Out of My League (39 page)
Authors: Dirk Hayhurst
Chapter Seventy-three
“I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me, and all your other advice about players and how we’re viewed and family, and everything else,” I said to Hoffman as he stretched his name across some baseballs I planned to use as groomsmen gifts.
The last game had ended, the season was over, and everyone was rushing to catch flights home. I’d probably get taken off the forty-man roster within the week. I’d probably never talk to Hoffman again after today since his contract negotiations weren’t going as planned with the big club. I couldn’t imagine him closing for anyone else, but baseball was full of things I didn’t understand, even when looking at it from the top down. Welcome to the big leagues.
“My pleasure,” said Hoffman. “You’re interesting to talk to. You’re definitely deeper than your average guy.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“And hey, you’re still going to do a lot of great stuff on this field,” he said. “But, personally, I think the best part of you is what’s off the field.”
I’m not sure if I blushed when he said that part, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I did.
“Good luck with that book you’re writing,” said Hoffman.
“Oh, thanks. And good luck with everything you’re up to.”
“Thanks, kid. Enjoy your off-season, and congrats on your marriage.”
I shook his hand after he gave me the last ball back, not as a boy star struck by a baseball hero, but as a friend. Then, after packing my own bags, I said my farewells to Chip and Luke, Frenchy and Anto. I tipped the clubbies, wished all the coaches I had words for good-bye, took one final pack of Fig Newtons, then wheeled my bags to the door of the Padres’ locker room and stopped.
I might never be here again,
I thought. I took one last big breath of big league Padres air, exhaled, and then walked away.
I might never be here again,
I thought. I took one last big breath of big league Padres air, exhaled, and then walked away.
It was a long plane flight back, but when I got off the jet, there was a little brown-eyed girl waiting for me.
“Welcome home,” she said, taking my hand.
“It’s good to be back,” I said, lacing my fingers in hers. “So where to, Grandma’s house?”
“No,” she said. “Never again. From now on, the only woman you’ll ever come home to is me.”
The night before the wedding, I sat in the apartment that would be our first home. My groomsmen came over for a few hours to keep me company in my last moments as a bachelor. They apologized for not throwing me a bachelor party. I forgave them, explaining that the big league club threw one for me already. When they asked for juicy details, I described the sultry curves of the Hooters girls in attendance, the flowing tequila, and the X-rated party on our private jet. Then I told them it was best they didn’t try to re-create the scene—they agreed wholeheartedly.
As an alternative to their party planning services, I enlisted them as carpenters and mechanics. The apartment was full of boxes of unassembled Ikea furniture, including the box containing my new bed frame. If I was going to get the apartment assembled in time to carry my wife across the threshold to more than stacks of Swedish furniture boxes, I needed their help.
After our assembly work, we stayed up late listening to music, talking about life and love and baseball while splitting a six-pack. Slowly but surely, the apartment started to come together. Then, when everything was assembled except the bed—which I felt I had the sacred duty of doing myself—my groomsmen slapped me on the ass and told me to enjoy my last night as a single.
Since I’d come home from the season, everything had been moving at warp speed. Each day leading up to the Big One was rife with one issue or another. There were the rehearsal dinner, showers, trips to furniture stores, arguments about seating arrangements, lease signings, final decoration choices, registry checks, shuttling family from the airport ... I almost found myself wanting to go back to baseball again.
When the door clicked shut and the groomsmen left, it was just me in the apartment. Things finally started to slow down, and I had time to think about what was going to happen in less than twenty-four hours. Things I’d known were coming for months now took on a new, terrifying shape. Like mountains on the horizon unworthy of my immediate attention, they had snuck up on me so slowly I didn’t realize they were here until they were just outside my window, blotting out the sun with their gargantuan size.
Holy shit,
it hit me, I was about to get married! I was going to be responsible for another human being for the rest of my life! I was going to have to be completely naked in front of a girl! I was not prepared for this!
Holy shit,
it hit me, I was about to get married! I was going to be responsible for another human being for the rest of my life! I was going to have to be completely naked in front of a girl! I was not prepared for this!
I flung open the door, but my groomsmen were already gone. I was alone. The walls began to close in on me. The apartment was no longer “our first place,” it was now a prison with Ikea furniture barricading me in. The unhung picture frames, the quilt from Bonnie’s grandmother, the plastic tubs full of unpacked clothes. This was it, this was how my run as a swinging single was going to end. No fireworks, no autobiographical documentary, not even a girl jumping out of a cake with tassels on her boobs. It was just me, foreign cardboard, an empty six-pack, and a place for the washer and dryer to get hooked up.
I needed to talk to someone, but not Bonnie—that was forbidden. The only real option I had was my parents, and though a conversation with them at this point could do more to talk me out of getting married than talk me into it, I decided to risk it.
“Hello?” my dad answered. I heard the sound of late night television in the background, then its departure at the striking of the MUTE button.
“Hey, Dad,” I said.
“What are you doing up?” he asked.
“I can’t sleep.”
“Nervous?”
“I guess. I don’t know. I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I mean, I just got back from baseball, I haven’t had any time to really think about how much my life has changed, and now I’m getting married and it’s going to change again.”
“Little late to be thinking about this now, ain’t it?”
“Yeah, I know it is.”
“Sounds like cold feet.”
“I don’t know. Maybe more like confused feet.”
“What are you confused about? You love this girl, don’t you?”
“I do. But the rest of my life is a long time.”
“Yeah, it usually is.”
“What if, you know, this is the wrong decision?”
“There ain’t no right or wrong to it,” he said.
“What if we, well, what if something happens to us like it did to you and Mom?”
“You can’t be thinking like that now, Dirk.”
“But I am,” I said. “I can’t stop thinking about that kind of stuff.”
“Well”—he cleared his throat—“if things go bad, then they go bad. You’ll work through ’em. But you can’t always think about how bad things can go.”
My dad let the phone sit idle for a moment, then he began again with a more introspective tone. “I guess I can’t blame you for worrying about it. We ain’t exactly the Brady Bunch. But, like I told you, you work through it. What you have to remember is, you’re not in it alone. That’s the strength and weakness of marriage—you never have to go it alone.”
“Never alone,” I repeated.
“You don’t get married for yourself, you get married because you’re better together than separate. Your mom and I fight, every couple does.” He chuckled to himself. “I guess we might be more passionate about it than your average couple.”
“You think?” I added sarcastically.
“Well, we have a family tradition to keep up.”
“I don’t want to keep that tradition going,” I said.
“So don’t,” he said, assuredly. “I’ll tell you, your mom and I haven’t been the best at showing you the right way to live, but we’ve been great at showing you the wrong way. I’d say you did pretty good at learning what not to do from us, and you don’t have to worry about turning out like us because you two aren’t us. You need to let that go. You need to stop being afraid of stuff that ain’t yet happened and may never.”
“I know,” I said. “I thought I had a handle on that.”
“What changed?”
“Getting my ass kicked in the big leagues. I guess I’m afraid any of my dreams can turn sour now.”
“That’s just baseball, Dirk.”
“It was more than baseball, Dad. It was my life’s pursuit.”
“Well, there is always next year,” said my dad.
“What if I blow this marriage like I did baseball?”
“You didn’t blow it in baseball, Dirk.”
“I don’t think the coach up there would agree with you on that,” I said.
“Oh, fuck that guy,” said my dad. “I’ve coached for a long time and you never tell kids who are out there getting their ass kicked for your club that they don’t got what it takes. Look, Dirk, we may not be great at fluffing you up with encouragement, but one thing we Hayhursts are real good at is telling other people they can shove their opinions up their fucking asses. That’s what you need to do with this guy’s.”
“I guess,” I said, smiling at my dad’s enthusiasm.
“Ain’t no guessing about it.”
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll try.”
“Good!” said my dad. “But that don’t make your feet warmer, does it?”
“No.”
“You’re still afraid of marriage, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, let me tell you something about that fear. Remember when you asked me about why I never went down to the wall in the backyard to pitch no more? It’s because I was afraid. I always enjoyed playing, pitching the most, but after you saw me there fumbling around on the mound, I felt embarrassed of how ridiculous I must have looked because I couldn’t do it like normal anymore.”
“But you were making it work,” I said. “You were doing it your own way. There is nothing wrong with that.”
“I know that now,” he said. “But, as busted up as I was then, it’s worse now. I can barely get a spoon in my hand let alone a baseball. I can’t walk as good neither, let alone wind up.”
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said, feeling like it was my fault.
“You ain’t got to be sorry. The point is, I quit doing something I enjoyed because I was afraid I’d embarrass myself, or that I’d do it wrong, or shit, I don’t know, that the world would end or something. I figure you’re in the same boat now, except you’re walking away from more than a lump of dirt in the backyard. You can’t let some asshole with a negative opinion slow you down, or what you think the people around you are thinking of you. You gotta stop doubting yourself and do what you know how to do. And stop taking more out to that mound than you need to get the job done, for Christ’s sake. You go out there with the weight of the world on your back, no wonder you ain’t getting anybody out.
“Now, listen, Bonnie’s a good girl for you. I told you that. You two are better together and she’s going to help you. I think she already has. She comes along and all of a sudden you’re in the Bigs. You couldn’t get your ass out of A ball with all the other girls you dated. You need to let her help you. That’s the mistake I made, Dirk. When I got hurt, I didn’t want anyone’s help because they didn’t know what it felt like to be me. Now I’ve lost years of my life I ain’t never going get back ’cause I wanted to figure it out alone. I hurt a lot of people acting that way.” He rumbled out a deep chuckle. “There’s another example for you not to follow.”
I didn’t say anything for a long stretch after my dad finished his point. I just sat on my floor, surrounded by a half-assembled bed. It was the first silence I shared over the phone with a family member that wasn’t awkward. I could hear my dad un-mute the television in the background, but I didn’t mind. He didn’t tell me he had to go, but he gave me space to think nonetheless.
“Dad,” I said, finally.
“What?”
“We should play catch sometime.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked, skeptical.
“Yeah,” I said.
“It won’t be much of a catch, Dirk. If I can even get a mitt on my hand.”
“We’ll get it on there,” I said.
“Well, even if ya do, you’d have to throw the ball right in my mitt ’cause I can’t catch for shit. And, no offense, but judging from how your big league time went, I don’t know if you’ll be able to do that,” he said.
“Funny, Dad, very funny. I’ll hit your mitt, and if I don’t, I’ll just hit you.”
“That’s fine. I won’t feel it anyway. That’s the silver lining of nerve damage.”
“I didn’t know it had one.”
“Not many, but you take what you can get.”
“I wish I could turn off my feelings, sometimes,” I said.
“No, you don’t,” he said. “Besides, you can’t. So make the most of what you can feel and stop overanalyzing it.”
“Alright,” I consented. “I’ll try.”
“Good. So,” he switched gears, “you ready for tomorrow now? Or am I going to have to hold your hand all night?”
“I’m ready,” I said, smiling. “Thanks, Dad.”
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