The Bullpen Gospels

by Dirk Hayhurst

  On the far side of the gate, I noticed a boy in a wheelchair. When I saw him, I stopped. I can’t read minds and I can’t search souls, but I wanted to give this kid the ball in my pocket. It just felt like the right thing to do. Moreover it felt like something I needed to do. I pulled the ball free and walked to the gate.

  I asked the security guard to let me through. He obliged, opening it for me. I stepped tentatively across the threshold. Immediately, programs and ticket stubs were pressed in front of my face. Parents called for their children, and whispers of urgency for something autographable and an implement with which to sign spread through the mass. They didn’t want my autograph. They wanted the autograph of a baseball player, any player. I, however, wanted something more personal. I ignored them, walking through the spear tips of their pens to the boy in the wheelchair.

  Standing there, looking down at him, I realized he was strapped into his chair. The expression on his face was not one of joy or expectation, but unintelligible emotion, continuously shifting while his head lulled side to side, sometimes gently, sometimes in thrashing spasms. His eyes focused on me as much as they did anything else, as if I were not there at all. He spoke no words, merely sounds and labored breaths.

  I knelt and did the only thing I knew how to do in my uniform. They only thing I’ve ever been expected to do in it. I smiled and acted cheerful, like some fifties comic book hero talking to a Boy Scout. I produced the ball and held it out to him, as if it were words enough.

  I expected him to take it from me, to snatch it up like every other child, yet his bent hands and crooked fingers continued to trace spastic patterns in the air. To him, I was not there and there was no ball—no souvenir, no magical bauble of white leather, no chance for a lasting memory. Spittle dribbled down the boy’s chin and collected on a napkin tucked in the collar of his shirt.

  His sister stepped in. She smiled graciously and requested the ball. I handed it to her. “Look!” she said to her brother in a singsong voice. “It’s a real baseball player and he’s brought you a ball! Way cool, huh?” She rubbed his arm and placed the ball at his fingertips, but they did not grab hold. The ball fell to the ground.

  The boy’s face did not react to her excitement, nor did it cringe at the dropping of the ball. Rather, it contorted in a series of expressions, the ambiguous shifting of a face that could not cooperate with its owner. His sister picked up the ball, and in her hands it remained.

  I looked at the both of them, then to the fans, and then to them again. Suddenly I was not there but standing in front of my father in his kitchen chair—his head in his hands while I stood awkwardly in front of him in uniform. I held out to him my accomplishment; I pressed it into his hands. Out it slipped, tumbling to the floor, where it shattered. Unconcerned, my father looked on, ever inward into a world none of us could understand, none of us could penetrate.

  Fans, parents, and kids alike, stared at me. All of them were more than capable of receiving that ball, all willing to react with the excitement I’d come to expect. I felt their gazes crush me, as if I should be doing something I couldn’t do.

  I was imploding now, falling to pieces from the inside, until the uniform I wore was a hollow shell moving on its own. I didn’t want to give the ball anymore. I wanted to give a part of me. I wanted to tear my uniform off and wring out every last ounce of magic it had within it. I wanted everyone to know how powerless I felt in a costume that people believed could fix everything, yet fixed nothing.

  If I could have broken my dreams into pieces and sold them for deliverance, I swear I would have. All I had was a baseball. And while so many people would have fallen over themselves to get it, and would have pushed, argued, and cussed me for not choosing them to bestow it upon, I chose that boy, the one person in the stadium who couldn’t take it. The one person I could offer nothing to no matter how hard I squeezed the fabric of my outfit. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t going to change. His sister smiled on, her patient face still watching me, ball in hand. I looked at her but couldn’t find any words. Then she spoke, saying, “I’m sorry.”

  She must have known her brother couldn’t take the ball. She must have grown immune to the broken joys. She knew the game, and its most revered artifact were rendered meaningless by his disability. She knew it because circumstances didn’t change his personality. She knew the hardship of trying to share something close to her heart with a brother who could never relate. She knew in some small way what it must be like to stand by and watch events you could never change as they play out completely beyond your control no matter how many times you shook your fists at the sky above. Why on earth was she apologizing to me?

  She was like my mother—apologizing to me for my own delusion. She was making the best of something she did nothing to deserve but couldn’t fix. And no one, no matter what they wore or what they did, was going to step in and solve it.

  I did not sign any autographs after I left that boy. Why should I? My name was as useless as my jersey, a scribble, a stretch of ink, and nothing more.

  Chapter Thirty

  I was operating under the assumption that after the game we’d head back to the hotel and go to sleep. You know what happens when you assume. It turned out, instead of catching some much-needed Zs on a nearby hotel pillow, I was riding another five hours on a bus as we made our way to the next town: Midland, Texas.

  I had been awake for twenty-four hours by this point. All I wanted to do was sleep. My mind was so heavy with thoughts and my body with fatigue that even the notoriously uncomfortable seats of a minor league bus would be like clouds beneath my ass. However, this was no Lake Elsinore where I had bus-seating dominion. All the seats had been decided on, and I would be the guy standing in the aisle while everyone pretended to be sleeping, deaf, or dead.

  I had to beg players to let me sit with them. Unlike the tour bus in Lake Elsinore, the bus here was older and smaller. Most of the guys I could pull the time card on were already doubled up. I sat with Cesar Ramos, another of the team’s starters, and though he did not outright tell me he hated me for ruining his seating arrangements, it was clear he did not enjoy the company.

  A side effect of spending way too much time in A-ball was that getting choice bus seats had spoiled me. I could no longer sleep with a man pressed up next to me, bumping my thigh with his, jutting his elbow into mine when he adjusted his iPod. I wasn’t the trooper I was when I first signed, the player who could sleep folded in a suitcase, if necessary. Now I could not fall asleep without the luxurious space provided me by two open seats. I felt like a sardine wedged into a can. I sat there thinking about sleep, thinking about what it would feel like to get some of it, and wondering what it would feel like if I could never do it again. I began to envision hell as a place where people desperate for sleep were constantly jerked awake by a bumpy tour bus and seatmates who couldn’t pick the right song on their iPod.

  Eddie gave me eighty dollars in meal money, and I ended up spending it on a seat. I bought a pair of twin open seats from the team’s strength coach, a man we called Juice. He had been in the back playing cards with Woot and Ward and had lost his meal money. He happily exchanged his seat for a chance to buy back in.

  I took Juice’s seat, but despite how hard I tried, I still could not fall asleep. I tried every awkward angle, leaning my head on the glass, trying to curl up over both seats, letting my legs dangle across the aisle. Nothing. Finally, when I got remotely close to slumber, I felt the urge to pee.

  Exceedingly frustrated with my life at this point, I made my way back to the bus’s bathroom. I had to climb back to it, picking my way over seat backs, trying not to step on other players’ heads as I went. The aisles were populated with obstructions such as card games using coolers for tables. It was as if the bus were a casino on wheels, and as dingy and cramped as it was, it was still better than the Lake Elsinore Hotel.

  The high rollers sat in the bus’s rear, next to the bathroom door. To get in, I had to in
terrupt their game. They made me wait until the hand was over. Woot won on a bluff, to which he said, “I’ve been tricking people into thinking I’ve got something I don’t for years now—just ask my wife.” Woot got up and allowed me entrance into the bathroom. Before I entered, I noticed his scooter was parked in the rear of the bus as well. I had to pay eighty bucks for a seat and his scooter got one for free?

  In the bathroom, I steadied myself with one hand, and relieved myself with the other. Trying to take a whizz on a tour bus is a lot like surfing. It’s a delicate blend of balance and stream control. Not that it really matters if I miss, since by trip’s end, the bathroom would be covered in pee from those less concerned than myself, but I was always taught to have pride in everything you do.

  As I piddled, I heard scuffling outside the door. A thump hit the door, laughter, and then things calmed down. I tapped the last drop out, zipped up, and grabbed the door handle—it wouldn’t open. It was being held in place. “Very funny guys. Oh no, I’m locked in the bathroom and I can’t get out! Come on, this was a tired act in college.”

  “Hold on buddy, we gotta finish this hand; then we’ll let you out.”

  I was pissed when I heard that, no pun intended. I shouldn’t have to explain the short temper a person has when he’s not slept for days. “Seriously you guys? What the fuck,” I barked. I punched the door.

  “Don’t be a dick, dude, just wait.”

  I heard more commotion outside and some laughing. That didn’t sound like a card game to me.

  “Okay—just watch your feet when you come out.” The bus casino allowed me to exit.

  I pushed the door open cussing under my breath. I looked down at the floor as instructed. Bottles with dip spit had collected there, as well as some wadded up junk food wrappers and a scooter wheel. There was nothing to look out for, nothing that wasn’t usually there. I took a step forward, eyes scanning the dimly lit floor of the bus. Still nothing.

  “What the fuck am I supposed to be watching out—” The collective gasp of the team pulled my eyes up. There, about a foot from my face, dangling from the ceiling was the spread ass cheeks and ball sack of Jon Dalton. He was hanging from the bus’s luggage racks completely naked, and I was on a collision course with his coin purse. One more step and he could have knighted me.

  “Jesuscriss!” I blurted, and fell backward, tripping on the scooter wheel and falling into Woot. Everyone on the bus had scuffled back into viewing position and was now bursting with laughter. Dalton dismounted, landing in the aisle. It turned out he wasn’t naked—he had on socks.

  “Spider-Man!” a patch of players shouted. Dalton was laughing as he pointed at me, “You just got Spider-Manned, bud.” He had one hand twirling his junk while he said it, as if he were thanking his sidekick for another job well done.

  “I have no idea what to say to that,” I said.

  Woot pushed me back to my feet. Guys were still laughing, and I started to chuckle despite myself. I made my way back to my seat, completely unconcerned with anything on the floor. As I went some of the team smacked me in the ass for being a good sport. Ox smacked me so hard my ass almost fell off. Needless to say, I didn’t get any sleep for the rest of the trip.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Room service woke me in the Midland Hotel. In my delirium I did not think to put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door before crashing into bed. The maid knocked once, then opened the door, and popped in.

  “No service,” my roommate groaned.

  “No serveeze?” the maid echoed.

  “No service”

  “No serveeze?”

  “Si, no fucking serivico or whatever…”

  “No serveeze?”

  “NO FUCKING SERVICE, GO AWAY!”

  She stood there for a second longer, casing our room or something; then she said, in a calm yet garbled voice, “Oh, okay, I come back later.” She shut the door.

  When I woke again, rain was coming down. It was pouring outside and in. The roof leaked. Buckets, dozens of them, strategically positioned under dripping hallway sections tried futilely to stem the flow. Some of the buckets were full to the brim, overflowing onto the floor, soaking the carpet, and forming large puddles that I foggily stepped into in my socks. The water was starting to leak into my room under the door, though, thankfully, nothing was dripping from our ceiling. Where the hell was I?

  Time travel—that’s a good way to describe it. After a thirty-six-hour travel binge, I was on a new team in a new town a couple thousand miles away from where I started the season. A matter of hours was all it took to remove me from the presence of my old teammates and crudely graft me to these new ones. That is how travel in the minors is though—harsh, immediate, and tiring, with a few hours on a plane, a few hours on a bus, and a few hours on a boat maybe if the roof keeps leaking. The most surprising part, however, is how fast a person adjusts and how quickly he forgets those individuals he played next to only days ago. I was no longer a Storm but a Mission now for however long it lasted.

  I took the second shuttle bus to the field. I slept right up until I had only minutes to catch the shuttle. Dalton (now fully clothed) rode with me, as well as two other members of the pen: Boris the Blade, one of the team’s closers, and Handsome Rob, the well-groomed, well-educated dean of the bullpen. Blade was the darker humored of the new pair, who enjoyed lighting the fuses of his fellow teammates and joyously watching them explode. He had a knack for sniffing out weak points. Handsome Rob, on the other hand, enjoyed judging the stupidity of fellow teammates and then pronouncing some insulting verdict. Rob was older, always well dressed, and spoke with an air of refinement. It was like being made fun of by Mr. Belvedere. Blade and Rob worked off each other well: one would instigate, while the other, too noble to instigate, would judge. I would have to be mindful of my behavior when around them.

  After arriving, we strolled from the bus, across the walkway to the entrance of the hallway leading to the Midland visitor’s team locker room. On opening the doors of the hallway, two crazed, angry dogs assailed us.

  “Jesus Christ! What the fuck!” Dalton screamed.

  The dogs, about the size of poodles, were locked in small kennels. They belonged to the visiting clubbie. Apparently, he let them run free when the teams were not present. When teams showed up, he locked the little ankle biters in tiny cages and, for some strange reason, placed said cages by the dimly lit clubhouse doorway. When the doors opened, the dogs ambushed anyone walking in with such ferocity that one would think they’d kill us all if they could get free.

  Dalton did not like being startled. So he bent down to the cages and started barking at the dogs that barked back, biting at the gaps in the cage. The three of them barked at each other for a minute or so; then Dalton started kicking the cages screaming, “Shut the fuck up you stupid little rats! Grrrrrr, grrr rarf! Rarf! Rarf! Yeah, keep growling. I’ll flush you down the fucking toilet!” He kicked the cages again.

  “That’s really working. Real mature,” Rob said to Dalton, as the dogs continued barking with renewed fury.

  “Rarf! rarf! Fuck you, dog. You want a piece of me? Grrrrr!”

  “Are you really trash talking the dogs right now?” I asked.

  “Wow Dalton, don’t be such a pussy—they’re just little dogs,” Blade said. The dogs really were no bigger than cats.

  “I don’t care what size they are. What are they doing here?” Dalton asked.

  “Scaring the shit out of you,” Blade said.

  “Yeah, you looked like Hayhurst did the other night when he almost walked into your dong.”

  Dalton relented on the dogs for a second and looked up at me. “Yeah, you should have seen your face when you got Spider Manned, Hayhurst. You looked like—”

  “I just had a dong shoved in it,” I interrupted, not amused.

  “Oh, don’t act like it’s your first time,” Blade chimed.

  “True, but I usually get paid for the other times it happens.” You have to rol
l with punches, or you’ll just get more of them.

  “How much do you charge?” Rob asked.

  “If you have to ask, you can’t afford me.”

  “Touché.”

  Dalton put his hand on the top of one of the kennels in order to stand up. The dogs nipped where he placed his fingers and scared him again, pissing him off even worse. “Goddamn fucking rats!” He started kicking the cages again. “SHUT UP!”

  Dalton stood up and looked to the rest of us. “Where’s the clubbie at? Who the fuck puts caged dogs in a dark doorway? I’m going to lock him in one of these cages.” He marched down the remainder of the hallway and kicked the doors open. We followed.

  Entering the clubhouse proper, Dalton could be heard yelling at the clubbie from around the corner, and every so often the words “dog” and “rat” could be heard. Blade and Rob went to their lockers and I to mine. On the far side of the lockers, more activity was brewing.

  Woot was bent down behind yet another reliever’s bare ass with a permanent marker. This reliever went by the name Ward and worked as the team’s lefty specialist. Ward, like Wooten, was also a former big leaguer with years of experience. If his thickly accented voice didn’t make it clear he was from the Bronx, then the sharp, quick-witted New York banter surely would. Ward had a mouth that (1) never stopped running and (2) was missing teeth. His ADD explained the first part, why he never slowed down and possibly his current, yet-to-be-discovered, exploit involving an artist and his ass. The missing teeth were due to bad dental care, despite the popular theory that someone knocked them out. He wore a mouthpiece to fill in the blanks.

  Taking the job more seriously than a man inscribing another man’s ass should, Woot made Ward move into better lighting so he could get a proper angle. The portrait was just as interesting as the canvas: Eddie, the team trainer. Woot drew a plump, round face with slanted eyes and short, buzzed hair. A mouth stretched from one cheek to the other, divided down the middle, of course. Though Eddie did not have acne, Ward’s canvas did.