Out of My League (31 page)
Authors: Dirk Hayhurst
“You’re here. Now you just need to focus on staying here.”
“Right,” I said.
He lifted his glass and clinked it against mine. “Here’s to a long career in the Bigs.”
Chapter Fifty-five
I came to the park early the next day. I figured, since I was young, I should probably be there before anyone else. Showing up early says you’re more prepared, hungrier, and more committed than other players. It says you want to stay in the big leagues and are willing to do whatever it takes.
I knew players and staff were still formulating their opinions of me, and I wanted them to be good opinions. It might only have taken me an hour to get all my pre-game work in, but an hour would not satisfy the people who were making judgment calls about my rookie work ethic. Every player knows that any exerting activity done in excess of what is required, which has no quantifiable relationship to on-field results but is pleasing to the eye of coaches and evaluators, is called “eyewash.” But, no matter how disingenuous it is, eyewash is an important part of rookie evolution. Older players expect it, and younger players freely give it because it’s the only way a player can avoid getting accused of being comfortable.
This is one of baseball’s greatest ironies. Young players desire nothing more than being comfortable so they might succeed, but older players detest young players who act comfortable. Not on the field, per se, but in their everyday behavior. A rookie player should always carry himself with the proper mix of terror, hunger, thankfulness, humility, confidence, and utter doubt.
Thankfully, I was in no danger of being comfortable. If anything, I felt guilty, like someone had given me a gift far too expensive for me to accept. The jet, the hotels, the money, the treatment—it was all so overwhelming it was nearly impossible for me to fake anything but utmost unworthiness. Yet, there was no way to express this sentiment except by pitching well and working hard. Like anyone who has been to the big leagues for the first time, I wanted to show I could handle the gift. I wanted to show I could be a good rookie to all who judged such things, I wanted to perform well on the field, and I wanted to be loved by my teammates.
Since I was a starter now, I had to throw mandated bullpens between my starts. I’d be facing the Rockies in a few days, and I was bound and determined to recapture the focus that got me to the Bigs—to do what everyone told me I should keep doing, which was not having hyperemotional freak-outs like the one I had in San Francisco.
Balsley and the team’s bullpen catcher escorted me out to the pen before the team stretch. Since the night I talked to him on the hotel phone, I’d felt uncomfortable around Balsley. He seemed cold to me and, since he was the boss and I didn’t want to piss him off, I steered clear unless he needed something from me. I thought we’d get a better feel for one another during our bullpen session. He was the big league pitching coach, after all; I wanted his approval more than anyone else’s, and I would do or say anything it took to get it.
Stretched, warm, and ready to throw, I took the mound in the Padres’ bullpen, told the catcher to get down, and set up low and away. I flicked my glove to announce a fastball, fired, and missed wide. The ball came back. I reset, flicked my glove again, fired, and missed, again. The ball came back. Balsley watched impassively at my side. I took a focusing breath, gave another flick, and this time threw a strike, right down the middle, belt high—the only kind of strike you’re forbidden to throw.
I cringed. By this point, Abby would have said something out of nowhere about my ears not being pulled back and how it was messing up my finger extension. Balsley, however, said nothing. Instead, he walked down to the foot of the mound and looked at me. Not at my eyes like he was trying to convey a thought, but at me as a unit, like I was some piece of machinery and he wanted to see the parts move from another angle. I flicked my glove again, fired, and missed.
The silence was crushing. I shook my head and mumbled, “What the fuck is wrong with me?”
Come back to it later,
I thought. Sometimes you don’t find your groove in a practice session on the first couple of tosses. Moving forward and hitting spots with your other pitches can help you get your feel back. Abby would say there is no sense in dwelling on a bad pitch when you’ve got other pitches that need work. I waved my glove to tell the catcher to move to the other side of the plate, then signaled for a sinker, but Balsley stopped me.
Come back to it later,
I thought. Sometimes you don’t find your groove in a practice session on the first couple of tosses. Moving forward and hitting spots with your other pitches can help you get your feel back. Abby would say there is no sense in dwelling on a bad pitch when you’ve got other pitches that need work. I waved my glove to tell the catcher to move to the other side of the plate, then signaled for a sinker, but Balsley stopped me.
“No,” he said, “stay down and away.” He continued looking at me like a mechanical instrument. “No use throwing to another spot on if you can hit the one that matters most. Low and away is where you make your living; you should be able to hit it nine out of ten times at this level.”
I nodded my head, consenting to his command. In fact, the catcher moved back as soon as he spoke, leaving me little option. I wouldn’t dare voice my difference of opinion, of course; the big league pitching coach’s word was law. I flicked my glove again, even though we all knew what I was throwing, wound and fired low and away for another miss. The ball was returned, the motion repeated, and the result the same. This went on for ten or so throws with me mixing in strikes like they were accidents. In the silence and the scrutiny, I began feeling like I had forgotten how to pitch.
I kept taking nervous glances at Balsley, but his face was stone. He did, however, count the strikes he thought worthy, announcing them so I might hear how low the number was. When I got to ten strikes out of who knows how many, I stopped and looked at him, completely lost. I knew I was making a bad impression. Or at least I thought I was. Maybe he’d seen this before and wasn’t worried about my lack of control. Maybe he knew this would happen. Maybe he knew how intimidating he was to rookies. Why wouldn’t he talk to me?
In fear of suffocating in the silence, I spoke in his place. “I don’t understand it,” I said. “I know this sounds like a cop-out, but I’m a strike thrower. It’s what I do ... I ...” I stopped there as Balsley turned his head away from the comment, seemingly disgusted by excuse-making.
“I believe you,” he said, though I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic. In fact, despite his softly spoken three-word reply, his face seemed to scream,
This is the big leagues, either you get the job done here, or you don’t. I have no sympathy.
This is the big leagues, either you get the job done here, or you don’t. I have no sympathy.
I thought about the words I shared with Bentley on the roof of the hotel last night, about how this was the only place you could really make an impact. Then I thought about the type of people who made impacts up here, if I was one of them, and if they made excuses. I tried another player/coach relationship technique: an appeal to arrogance, like I did with the strength coaches back in spring training.
“I, uh, don’t know how much time I’ll get up here in the Show, so I want to soak up as much info as I can. Anything you see wrong, I’m all ears. You’re the best coach in our system, and I obviously need to make an adjustment. I want to stay.”
I regretted saying anything almost immediately. Balsley picked me apart in short order, a regular dissection on the mound. He missed nothing, factoring my stride length, my landing foot’s angle in relation to my hips, the degree to which I crossed my body, and the length of my inseam compared to my torso. He even had me walk to see which way the balls of my feet struck when my foot fell. Most of the critiques focused on the mechanical, but when he was done, he told me that much of my delivery was just me compensating for me. It was like getting genetically sequenced and finding out I had more in common with poop-throwing monkeys than I did with strike-throwing big leaguers. I didn’t know how I was supposed to process all the analysis, or if I even could. Balsley did confess that this point in the season wasn’t the right time to work on it, which brought us back to square one: finding a way to hit the mitt low and away. The only difference now was, as I spent the rest of the bullpen time winding and missing, I could take comfort in the fact that it wasn’t really my fault, what with my entire body being a grab bag of inferior products and all.
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 bathroom 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.
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