Out of My League

by Dirk Hayhurst

  I was hoping that when the pen was over and I made it back to the locker room, I would do so with a new confidence in my ability to perform here. I wanted to believe that I could match up against the Rockies. Instead, I felt like I was an excuse maker who couldn’t hit the most rudimentary of spots on account of my terrible delivery. I wanted to believe that wasn’t true, but when I looked at Balsley’s face, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was wasting his time, and no amount of early eyewash was going to change that. This was the big leagues, after all, and not some developmental minor league practice session. What mattered here were results, period.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  I booked a flight to get Bonnie into San Diego the day before my start against the Rockies. It was an off day—a blessing and a curse. It was nice to have the day free to do whatever we pleased, but it also meant another day without throwing before a start. I didn’t want to be rusty like I was in San Fran, and I didn’t want to rearrange my hotel room so I could have another game of catch with the mattress. Instead, I left Bonnie at the hotel for about an hour and headed to the stadium by myself. One of the clubhouse crew let me in and granted me access to the batting cages, where, in the absence of a catcher, I set a ball on a batting tee and tried to knock it off from 60 feet away—my arm didn’t know the difference, and the tee didn’t say anything about how bad my mechanics were.

  Afterward, Bonnie and I had dinner at a restaurant called Acqua Al 2. I selected the place because the night before Bonnie arrived, I had to work at this restaurant as a waiter in Adrian Gonzales’s charity event. The restaurant staff, remembering me from my visit the previous night, insisted Bonnie and I eat for free. They gave us a full seven-course experience. Bonnie was very impressed by how everyone treated me like I was some big shot. I played it like it was no big deal, not speaking a word of how I busted tables for charity the previous night. I told Bonnie this was the way all big leaguers got treated, and that things were different up here in the only league that matters.

  I really wanted to dazzle Bonnie, like I had been dazzled by the whole experience thus far. I bought her a dress, ordered her a massage, and the next day, the day of my start, I ordered a full room service breakfast.

  We sat on my bed, eating and chatting about how things were going for me. Bonnie wanted to know where to go for the game, who to sit with, and if any of the girls she knew from the minors were present in the big leagues.

  “I don’t know. I know Chase’s girl is here with him, but beyond that, I don’t know who else is here. I barely know anyone on the team, and some of the guys I knew from Triple A I feel like I don’t know up here.”

  “Like they’ve changed?”

  “I don’t know if they’ve changed, but very few of the guys are as relaxed up here, including me. And some of the guys, and this is totally my opinion because I haven’t been here long enough to be sure of it, seem like they really enjoy that they’re big leaguers.” I ordered pancakes and I was cutting them up, not really paying attention to my words as I spoke. Instead of elaborating, I poured syrup over cuts in the grid, ensuring each piece got optimal syrup penetration.

  “Of course they do,” said Bonnie. “After everything you’ve told me about it, I can totally imagine they would.” Bonnie speared some fresh fruit with her fork, more attuned to my words than I was.

  “That’s not what I mean. Yes, it’s cool being a big leaguer, but they act like, I don’t know, like it’s made them more powerful, like they now have social steroids or something. They’re the same people, but they’re just tone-deaf or too busy to be bothered. Especially if you’re unsure, nervous, or doubtful. Hell, I don’t know if this even makes sense. It’s hard to explain. It could just be this group of guys or the fact that we suck right now, but all the games here I just sit in silence on the bench, trying not to bother anyone. It’s nothing like Triple A, where we all talked and had a good time. Actually, the most lonely part of the day is when I’m at the park.”

  “You said that on the phone.”

  “Said what?” I took a bite.

  “That you weren’t talking to anyone and that it was lonely at times.”

  “Oh yeah.” I chewed as I spoke. “It sounded pathetic then and it sounds pathetic now. This is the big leagues, I shouldn’t be complaining.”

  “It’s not pathetic. It’s important to have friends wherever you’re at.”

  “Look, I appreciate what you’re saying, honey, but I’m in the big leagues. Who cares if I have a sewing circle to chitchat with, right? I should be happy I’m here.” I sat my fork atop another stack of pancakes and hesitated. “But ...”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know. There is something to be said for team chemistry, but ... I don’t know, Bonnie. It’s early, I’m a rookie. I’ll figure it out.”

  Bonnie stopped pressing the issue and went back to eating, as did I. After we cleared most of our plates, she said, “At least the money is great.”

  “Yeah, and that’s a huge relief. Even if I get sent down right now, I can command minor league free agent money, which is way better than what I was making before.”

  “You don’t think they’ll send you down, though, do you?”

  “This level is the most performance-driven level in all of baseball, babe. If I don’t perform, anything is possible. Look at how much turnover has already happened this year. I can tell you this, if I make it into September, I’ll probably stay.”

  “Why is that?”

  “First, there is no place to send me back to come September; Triple A is done for the year. Second, the rosters expand so they don’t need to worry about making space for me. They could send me home, I guess, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense for them to do since September is typically when they bring up guys they want to try out.”

  “Is that what they’re doing? Are they giving you a tryout?”

  “Yes and no. I came up before September so they obviously had a role they wanted me to fill for them. Otherwise, they would have stuck me in the bullpen. But if we were in contention for something other than not losing a hundred games, they wouldn’t have brought a bullpen guy into the starting rotation.” I looked at Bonnie, who was doing her best to keep up with me on what all the possibilities were.

  “All you need to remember is that our immediate goal is making it to September. If I can hold on long enough to be here when the rosters expand, we’ve got a great chance at collecting a nice payday to start our marriage with. That’s why today is so important,” I said. “It’s my last start before September. I really need this one to go well, to show them I can handle myself up here and that they should keep me.”

  “You’re going to do great, honey,” said Bonnie, completely certain.

  “I certainly feel more prepared for this one than the last one.”

  “Well, I don’t want to do anything to distract you,” said Bonnie. “We don’t have to do anything special, or go anyplace. I just want you to be ready.”

  “I appreciate that, but we have to live this up. We’re big leaguers now, right?”

  “Right. I have go to the bathroom,” she inserted abruptly.

  “That’s living large,” I said as Bonnie got up and scampered into the bathroom.

  “I’m sorry, honey, I’ve got a minor league bladder!”

  Bonnie went into the bathroom, and while she was gone I ate from the unfinished bacon on her plate. Then I flipped over the bill for the room service: it was over a hundred dollars.

  “Jesus Christ!” I shouted, before repeating the price of the bill out loud. “We could have eaten this same meal at Denny’s for twenty—” The sound of breaking glass in the bathroom interrupted me. Suddenly Bonnie let out a screech of pain.

  I stood up. “Honey, are you okay?”

  “No. No, I’m not. Oh my God.”

  I started to the door. “Bonnie, I’m coming in, alright?”

  “Be careful, there’s glass.”

  I opened the door to the bathr
oom and strewn across the floor were shards of glass from a broken tumbler. Then there was blood, big half dollar–sized splats of it smeared on the tile and leading to Bonnie, sitting on the edge of the bathtub holding her foot with bloody hands.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  She was pale-faced while blood oozed between her fingers. I snatched a towel from the rack and threw it down on the floor. Using it like a dry mop, I wiped the glass and some of the blood from the floor, pushing it safely out of the way and under the vanity.

  I grabbed a clean towel and got down on my knees in front of Bonnie’s bleeding foot. She’d cut the bottom of it, nearly an inch-long gash stretched across the arch. But the wound was deeper than it was long and bled like it went to the bone.

  “Turn around and stick your foot under the tub’s spout,” I said, gently. Clean water turned pink as it flowed over the cut. Thankfully, there was no glass in the gash. I pulled her foot free and put the dry towel on it with as much pressure as I could without making her yelp. “Hold it down tight,” I said. She grabbed hold of the towel, and I grabbed hold of her, lifting her up and carrying her into the bedroom and laying her on the bed. I went back and got some extra towels before replacing her hands with my own on the cut.

  “It’s not that bad,” I said, though I didn’t really know if it was or not. “It’s a clean slice, so it’s going to bleed, but holding it shut like this should stop it.”

  “Do you think I’ll need stitches?”

  “I don’t know. Does it hurt much?”

  “No, I can’t really feel it,” she said. “I was just scared of all the blood.”

  “I’ll bet.” Then I thought about her not being able to feel. I knew how long the slice was, but I didn’t know how deep. “Can you feel my pressure?” I squeezed to check.

  “Ouch, yes, I can feel it.” She settled down and tried to act tough. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Sure.” I smiled. “Take over for me. I’m going to call the front desk.” Bonnie switched hands with me. I called the lobby and had a first-aid team come up. By the time they got to the room, there was an inkblot test’s amount of blood on the towel, but the bleeding around the wound had subsided. The hotel’s first-aid supply was limited to gauze, Band-Aids, and creams. It would keep the bleeding stopped, but not keep the cut closed if Bonnie were to walk on it. I knew Bonnie hadn’t flown all the way to San Diego to sit in the hotel room while her husband-to-be made his home team debut, so we needed to find a way to get her to the park without opening the wound.

  I didn’t know if Bonnie needed stitches, but I wouldn’t be able to escort her to the hospital to find out. I had to be at the park ultra-early for my rookie eyewash time. What I needed was someone with a better read on these things than me; I needed a team trainer.

  In the minors, if the children of coaches or players had a boo-boo, it wasn’t uncommon for them to show up in the locker room for trainer attention. Wives, on the other hand, were a very different subject. I never saw any of them in the lockers. In fact, in all my time as a player, the words locker room and wives never entered into a sentence in a positive relationship. Asking the training crew to treat my wife seemed like a very bad idea, but today was my big day and I didn’t have many options.

  I felt bad for leaving Bonnie, but I had no choice. I needed the expertise of the big league training staff, but in getting it, I also needed be discreet. I didn’t want anyone else, not coaches or players, to know I needed to bring my wife into the lockers to get checked out. The last thing I wanted to do was draw any unnecessary attention to myself. If this was for me, I would have gone to one of the assistant trainers I knew from my A ball days. But this was a special request, which meant I’d have to talk to the man in charge of Padre-health, Todd Hutcheson, aka “Hutch.”

  I was scared Hutch would chastise me for asking for special favors without so much as a week of big league time under my belt, but, as it turned out, Hutch was saintly about it. In fact, the whole training staff, once they got word of it, seemed eager to help my wife-to-be any way they could. They even formulated a plan to have Bonnie get checked out in a private room, with a separate entrance from the lockers, during the game so no one had to know she was ever there. She would be like a ghost in a sundress with a cut foot.

  After I reported the instructions to Bonnie, I tried to put it all out of my mind and settle in for my start. The locker room’s television arrays played continuous loops of the opposing pitcher, Aaron Cook, and hitters strolled around the place, occasionally looking up at the feed and remarking about how they hated hitting off “this fucking guy.” I would have agreed with them, but I hated hitting off everyone. No doubt, Cook would slaughter me; at least he would do it from the right side instead of buckling me with towering left-handed hooks.

  I watched some video of the hitters I would face, and after about a half hour of it, I’d had enough. It wasn’t that I didn’t think it would help, it was just that I didn’t know how to apply the information. In Portland, Abby would take us down the line and give us a scouting report on the opposing team. The notes were hardly comprehensive, but they provided what we needed to know. Up here, a player could drown in information if he didn’t know how to apply it. The only thing I knew was that once the game started and the lights hit me and the cameras zoomed in, it would take everything I had not to hit critical mass. The less complicated I could make things, the better.

  About forty-five minutes before game time, I headed out to the pen to start warming up. Fans gushed into the park as pre-game sounds echoed into the far reaches of the stadium. Autograph hunters, dazzling light boards, concession callers. The machine was starting up again. I tried my best to tune it out, but it was still difficult as the magnitude of what it meant for the rest of my life washed over me.

  Doing my best not to look at Balsley when I missed a spot, I brought my arm to a game-ready boil in the centerfield pen. I thought of the catcher’s glove as a ball parked on a tee. I tried to convince myself I was alone, simply trying to hit targets like in the batting cage the previous day. I tried to convince myself there were no fans behind me, no tennis court–sized display boards advertising gift shop goodies, no relievers standing outside the pen, waiting for me to finish, and no wife hobbling along on one bleeding foot, trying to get to a place where she could watch the game. But the more I tried to tune it out, the more I tuned it in.

  “Alright, let’s do it,” I said to anyone who cared, grabbed a towel and a water bottle, and made my way out of the pen. The reliever crew waiting just beyond the pen’s gate met me with a shower of fist pounds, high fives, butt smacks, and “Go get ’ems.” With their blessing, I walked across the outfield as majestically as I could.

  The light boards flashed lineups and the announcer’s booming voice read the batting orders. When I hit right field, the voice declared, to the elation of the home team fans, “And now the starting lineup for your San Diego Padres!”

  The voice embellished the names with rolling Rs and stressed syllables, making everyone seem to have heroic proportions. Then, as the voice got to the end of the lineup, I knew my name was coming. My catcher, Nick Hundley, and Balsley entered the dugout, but I stayed outside on the grass. I had endured six years for the dream of hearing my name spoken over the loudspeaker at Petco. I did not want to miss this moment.

  “And pitching, number fifty-seven, Dirk Haaaay-hurrrrst!”

  The crowd let out a meek cheer reflecting my obscurity. I didn’t care. It was my name being announced as the pitcher in Petco Park. Nothing could ruin this moment. I cast my eyes to the display board to see my name flashing in bright, dream-come-true lights, but, according to the big screen, “Dick Hayhurst” was pitching for the Padres. I turned around to see if anyone in the dugout noticed. They were too focused on game preparation to care about something as routine as a roster announcement. I shot a glare back at the board. Dick Hayhurst. Dick motherfucking Hayhurst? I’ve been in the organization for how long, and on the day of my de
but they misspell my name into a phallic synonym? You’ve got to be kidding me.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  The display board goof was a sign of things to come.

  Though Bud Black was the kindest person to me upon my arrival in the Show, he was not shy about telling me to be more efficient. It took me nearly fifty pitches to get through the first two innings, and the only reason Bud was talking to me about being more efficient and not screaming at me was because I’d somehow managed to put up zeros. I guess I should have been thankful that, before becoming a manager, Bud was a pitcher himself. He knew what it meant to be a starter who pissed his pitch count away. When he told me to clean things up, he did so like all he wanted me to do was go out there, relax, and let those bastards dribble the ball to my infielders so I could get us through five innings.

  I took his sage advice and promptly gave up four runs in the third.

  Walks always catch up to you. Either they eat up your pitch count or come around to score, but they bite you in the ass one way or another. In my case, it was both. I walked three guys in three innings, one in each. I managed to dodge the damage of the first two, but, in the third, I walked Matt Holliday and tested my luck. With the pressure on and two bases occupied, I channeled the calming, soothing, let the ball find its way to the glove of your fielders voice of my manager, and I served up a curveball that Garrett Atkins crushed into the glove of a fan in the left field stands.