The Bullpen Gospels

by Dirk Hayhurst

“Let’s fucking go, Barry.”

  “Have a seat, Don.”

  “Quit staring at me, Ronald.”

  The rattling off of names was done in an attempt to guess the name of the bus driver. It was almost a game to see who could guess his name first, each guess with its own complimentary insult.

  “My name’s Tim, and I’ll be—”

  “GET OFF THE MIC, TIM!”

  Overwhelmed, poor Tim consented. The manager still feigned sleep, but there had to be a smile on his face. Tim put the mic down, and we started applauding him. He didn’t know it, but he was just initiated into the fold. If he did a good job, the guys on the team would treat him like royalty. If he did a bad job, well, he may as well drive this bus off a cliff. We wish we could all be winners, but let’s be honest, the “everyone’s a winner” talk lost its meaning back when fathers stopped buying ice-cream cones after the games for their red-blooded American boys. This is a lifestyle now, not a feel-good exercise. If you are going to work closely to a team, do yourself a favor and check your clueless speeches at the door.

  As the bus crept up into the mountains on its way to High Desert, a master plan was hatched. It was partially my fault, since I was the one who brought it up.

  “Do you remember what Skip did last year?” Brent asked, sitting up a few rows from me.

  Skip did a lot of things, to a lot of women, in a lot of towns. It was hard to pinpoint exactly which incident Brent was referencing. “Which girl?” I asked.

  “No, not that. I meant the sign he made for the bus trips.”

  Oh yes, that. Skip thought it would be a good idea, a boon for team chemistry and all that, if he solicited those passing us on the highway for free entertainment. He drew up a sign, written on a white trainer’s towel that read Please Show Us Your Boobs. Cheers!

  It wasn’t so much that the idea was invented. In fact it was actually rather odd the idea hadn’t come up sooner. I think every minor league team has done it. I’m confident major league teams would do it if they didn’t fly places. Rather, the irony was that so many women obliged.

  Car after car of ladies would do double takes at the white towel flown by lustful faces pressed against window glass. Several women would laugh and shake their heads, but a certain sect acted as if it were an audition. They’d steady the wheels with their knees; then they’d flash the bus for a second or two before blushing and laughing hysterically at their inner naughtiness. Once we encountered a very willing caravan full of sorority girls, and on yet another trip, we had so many ladies flash, a couple guys drew up additional numbered signs and acted as judges. Out of decency, we never offered a score below an eight.

  “Yeah, I remember,” I yelled back.

  “Remember what?” Slappy asked. Brent and I looked at each other. A mischievous smile curled across Brent’s face. I put my hand on my head.

  I explained the story to Slappy, and his reaction was immediate. “Do we have a towel?”

  “You are such a savage, Slappy.”

  “Yeah, like you don’t want me to do it, Tiny.”

  “People are going to think we’re perverts.”

  “It’s Southern California—they’re probably perverts too.”

  I actually tried to talk Slappy out of the idea. It usually ended with a strict scolding from the team manager. But there was no stopping Slappy now that the idea was out in the open—a new crop of players, a new manager, a new highway full of talent. History looked as if it would repeat itself.

  Slappy sniffed out a towel, then commandeered a Magic Marker. He wrote out the message while four or five players leered over his shoulder, anxiously observing the inscription of each letter like school kids about to pull a senior prank. As soon as the advertisement was complete, Slappy chose the side of the bus with the most traffic lanes and ran the towel up like the Jolly Roger while his pirates played lookout.

  The first car with potential had a cute blonde at the wheel. Some of the players started banging on the window glass, even yelling, as if the girl could hear them—it was probably for the best that she couldn’t. She casually looked over, then did a double take. She mouthed the words of the sign, daringly keeping her eyes on the road. The pirates continued to hoot and bang.

  “Is she going to?”

  “How the hell do I know? I’m not her.”

  “I think she’s going to.”

  “I hope so, she’s cute. She looks foreign.”

  “Foreign chicks are so hot.”

  The cute, foreign, blonde started talking aloud again.

  “Who’s she talking to?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there is another chick in there we can’t see. Two, hot, naughty foreign chicks!”

  The passenger’s seat folded up, propelling the formerly sleeping form of a male counterpart. He was not happy, and his finger went up to prove it. He was not foreign either as the words he began angrily mouthing were easy to lip-read by such well-trained swearword translators as us.

  Of course, this wouldn’t stand with the Lake Elsinore Pirates. We fired back with dozens of choice fingers. The car we were laying sexual siege to countered, defending itself with two middle fingers and a barrage of angry words we couldn’t hear. Nor could the vessel hear us screaming back, though I’m sure they got the gist.

  The battle raged until someone on our side put his ass on the window. The car sped away at the sight of it, and the cheeks left a wide smudge on the glass. We were left pants down and boobless, cursing at the one that got away.

  Life on the concrete seas is harsh. To survive, you must focus on the next prize, the next car of hot foreign boobies. “Hey guys, we got another one,” came a call from starboard. The boys tucked their fingers in, smoothed their hair back, and pulled their pants up. Faces returned to the glass, except the part with the smudge.

  A small car, with tinted windows cracked oh so slightly, rolled up beside us. From the crack in the car’s window, long, wavy lady hair that framed a face mysteriously hidden by large sunglasses could be seen.

  The banging and hooting started again. You’d think we were smart enough to know she couldn’t hear us. Or could she? Eyes hidden behind sunglasses coolly turned to peek through the crack in the window. She was looking at us—looking hard, more than looking. The sunglasses lingered longer than a person driving a car should let a gaze remain. She was good.

  “Oh, she is totally going to.”

  “She’s a vet. Look at that car control.”

  The window went down a hair, low enough to see her smile and nothing more. The boys started clapping at her, giving her the thumbs-up, and cheering. Slappy shook the sign like a bull-fighter.

  She gave a thumbs-up back, stirring the bus into a frenzy. Next, she put up one finger as if to say “Just a minute boys” and the dark, tinted windows went up.

  “Oh my God, this girl is awesome!”

  “She’s a professional. I’ll bet she lives for buses like ours!”

  A moment later came the yell, “We’ve got action!”

  All eyes went starboard. The window came down all the way, with full exposure.

  It’s obvious we needed the sign since there was no way for us to scream out through the window glass, though that didn’t seem to stop us from trying. There was no way for the ladies to hear our hoots and cat calling—no way to vocalize our request for high-velocity boobies. A sign on a towel and pantomime was all we had. It made things interesting, even challenging. However, while we were happily up to the task of getting girls to oblige our requests, no one ever stopped to think about how to get them to stop.

  Her face was cute, at least the portion that wasn’t hidden behind tinted glass, which turned out to be a very small portion. The rest of her looked like melted candle wax—white, pasty, melted candle wax with two large, drooping pizza dough boobs and pepperoni nipples on an acne-speckled chest.

  Dry heaving, coughing, and moaning, the pirates fell back in their seats, hitting the deck as if fat, fleshy, pendulous cannonballs h
ad struck the bus.

  “That’s the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.”

  “I think I’m gay now. I think I just turned gay because of that.”

  “Take the sign down! Take it down before she does anything else!”

  Someone’s ass went back up against the glass, but she didn’t leave as the other one did.

  Slappy wadded up the towel and threw it at me. “Great idea, Hayhurst. My penis hates you!”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The area around the High Desert stadium is not among the most picturesque locations in baseball. There is a beautiful view of snowcapped mountains during certain times of the year, but the immediate view is far from captivating. It looks like a former testing ground for atomic bombs—flat, barren, windswept land with a burned out feel to it. There isn’t much development near the stadium either, giving it a remote feel sitting lonesome off a bumpy stretch of road on the outskirts of Victorville, California.

  The place depresses me. Something about long stretches of flat, cold, windy deserts just feels sad. Then there is the high altitude. They don’t call the place High Desert for nothing. The stadium is the minor league equivalent to Coors Field. Couple the elevation with the wind, and it’s easy to understand why the park hosts so many games in the ten-run range. The unceasing high-altitude jet streams act like a tractor beam, simply sucking fly balls over the fence. If you aren’t depressed when you get there, you will be after you watch your ERA increase in altitude.

  At night the temperature drops substantially. The park’s bullpen, which is nothing more than a single slat of wood forming a bench only four relievers can sit on at a time, offers no shelter from the elements when the sun sets. The wind picks up and the cold air cuts through our spandex outfits as if we weren’t wearing anything at all.

  Though not the oldest in the league, the park is not a very comfortable experience for the away club. The locker room is nearly the size of a semitruck trailer. Lockers line the sides of it, with folding tables in the center. The confines are so tight, when pre-game food is put out, players have to sit wedged inside their locker cavities to make room for others to get through. Poorly ventilated, fly stripping hangs over the meals, coated with the dead insects like a decaying chandelier.

  There’s no training room. The trainer’s table and equipment are also crammed into the locker room, as are all the coaches, the manager, and his desk. There is a soda machine, which would only make sense, and the manger’s desk sits next to the toilets and showers to make room for it. Sure, his shoulder is getting brushed against by naked guys who just took a dump, but on the bright side, he’s only an arm’s reach away from a Dr Pepper.

  When the bus pulled into the parking lot and the boys began to filter out I languished at the end. I watched the guys exit noticing how the wind grabbed their coats when they stepped out. The unseen force, a constant at this park, smeared their hair and pulled it across their faces. It was gusting, straight out toward the outfield.

  Getting off this bus was a gut check for me. I couldn’t believe I was here, again. It’s amazing how nice parks make you feel proud of your career, whereas garbage ones make you wish it was over. I got off, grabbed my equipment, and fought the gale into the locker room. I picked a locker away from the high-traffic areas ensuring that I spent as little time forced in my locker as possible. Apparently, there were not enough seats to go around today. Some of the plastic chairs were broken to begin with, the backs snapped off or kicked through, no doubt the aftermath of a pitcher releasing his frustrations. Some were destroyed altogether, accounting for the lack of supply. I changed standing up.

  At game time, I found myself sitting in the makeshift away-team bullpen with Pickles, Rosco, Slappy, and Maddog. The temperature had dropped significantly, forcing us to layer up, going as far as to scavenge batting gloves to use as winter gloves. We sat down the right field line, huddled in a pack like Eskimos.

  “We need something to take our minds off this weather. This is miserable.”

  “Yeah, we need to get a good conversation going here. Anyone got any good shit to talk about?” Rosco asked.

  I thought for a second about some of the things I would talk about in the past dead times like this. I once read this book of superstring theory, black holes, and quantum mechanics—seriously. I thought I needed a crash course in something smart to test how many brain cells baseball had killed.

  I thought about bringing up some of the wild topics it covered. Stuff like time travel, alternate dimensions, and gravity wells. But Slappy, a black hole of a different variety, was the first to speak. “Okay, I’ve got one. What if you meet a girl, like the hottest girl you’ve ever met—like a Jessica Simpson, but hotter. And she’s all over you, right?”

  “This happens to me all the time,” Maddog said, rubbing his knuckles on his jersey.

  “Well, women are only human, Maddog.”

  “Anyways, she’s all over you, and she takes you home and you’re messing around.” Slappy started making messing around movements, which I won’t describe right now.

  “Right, right. I’m pickin’ up what you’re puttin’ down,” Rosco said.

  “She stops before it gets too serious, and tells you she needs to go freshen up. She goes into the bathroom, strips down butt naked, comes back out, and boom—she’s got a penis.”

  “What do you mean boom? Like it just appears there?”

  “No, she’s had it the whole time.”

  “Like she owns one, like a toy?”

  “No, it’s hers. It’s on her.”

  “So she’s a dude, like a superhot, Jessica Simpsonesque tranny?”

  “No, she’s a hermaphrodite. She’s both.”

  “She’s both?”

  “Yeah. She’s packing both.”

  “So she’s the hottest chick that’s also a man I’ve ever made out with.”

  “Ever? Do you do this frequently?” I asked.

  “Come on dude, I’m being theoretical.”

  “Of course, of course. Who am I to stand in the way of science?”

  “Yes,” Slappy continued, “she’s a hermo, and she’s ready to go the rest of the way with you. My question is, Do you still do her even though she’s got a penis?”

  The boys did not respond immediately. Rather, as if they were in math class and asked to solve for x, their faces shifted to deep thought. “Wow, good question.”

  Did I hear that right? Good question? Not, Where do you come up with this stuff? Or what the hell is wrong with you? Or you need to pick higher-quality websites. Or do you think you could just plain stay off the Internet altogether?

  “Are we really having this conversation right now?” I asked. “I mean, is this a real-world situation we need to plan for?”

  “I’m just trying to spark some conversation.”

  “You never know what kind of beef Slappy will bring home,” Maddog said.

  “Why is it always me that gets ridiculed?” protested Slappy. Everyone turned and stared at him. “Okay, I know why it’s always me, actually, but it’s not like I’m the only one here. You slept with a married chick in rookie ball, Maddog.”

  “I was drunk so it didn’t count,” Maddog replied, giving a wry smile.

  “No, no, no, it counts—you can’t just say it—”

  “Wait,” Rosco interrupted. “How drunk am I when I’m with this chick?”

  Slappy looked at Maddog. “You can’t be so drunk it doesn’t count,” Slappy mocked.

  “Yeah, because that would just make this situation too ridiculous,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Let’s say you have to be stone sober.” The council on hermaphrodite sexual relations all grunted, effectively ratifying the amendment, and the conversation continued.

  “I don’t know if I could do it if I’m stone sober.”

  “So it’s a no for you, then?”

  “Not necessarily.” Rosco went back to the drawing board in his mind. “Hotter than Jessica Simpson, but h
as a dong…Hmmmm…”

  “What if you don’t think Jessica Simpson is that hot?” Pickles offered.

  “How can you not think Jessica Simpson is hot?” bellowed the council, producing a reaction of instant outrage, which made me wonder how we could be totally on board with a subject like man on man-woman relations but be livid when the hotness of a certain blond-haired pop star is brought into question?

  “She’s hot, but I just don’t think she’s the hottest.”

  “Well, then pick your fantasy girl and add a wiener. It’s a simple equation.”

  “So it could be Angelina Jolie?”

  “With a wiener.”

  “Okay, good,” Pickles said, smiling contentedly.

  “How big is the penis?” Rosco resumed.

  “In regards to—?”

  “Well is it bigger than mine?”

  “No, yours is definitely bigger.”

  “Okay, so I’m still the king of the bedroom. That’s good to know.” Pickles and Rosco exchanged high fives, declaring, “Big ones!”

  “Yeah, she’s got a very feminine penis,” Slappy continued.

  “Could you explain that for me? Could you explain feminine penis?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Slappy said. “It’s small and cute.”

  “Cute?”

  “Yeah, and it’s been accessorized.”

  “Accessorized?”

  “Yeah, like the tip has lipstick on it, and there are two little earrings on the balls and stuff. Maybe she’s got a little pink sweater for it or something.”

  At this point, all I could do was stare at Slappy.

  “What?” Slappy stared back, innocently.

  “Do I have to see it while I’m doing her?” Rosco asked.

  Slappy disengaged from the accessorized penis talk. “No, you don’t have to see it. You might feel it, but you don’t have to see it.”

  “If we are under covers and I’m behind her, I should be okay, right?”

  “I think so.”

  Rosco nodded his head. “Okay, alright, I’m in.”

  “Hey hey, alright!” The council passed out high fives at the decision, passing the bill. Later, the council also ruled all women with penises should declare their arms before taking a man home because it’s discourteous. Honesty is the best policy, after all.