Out of My League (37 page)

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Authors: Dirk Hayhurst

BOOK: Out of My League
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Chapter Sixty-nine
I stuck a final fastball into Hundo’s mitt, then announced I was warm and good to go. I’d done my best to retain the scouting report regarding the Nationals’ hitters and was running through mock scenarios with Hundo as we finished our warm-up sequence in the pen. The Nationals were probably the weakest lineup we’d faced to date. So weak I couldn’t help but think that maybe all of the struggles I’d gone through to this point were some kind of trial, and today, against the worst team in baseball, I could turn it all around.
As I walked in from the pen with my complimentary bottle of water and towel, I did not search the stands for Bonnie. I told her the night before that once the game came around I would be all business. I told her this again when we went out for lunch. I told her a third time when I left to come to the park early. I told her as many times as the game came into my mind between the time I got the call and the moment I hit the field. I did it because each time I said the words, it was like I was telling myself that I would not be distracted. I would be like a stone, unshakable, and come game time, I would have everything in order to ensure success.
Things got heavy fast. Despite all the mental preparation, focus, and desire to vindicate myself, I walked the first batter of the game and watched him come around and score while I ran the pitch count up scuffling for outs. Once again my fastball refused to obey me, and emotions were quick to follow. Then came those familiar questions:
What is wrong with me? Why does this keep happening?
I managed to escape the first inning with only one earned run. While my guys hit, I battled the fear that this outing would become what all the other outings had. I recycled all my best clichés:
One pitch at a time, one hitter at a time. Don’t let this inning influence the next. Don’t get down on yourself. This is your opportunity—embrace it. Forget the failures of the past. Forget the failures of the past. Forget the failures of the past
. It was all for nothing. When I went back out for the second inning, I yielded another walk and run, throwing nearly thirty pitches in the process.
“You’re going to have to be more efficient,” said Balsley when I came back in before the start of the third.
“I’m trying. I don’t understand why I can’t hit the mitt.”
“I don’t understand either,” said Balsley. “But you still have to compete. You need to make an adjustment. You’re nearly fifty pitches into the game and it’s the third inning. You have to find a way to get it done.”
I tried, Lord, did I ever. The third inning went one, two, three, and, for a moment, I actually believed I’d turned the corner. Then, in the fourth inning, I returned to form and handed out a double, a single, and a walk before getting pulled.
I sat on the bench with my head up, eyes aimed at the field though I was not there. I was in the place you go when you’ve completely given up on yourself. When I took long enough to look at the scoreboard, the lights didn’t seem brighter to me anymore. The fans didn’t seem louder, and the field wasn’t bigger. Everything was so normal now. Everything was as it should be. And that was when it hit me, the most horrible part of the whole thing: no matter how hard I focused, no matter how undistracted I was, failing was normal for me.
I retreated into the clubhouse after this realization. When I arrived at my locker, the frustration I’d been holding back finally reached the tipping point, and I unleashed the pure, raging emotion I’d been trying to hide. I kicked the chair over and beat my glove against the wall before throwing it across the room. I pulled down my jerseys and threw them into a pile so I couldn’t see the name on the back. I scattered my hats and flung my big league equipment bag at the trash can. Then, when I ran out of things to launch, I grabbed the sides of my locker and tried to tear them apart; tear the whole goddamn stadium down.
After a time, I sank down to the floor where I sat in mental agony over what a disaster I was. Eventually, defeated yet again, I righted my chair and collected my things. I labored to take my jersey off, as if each action required tremendous strength. When I finished, I sat in front of my locker like my dad would sit at the kitchen table when the world was a dark and dying place.
I sat with my head down until my cell phone rattled from inside the locker’s wreckage. It was Bonnie texting me to tell me I’d done a good job, and that she was proud of me. I shook my head at her message, I started laughing at it at first, and then I started screaming angrily at the phone, “What the fuck are you proud of? I was fucking horrible!” I threw the phone back into the rear of the locker. Then I picked up one of the jersey pieces and pressed it over my mouth to muffle my shouts of “I hate this fucking game!” I pulled out another jersey piece and shrouded my head with it, trying to hide from the outside world, from myself. But no matter how tight I pulled my cowl, there was no hiding from the fact I’d spent my entire life trying to get to this place just to crash and burn when it mattered most.
 
Balsley came in during a break between innings. By the time he arrived I’d wrapped myself in ice and my frustration had calmed to the more manageable level of controlled despair and needy paranoia. I don’t think Balsley’s intention was to talk with me at the moment, but I didn’t give him a choice.
“I don’t understand why I’m not throwing strikes,” I said to him, over and over again. “I know I’m better than this. I know you haven’t seen the best of me. I don’t understand why I’m not—”
“You know, Dirk. I don’t know either,” he said with a cold sigh of irritation. “Honestly, all I can tell you is there are some guys who can put it all together when they cross those white lines here, and some guys who can’t. You’re probably just one of the guys who can’t.” Then he shrugged and walked back to the game.
After he said that, there was no reason for me to ever speak to him again. There was no reason for me to even be there. I didn’t care about the service time, the money, or the experience. He might as well have said to me, “You’re a lost cause.” In fact, he should have just shot me, because after he said those things, my life in baseball was over.
Chapter Seventy
I cast a long angry shadow as I walked Bonnie back to the hotel room. She met me after the game along with some of my other friends. They all wanted to share these sickening pleasantries about how awesome it was to see me pitch in a big league game, but I wanted none of it. I wanted them all to be quiet like they had been before when I was nothing but a career minor leaguer.
They asked for signed baseballs; not from me, of course, but a Hoffman or Peavy—for a friend of a friend. They reminded me that it was easy for me to get these things, since, after all, I told them about how I was around such big names every day, how it was all so normal for me. They asked if I could leave tickets, if I could get them a discount on merchandise, if I could call their aspiring nephews. They asked me to do all the things I promised I would do should I ever make it to the big leagues, and I wanted to scream at them for it. But, as they lifted food and drink in celebration of my coming wedding, my good health, and my
flourishing
baseball career, I could do nothing but sit bitterly under the thunderstorm that had been following me since my exit from the field.
It followed me into the hotel, up the elevator, and down the hallway with Bonnie. My words to her came out like short claps of thunder, and my eyes shot to her like lightning when her words displeased me. Unfortunately for her, sitting by and doing nothing while her husband-to-be was in such a state was not something she could abide, and so she sailed her ship right into the eye of the storm.
“I’m sorry you didn’t pitch good today, honey. I know it’s bothering you, but I still love you, and so do your friends.”
“Great,” I sneered.
“It was just a bonus outing.” She took my hand. “It doesn’t change the paycheck or the money we made. And you made it to the big leagues, like you always dreamed. No one can ever take that away.” She started rubbing my arm but I jerked it from her and broke free of her hand.
“Eight more days, honey, you can do—”
“Stop it!” I shouted at her. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
Bonnie looked at me, startled.
“You just don’t get it, do you? All this repetitive positive crap you keep spouting at me doesn’t change a thing.”
“I know we can’t change the outcome of the game, but it—”
“It’s not the game I’m talking about. It’s the whole fucking experience, Bonnie. This whole thing has been a disaster.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. No one ever understands. No one understands what it’s like to do this.” I threw my hands up in disgust. “You know what it was like for me sitting at that dinner table tonight, listening to all my so-called friends tell me how great it must be to be up here? Listening to them tell you how lucky you are to marry a big leaguer? All they know is what the media has showed them, they don’t see the other side, this side. They don’t see the failure, the paranoia, the doubt—and they don’t want to see it! They don’t want to hear people talk about it, and they don’t want signed balls from people who create it. They only want the dream part.
“And you know, I don’t want to see it either, but I don’t have a choice. I’m living it. My dream has turned into a nightmare, and the worst part is I can’t tell anyone about it without looking like a whiner, ungrateful, scared, or pathetic.”
“You can talk to me about it.” She took a step toward me but I backed away.
“And what are you going to tell me, darling?”
“That I love you, and that it’s okay.”
“Great!” I scoffed. “And that will fix everything, won’t it?”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly under my booming anger.
“Why?” My eyes flashed at her again. “Why are you sorry? Or are you just apologizing because you feel like you have to because I’m upset? Nothing you can do is going to fix this.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
“I’m used to it,” I said, and I jammed my key card into the door of our suite. The room disgusted me. The upscale furniture, and the expensive linens; the turndown service that had soft jazz playing on the clock radio and slippers at the foot of the bed. I hated all of it. I went over and turned the smooth music off and kicked the slippers away. “My parents never could, why should you be any different? This is on me. It’s always been on me.”
“I don’t like you saying that. I don’t like you saying I can’t play a role in your pain. I’m going to be your wife.”
“Yeah, well, there are a lot of things out there people don’t like and they just have to deal with them. This is one of the things you’re just going to have to deal with.”
“Why would you say that? This is not something you have to deal with alone.”
“Oh, it isn’t, huh? Let me ask you something. Is it your name in the box score? Is it you that’s out there in front of all those people getting mercy claps when you finally throw a strike? Is it you fielding questions on national television about why you stunk? Is it you being told you’re probably one of the guys who can’t get the fucking job done at this level?”
“No. But it hurts me when I see you hurt. I feel the pain right along with you.”
“I doubt that.” I shook my head at her.
“Why?” she pleaded.
“Because this isn’t your life!” I roared. I stood up from the bed and bore down on her, slamming my finger into my chest as I spoke. “This is my life. I’ve spent all of it trying to get here, Bonnie. My entire life! All the sacrificing and scrounging and working shit jobs. Starving myself in college to cut weight, sleepless trips on buses, paychecks that put me in line for handouts—all of it done to get me to this point just so I could fall apart when it finally happened! You have no idea what that feels like! What it feels like to know your life’s ambition is a waste!”
Bonnie dropped her head and sat down across the room from me. I stood, swollen with my own anger, my chest heaving up and down as I breathed in the air-conditioned room and exhaled the steam of my frustration. After a few minutes of silence and strained eye contact, I started pacing around. “You know who they brought me up here to replace?” I asked rhetorically. “Greg Maddux. Greg fucking Maddux, a first ballot hall of famer and one of my heroes. He’ll always be remembered for the amazing things he did in this game. You know what I’ll be remembered for?” Bonnie did not answer me. “The candy bag, if anything at all.”
“You said it doesn’t matter if you’re remembered for anything up here. You said you just wanted to cash in.”
“It matters. Everything up here matters. It defines my whole career’s worth. I
had
a chance to make it something really valuable and I’ve ruined it. The sky was the limit and I couldn’t get off the ground.”
Bonnie’s face cringed at my pain. She walked over to the bed where I’d sat down, cupping my face in my hands. She put a hand on my back and started rubbing.
“I know it’s hard right now, but you really should think about all the positives you had in this career. You had a great season in Triple A, we made enough to get off to a great start in our marriage, and your dad is doing better.”
True or not, her words just made it worse. I didn’t want to hear about what had happened before this point. This point was all that mattered. “How can you not see that?” I asked, aloud as if I’d spoken everything going through my head.
“See what?”
“You’re analyzing me, aren’t you?” I pulled away from her.
“What?” Her face twisted in confusion.
“Is this part of your therapy method? Relentlessly trying to push me toward something good? Forgetting about the truth of the situation just because it’s uncomfortable?”
“No, I’m trying to steer you back toward all the good you’ve done.”
“No offense, Bonnie, but I’ve got news for you: this isn’t some Share Day performance. This isn’t a time for me to get up onstage and perform and if I do bad everyone claps anyways. This is a kill or be killed business. What happens here will define the rest of my life. Spare me your patronizing self-help method. There is no song you can sing me that is going to fix this.”
Bonnie face started to turn pink, and tears welled up in her eyes. “Our lives,” was all she said, as the drops started streaming down her face, “the rest of
our lives
.”
“Right, sorry, my mistake.
Our lives,
” I repeated sarcastically.
I got up and walked over to the mini-fridge in search of something to drink. As I rustled through my choices of small bottles, I did not see the frown on Bonnie’s face flatten out, or her eyes narrow. She passed a hand across her wet face.
“I’m sorry you’ve lost your ability to enjoy the other things that make your life what it is,” she said, her voice choppy from hyperventilation.
“Spare me,” I said.
“No, I won’t. You wanna hear a song?” she asked, coming to her feet. I looked up at her from my crouched position at the fridge.
“How about this one,” she continued. “How about a song about how I don’t care how much you make up here, or how much fame you collect, or how long this lasts, because if it means this is the person you’ll be while it happens, I will never love you. Never,” she said. Then, to make sure the point was perfectly clear, she added, “Dallas.”
I stood up, towering over her shaking little frame. I opened my mouth to fire back, but it was she who spoke first. “You’re not the only one who’s sacrificed for this opportunity, you know. I understand that most of the people around you don’t have a fucking clue what it’s like to feel the way you do right now and never will. But I swear to you that if you lump me in with that group, if you lock me out, then this relationship is over. I didn’t get into this with you because I thought you’d make me rich, or because I wanted to be some big league wife. I got into this because of you, when you were sleeping on your grandmother’s floor and driving some shitty import. I was happier where we started than where we’re at now.” When she finished, her persistence broke and she collapsed on the bed sobbing.
Watching her cry made me feel disgusting. I didn’t think I could feel any worse about myself as a person until I saw her there on the bed, afraid to turn her tear-filled eyes on me, the man who claimed to love her. I looked down at my hands, a bottle of vodka in one and fruit juice in the other. My God, what was I becoming, and why did it take the weeping frame of my fiancée to make me ask this question? I fell back against the wall, overwhelmed by my own repulsiveness. I dropped the bottles, then slowly, like a withering plant, I descended to the floor, sliding down the wall to my knees, where I belonged.

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