The Bullpen Gospels

by Dirk Hayhurst

  “Come on, Blade!” we cheered, but he couldn’t hear us from the pen.

  The Cardinals, who spent the entire game rolling over to our onslaught, suddenly decided to muster some resistance. They singled, then hit a two-run blast to put them on the board.

  I’m sure Blade wasn’t happy, but I felt almost charitable about it. I was glad to see the Cardinals didn’t get shut out in the last game of their season, on field, during the championship series. However, my mercy transformed into concern when Blade walked the next two batters and allowed another single.

  We were still up ten. In any other situation, there would be no cause for alarm. But this was not any other situation. This was the situation of the year. The emotional, ecstatic anticipation turned into neurotic what-ifs.

  The pen phone rang. Abby wanted Moreno up. No sooner did he start throwing than he was in the game, and the score was 3–12 with no outs. A wild pitch brought it to 4–12 and a single, 5–12. Our first out was made after the fifth runner scored, but if the Birds kept this up…

  Seven runs was still a huge deficit to overcome with three outs. The law of averages was still in our favor. That didn’t stop the bullpen from graduating to a full-on freak-out. Just a minute ago, we were cruising with a ten-run lead. Now we watched the Birds put up five without recording an out, and there was nothing we could do but watch from the confines of our square in the outfield.

  When the score hit 7–12, I started to kick myself. All that talk about having a beer, all the talk about winning, all that talk of Road House! What was I thinking? I felt sick, like all the happy butterflies in my stomach had just died gruesome deaths. Panic hit.

  “What the hell did we do?”

  “THE BALL BAG!” Dalton screamed.

  Some idiot, probably me, had packed the ball bag. A universally accepted no-no that always seemed to warrant punishment from the baseball gods, which I almost started to believe in. Thinking about winning and acting on those thoughts were different. Packing up your equipment in expectation of a predictable ending usually ensured the unpredictable. It was more than stupid—it was heresy!

  Dalton grabbed the rosin from the ball bag and threw it back into the bullpen. When another hit was recorded, he took the ball bag and dumped everything out. I stood in front of the pen’s chain-link fence, squeezing the links with my hands.

  “This can’t be happening…not again,” I mumbled.

  “Come on, Moe! Come on, baby!”

  Cheers arose. Futile cheers that came from our bullpen but were trampled over by the Cardinals’ war machine in the stands. They had come alive now, cheering their hearts out for their hometown boys. They were marvelous and horrifying in their intensity. There were no mathematical probabilities to them; no deficits too deep to overcome. I watched the scene on the field play out, completely helpless, feeling like I did those years ago when I watched the Cal League championship slip away.

  Turning to the boys I said, “If we lose tonight, we’ll lose tomorrow. There is no way we come back after a heartbreaker like this.”

  “They will have all the momentum,” Ox said.

  “If we are going to do it, we have to win it here.”

  El Gato wound and delivered. The ball was struck, a deep but tilting foul. Venable had a bead on it. We grabbed the links of the fence as we watched him track it, squeezing the fence like a throttle:

  “Come on Will! Come on Will!”

  The ball came down. Venable’s body was out too far to stay balanced, and he went down with the ball, glove out across the grass, reaching to make the catch! Two outs.

  “HELL YA!” we cried in unison. We shook the fence to vent our energy.

  “Attaboy, Willy!”

  “One more fellas, one more!”

  “Come on, Moe! Come on, baby!”

  One more. That’s all we needed. The Birds were down to their last out, but baseball has a way of making one little out impossible to get. In an attempt to confuse it, our catcher called time and walked out to the mound. There was nothing he could say that wasn’t obvious by the situation, but the conversation wasn’t important. He could very well talk about candlesticks or fried chicken. He was stalling.

  We were slowing down the Birds. They were riding a surge of adrenaline, a fire fueled and stoked by the crowd. Our battery was trying to put it out by starving their need for action. A long enough lull and the energy would dissipate, and the Cardinals would once again be aware of their dilemma.

  The umpire, not immune to the energy, hurried our pitcher along, though he resisted as long as he could. The players reset. The crowd’s engine turned over, firing up again. Moreno looked for the sign. Fastball, just what he wanted. Leg kick hand break, and then the ferocious uncoiling down the mound to where he let it loose.

  The ball was struck by a hitter who had batted around. He topped it, sending it spinning across to third base like a bouncing boobie to Chase. Chase scooped, stepped, and threw it across the infield. The ball seemed to move in slow motion, spinning like any other and, at the same time, unlike any I’d ever seen. It seemed to stand still, as if the field, the stadium, and the whole earth itself moved around it. It carried the expectation of a 147 game season on it, the culmination of every drop of sweat, every sacrifice, and every hope. Thousands of eyes watched, dozens of hearts pushed, and one outstretched glove caught the ball that ended the 2007 Texas League season. We had won it all.

  I made it to the gate first, but my emotions were driving me at a reckless pace, and I couldn’t get the latch open. All the practice I put in, and I was rendered impotent like a freshman fumbling with bra hooks. I began punching and jerking on the fence, finally resorting to kicking it open.

  The rest of the pen was on top on me. Suffering from the same adrenaline stupor, they would have pushed me through the fence or simply knocked it down had I not gotten the gate open. When it flung wide, we burst through like a raging river. Across the outfield we ran, screaming wildly.

  I was in a full sprint, my arms raised in a V with both fists clenched as I crossed the infield dirt. Ox and Dalton tore off their jackets and threw their hats as they ran. We were set to collide with the mountain of teammates already forming on the pitcher’s mound. Arriving last, we landed on top of that screaming pile of uniforms. Underneath, we could hear cries for mercy from the crushed. They begged us to relent, crying they couldn’t breathe, that something was going to break if we didn’t get off. Ox got off, jumped back on, and rolled around on the top like a pig in mud.

  The voice of the announcer, the same one who called our names to the demonizing tones of Darth Vader, announced us as champions. The crowd mustered hollow congratulatory applause. Then the announcer took a cheer offering for the slain Cardinals, and the place erupted one final time for the fallen.

  A stage was erected on the field, directly behind home plate. Our team was called together and presented a trophy, the prize of the Texas League. We clamored to touch it, to feel the tangible proof of a championship. League officials made speeches, coaches offered magnanimous words, and pictures were taken. Microphones and the people who wielded them chased around key players for marketable insight, but no one wanted to linger on the field. There was a celebration waiting for us in the locker room, and we wasted no time getting to it.

  As we entered the locker room, champagne bottles were again handed to us like rifles. The stereo blared hip-hop, and guys squealed and screamed like children ready for birthday cake. We popped the corks of our bottles and held our fingers over the barrels, awaiting firing orders. Randy entered when we had all gathered and attempted to give us a victory speech, but he didn’t get far before streams of champagne cut him off because every trigger finger was an itchy one.

  We soaked one another, chasing each other around as if the bottles were squirt guns. We drenched teammates, walls, furniture, the ceiling, members of the press, mascots, and everything else we could blast. Drew took a champagne bottle and sprayed it as if he were riding a pony. Lunchbox
acted as if he were jerking off with his bottle. Ox sprayed it up Manrique’s ass, and I sprayed mine on the wall thinking it was my fellow players because I had my eyes closed. Dalton ran around naked, and Blade, knowing he wouldn’t get his arms ripped off, sprayed Juice in the face, then dumped the rest down his shirt back. When the pressure in the bottles ran out, we tackled each other and dumped the remaining gulps on each other’s heads.

  Randy fought us off as long as he could before we cornered him with the watercooler. Ice cold, it took his breath away when we dumped it over him. Abby, less mobile than his managerial counterparts, stood his ground and was demolished—standing with his eyes closed, hands out like a blind man while a river of booze splashed down on his head. Pops happily called us all manner of swears and curses, which only served to cement the inevitable dumping of an ice chest on him by his hitters.

  When we ran out of bubbly, we moved to beer cans. We sprayed it from the lid, slopped it like paint, spit it out of our mouths, and dumped it on heads and down pants and shirt backs. We even punctured the cans and let little annoying streams squirt out like baby sprinklers. Ox tried to catch as much of it in his mouth as he could.

  When the waterworks stopped, we peeled off, picked each other up, and stumbled around, staggered by the surreal quality of our victory. Hugs, shouts, arms over shoulders, punches to shoulders, chest bumps, hugs again, until there was nothing left for us to do except take it all in. There we were, a pack of grown men, big kids, and wild warriors standing in the locker room so far from our homes. We had done the very thing we only whispered about in spring training, back before teams were made. We were a family now, baptized in the power of a championship. We posed for personal pictures with our arms around shoulders and our pointer fingers up, declaring we were number one. We stretched the Texas League Championship banner out in front of us and surrounded it, soaking wet, hair matted to our faces, reeking of cheap booze for the best family picture of the year.

  After showering and changing into dry clothes, we made our way to the hotel for the after party. There was beer there as well, but the meant-to-be-drunk kind. There was also pizza, chips, our freshly acquired championship trophy. Fortunately, Dalton was clothed again.

  The guys took turns having their pictures taken with the monstrous Texas League trophy, complete with a fresh engraving declaring the Missions as 2007 champions. I took my turn next to it, though the real prize was something far less tangible, something that felt like redemption.

  A promise is a promise. Drew poured me a tall, plastic party cup, like the kind I refused at so many forgettable college parties, filled to the brim with New Castle. With my chalice in hand, I walked to the center of the converted conference room. I interrupted the party, asking for the attention of my teammates, raised my cup and declared, “Here’s to you guys! A hell of a good reason for a first!” With that, I inhaled the entirety of my cup in one gulp, slammed the cup onto the table in front of me like a Viking, then gagged, cringed, and coughed. My teammates shared a laugh at my expense, then showed their approval by screaming, “Get him another one!” Twenty-three fresh beers were immediately pressed into my face.

  “That’s okay,” I said, waving them off, “I think I’ll take it easy from here on. It really does taste like piss.”

  Twenty-four hours later, I was on a plane back to Ohio. The season was over. No long good-byes, no sobs, and no last-minute declarations of love. It was done, the institution of minor league baseball shut its doors, packed up, and closed for the season. The next time we’d see each other would be in the spring, when we’d duke it out for a chance to do it all again.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  One Year Later

  I could tell them anything. The people who didn’t know me, which was most of the people in attendance, had probably heard the fantastic tales perpetuated by baseball books and movies and would take me as an authority on the subject, eagerly swallowing whatever concoction I fed them. My friends and family would believe me because of the inexhaustible supply of fantastic tales I’d already told. Stories about baseball just have that effect, I guess—it goes down smooth. But this wasn’t the time to goof around, even though my uncle thought it would be cute to toast my last night as a virgin with, “Don’t swing for the fences on your first at bat, buddy—just manufacture runs, steal a base or two, bunt.” My family has a way of spicing up any occasion, including my wedding.

  “First,” I began, “I’d like to thank all of you for coming today. I’m so very pleased Bonnie and I could share this special day with you. I know you wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but we appreciate it all the same.” Especially since their showing meant a guaranteed gift.

  “Second, I realize many of you here today don’t know me, which is a regrettable side effect of my career. In fact, I’d say most of you know more about my job than you do about me. I’ve been told by several of you that you’ve been following my stats on the Internet and rooting for me. Thanks.

  “I’d like you to get to know me though, beyond my stats, and, with my wife’s permission of course, I’d like to tell you a story about me and baseball, a real one that I think we can all relate to.” Unlike my uncle’s hitting advice.

  Most of my wife’s relatives—the bulk of the guests—flew in the day of the wedding and would be leaving the next. They didn’t know me, though most thought I was a nice young boy because reports they received about me told them so. What they did know, for certain, however, was I was a big-league baseball player, something that always seemed to dominate my conversation regardless of the occasion. Though I did spend most of the nonceremony portion of the evening being cordially threatened by the males in my wife’s extended family over what would happen if I didn’t treat her right, I also spent an inordinate amount of time getting big league ticket requests and contract speculation fired at me by fingers folded into the shape of guns.

  Making it to the big leagues was no small feat, especially considering how distant and impossible the goal once seemed. Me meeting a beautiful, caring, and capable woman was no small feat either. As it would turn out, both of these occurrences had their roots in the 2007 championship season.

  At the time, meeting my wife wasn’t quite as celebrated as winning a championship and discovering some of the mysteries of baseball. We were introduced through the wonders of technology, over the Internet. We spent the last two months of the season, even the night of the championship party, talking on the phone and exchanging e-mails. Our first live meeting came days after I returned home. When we finally met, the heavens opened up, doves flew in her wake, and I knew right then and there she would be the reason I moved out of my grandma’s. It was love, and the following season, I proposed.

  Speaking of the following season, I pitched my way back onto the Triple-A roster out of camp. I put up good numbers in the spring, even good enough radar reads to warrant Earp talking to me about something other than my nuts. Though I was sent off to Portland, Oregon, with a message from Grady that I might have to come back down to Double-A and pick up some spilt innings, it never happened. I pitched well enough to avoid that scenario, well enough in fact to earn an invite to the Triple-A All-Star team. (I turned it down to go home and help my wife plan our wedding, FYI.)

  Abby and Randy moved up along with several players from the 2007 championship team. Reunited, we had another season of adventure, but then again, they are all seasons of adventure. Come the end of the year, the Portland Beavers selected me as the Community Player of the Year, an honor given to a real person who moonlights as a baseball player. And then one unassuming night in August, I was called into Randy’s office, the door was shut, and I was told I would be exchanging my minor league uniform for a major league one.

  My relatives, much fewer in number, sat together at their tables. They were already bored with me and preferred to lavish my wife with attention, resulting in the males of my own family threatening me over what would happen if I didn’t treat her right.

&nb
sp; My mother, brother, and father, along with my agent and some mutual friends, were grouped together. My closest, nonbaseball friends sat at the wedding party table. My grandma sat at home watching Judge Judy because she refused to come. She said that my wife had the voice of a whining dog and that she hoped she was dead before the day of the wedding. That’s okay, she was just upset I was leaving her for another woman, and I’ll take that as a compliment. She’s still single now, and if you’re interested, she loves bird watching, is handy with a gun, and is a fantastic cook. Bless her heart. Naturally, my wife and I sat together, happy as could be.

  Officially sworn in as new family additions with everyone comfortably seated in front of food and beverage, I thought I’d introduce myself and my intentions with an experience that helped me put the game into perspective, even at the big, brightest level. This is what I told them:

  I was sitting at my locker when a big hand fell on my shoulder. It was the hand of Trevor Hoffman. I turned around, nervously, and offered a pathetic squeak as baseball’s save leader pawed me.

  “What you doing kid? Writing a book?” he asked, staring down at me as I typed away at my laptop computer. I started keeping a diary at the start of the 2007 season.

  “Uh, as a matter of fact, I am,” I replied, shutting the lid to keep my thoughts private.

  Hoffman sat down next to me, which was as flattering as it was terrifying. I hadn’t been in the big leagues long, but it didn’t take me long to realize that this level had more unspoken rules about time and behaviors than any other. Young guys were weighed and sifted by older guys, and depending on the disposition of the older guys, the scales weren’t always balanced.

  Young guys in the bigs aren’t only auditioning for the front-office Brass, they are auditioning for their teammates at the only level that really matters. New guys know from climbing up the many rungs of A-ball, they are to be quiet, seen, and not heard, and when they are seen, be doing something productive or entertaining. In my short amount of time at the big-league level, I wasn’t doing either. I had my butt handed to me on several occasions. In fact, my biggest highlight, the one my mom called to inform me I made SportsCenter for, was giving up a home run to Manny Ramirez.