour of it, I’d had enough. It wasn’t that I didn’t think it would help, it was just that I didn’t know how to apply the information. In Portland, Abby would take us down the line and give us a scouting report on the opposing team. The notes were hardly comprehensive, but they provided what we needed to know. Up here, a player could drown in information if he didn’t know how to apply it. The only thing I knew was that once the game started and the lights hit me and the cameras zoomed in, it would take everything I had not to hit critical mass. The less complicated I could make things, the better.
About forty-five minutes before game time, I headed out to the pen to start warming up. Fans gushed into the park as pre-game sounds echoed into the far reaches of the stadium. Autograph hunters, dazzling light boards, concession callers. The machine was starting up again. I tried my best to tune it out, but it was still difficult as the magnitude of what it meant for the rest of my life washed over me.
Doing my best not to look at Balsley when I missed a spot, I brought my arm to a game-ready boil in the centerfield pen. I thought of the catcher’s glove as a ball parked on a tee. I tried to convince myself I was alone, simply trying to hit targets like in the batting cage the previous day. I tried to convince myself there were no fans behind me, no tennis court–sized display boards advertising gift shop goodies, no relievers standing outside the pen, waiting for me to finish, and no wife hobbling along on one bleeding foot, trying to get to a place where she could watch the game. But the more I tried to tune it out, the more I tuned it in.
“Alright, let’s do it,” I said to anyone who cared, grabbed a towel and a water bottle, and made my way out of the pen. The reliever crew waiting just beyond the pen’s gate met me with a shower of fist pounds, high fives, butt smacks, and “Go get ’ems.” With their blessing, I walked across the outfield as majestically as I could.
The light boards flashed lineups and the announcer’s booming voice read the batting orders. When I hit right field, the voice declared, to the elation of the home team fans, “And now the starting lineup for your San Diego Padres!”
The voice embellished the names with rolling
R
s and stressed syllables, making everyone seem to have heroic proportions. Then, as the voice got to the end of the lineup, I knew my name was coming. My catcher, Nick Hundley, and Balsley entered the dugout, but I stayed outside on the grass. I had endured six years for the dream of hearing my name spoken over the loudspeaker at Petco. I did not want to miss this moment.
“And pitching, number fifty-seven, Dirk Haaaay-hurrrrst!”
The crowd let out a meek cheer reflecting my obscurity. I didn’t care. It was my name being announced as the pitcher in Petco Park. Nothing could ruin this moment. I cast my eyes to the display board to see my name flashing in bright, dream-come-true lights, but, according to the big screen, “Dick Hayhurst” was pitching for the Padres. I turned around to see if anyone in the dugout noticed. They were too focused on game preparation to care about something as routine as a roster announcement. I shot a glare back at the board. Dick Hayhurst. Dick
motherfucking
Hayhurst? I’ve been in the organization for how long, and on the day of my debut they misspell my name into a phallic synonym? You’ve got to be kidding me.
Chapter Fifty-eight
The display board goof was a sign of things to come.
Though Bud Black was the kindest person to me upon my arrival in the Show, he was not shy about telling me to be more efficient. It took me nearly fifty pitches to get through the first two innings, and the only reason Bud was talking to me about being more efficient and not screaming at me was because I’d somehow managed to put up zeros. I guess I should have been thankful that, before becoming a manager, Bud was a pitcher himself. He knew what it meant to be a starter who pissed his pitch count away. When he told me to clean things up, he did so like all he wanted me to do was go out there, relax, and let those bastards dribble the ball to my infielders so I could get us through five innings.
I took his sage advice and promptly gave up four runs in the third.
Walks always catch up to you. Either they eat up your pitch count or come around to score, but they bite you in the ass one way or another. In my case, it was both. I walked three guys in three innings, one in each. I managed to dodge the damage of the first two, but, in the third, I walked Matt Holliday and tested my luck. With the pressure on and two bases occupied, I channeled the calming, soothing,
let the ball find its way to the glove of your fielders
voice of my manager, and I served up a curveball that Garrett Atkins crushed into the glove of a fan in the left field stands.
It’s amazing what a single swing of the bat can do. Atkins’s swing didn’t just change the score, it changed September’s paycheck chances, big league service time, scouting reports, player reviews, and contract opportunities—and all of it was in my head as he trotted around me. Why couldn’t I tune it out? So many thoughts at once, like a densely compacted bomb of negativity went off in my brain as soon as leather struck wood. Even the act of thinking about it for the few seconds that I did made me feel guilty since any coach in the world would tell me such thoughts had no business on a baseball field.
Where was Bonnie? I wondered. Was she inside the stadium right now, or getting her foot tended to? Hopefully she was not present to see me, for she of all people could surely see through the scowl I wore to mask my thoughts and discern the wreckage beneath. I didn’t want her to see this; I didn’t want anyone to see this, but the only way out was forward, through the fire. It’s a terrible conclusion that every starter must come to terms with at some point in his career, the realization that the damage is done, and the best you can hope for is finishing your outing by not adding to it.
I put my glove up indicating I wanted a fresh ball from the umpire, but he didn’t toss me one until Atkins crossed home plate. I guess this was done so I didn’t throw it at Atkins or something. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind, what with all the extraneous crap currently populating it, but now it seemed like a therapeutic exercise worth trying. Instead, I attempted to channel my frustrations into effective pitching, like I did after things got hot in San Francisco. I failed. I walked one more hitter in the third inning before getting out, bringing my total walks for the game up to four. I was a bust, and after only four innings, I was removed from the game.
Jersey off, sweat soaking my undershirt and matting my hair, I sat at my locker staring into the abyss. I didn’t see the custom woodwork, my shiny big league name tag, or any of the other luxury things that had stunned me when I first arrived five days ago. I saw failure, unvarnished failure that was surely broadcast in HD all around the country. I’d put myself in line for the loss as I burned through nearly one hundred pitches in four innings.
The outing played over and over in my head like a pre-game video loop. Unlike my start against the Giants, this performance didn’t have a nervous rookie excuse to hide behind. This was the outing of a poor pitcher. In fact, to those wondering if my borderline success against the Giants was luck or blooming skill, this start would be the retroactive lens through which it was interpreted. It was like having two bad outings rolled into one and, with the adrenaline leaving my system and no batters to occupy my attention, I was tearing myself apart over it, completely uninterrupted.
A hand fell on my back as I sat, swirling down the spiral at my locker. It was one of the trainers. They had brought Bonnie down to the training room following my removal from the game. They patched her up enough so she could watch me pitch, and promised to finish their work when I finished mine. They were going to have her checked out by a doctor, and they thought I might like to tag along.
I lumbered into the training room, dragging the ball and chain of my fresh big league failure behind me. Bonnie was waiting for me in one of the private examination rooms of the main training room with her foot soaking in a container of warm water and iodine. When I walked into the room, she reacted to me as if I was the one injured. There were members of the team around so she didn’t blubber over me, but it was easy to see that she wanted to.
“Are you alright?” we asked in unison.
“I’m okay,” we both responded.
She was okay, and her injury was being well tended to. I, however, was lying as much for her sake as my own pride. I didn’t want the guys around me to think I was weak.
“I’ve got to get some ice on my arm,” I said to her. “Then I’ll come back in and join you.”
“Okay, honey. I’ll be here.”
The training staff wrapped my arm up in ice, one bag on my elbow and one on my shoulder. After they finished, I went back into the little examination room with Bonnie. When the door clicked shut, my guard went down, exposing the broken man behind the shield. I let my head fall back against the wall. Bonnie didn’t say anything, knowing that when I’m in a wounded state she would have to choose her words carefully.
“Well, I had my chance and I blew it,” I began.
“No, you didn’t ...” She stopped to consider her words for a moment. Then, realizing pat statements were not going to cut it, she offered, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry it was a bad outing.” She put her hand on mine.
“Me too,” I said. “My body just wouldn’t cooperate. I couldn’t throw strikes.” I looked desperately to Bonnie. “I don’t understand why I’m not getting the ball over the plate like I always have.”
“I don’t know either, honey.”
“It’s like I just lost it.” My head went back to the wall.
“You haven’t lost it.”
“It sure feels that way.”
“Look at me,” she said, but I didn’t. “Look at me. You haven’t lost it. You can’t think that way.” She tried to pull my face around to hers, but I resisted.
I couldn’t look at Bonnie. I knew where I was, and how I was expected to behave. Of all the things I dreamed of doing in a major league locker room, crying on the shoulder of my fiancée was not one of them. She wasn’t supposed to be here, and I was starting to think I wasn’t supposed to be here either.
“When it falls apart out there, it’s like you’re in free fall with no chute. You know you’re falling and you can’t stop it. It took a lot to make that feeling come out of me in Triple A, but here, if I fall behind on a batter I’m immediately rattled. It’s like I can feel what everyone is thinking. I’m hoping I can get outs and this is the one level where I need to
know
I can get them.” I mocked myself with my own laughter. “Jesus, I’m in the Bigs and hoping.”
“It was just one outing, babe.”
“But my career starts here,” I said.
“That’s not true. You’ve been playing for a long time. You’ve had a lot of success.”
“Those words don’t apply when the outing in question is the one that decides your future. Do you think this is going to help us stay up here through September? I don’t think so.”
“You’re under a lot of pressure and you’re expanding this into a bigger thing than it needs to be.” She said it all very controlled, trying to cool me off.
“Bonnie, it doesn’t get any bigger than this!”
“You’re not a starter,” she offered.
“I don’t need your excuses,” I said. “I need to pitch better. A player can’t complain about his opportunity, he can only make the most of it.”
The handle of the door latch turned along with the sound of a knock. In walked one of the team physicians. He introduced himself, and I responded chipper and cheery, like the entire day had been full of nothing but rainbows. “Thank you so much for seeing her.”
The doctor said it was nothing, that he was happy to do so. He checked Bonnie’s foot, cleaned it, and then patched it. Convinced she was in good hands, I stepped out to take off my ice bags. While assisting me in unraveling my arm from the wraps that held the ice on, one of the trainers asked me if I was worried about Bonnie while I pitched, if it was distracting.
I knew there was nothing I could do to change my outing, no way to go back in time and fix it. However, if there was a way to paint it in a different color, a way to convince those making decisions that this disaster wasn’t entirely my fault, maybe this disaster wouldn’t look so bad after all. Maybe Bonnie cutting her foot was a blessing in disguise. If I told the trainers I couldn’t focus knowing my fiancée was hobbling around on a sliced-up foot, maybe the powers that be would show me mercy. I had an excuse, all I had to do was take it and run with it.
“It wasn’t the best thing to have happen on a start day,” I said, wadding up the wrap and shedding the ice. “She’s my fiancée, after all. I mean, she is the most important thing in the world to me.”

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