The Bullpen Gospels (4 page)

Most baseball players are content to play until they have absolutely no chance left. In fact, I’d say that’s the basic mindset: keep pitching, until your arm falls off or they tear the uniform from your back. However, I’m not most baseball players. I realize that if this doesn’t pan out, I’m not going to have anything to show for it except boring stories of glory days.

While I lay there on my air mattress, some unremarkable Tuesday morning with snow and squirrels and screaming, I decided I’d start taking the necessary preparations to make my peace with baseball. I didn’t want to quit, but I’d run out of good reasons to keep playing. I couldn’t go on living like this, which wasn’t really living at all. I needed to get out before too much of my life had collected alongside the other broken-down relics in Grandma’s house. I just had one problem: I wasn’t the only person wrapped up in this dream.

Though my parents’ house was only a few miles away in Canton, I didn’t visit it very often. When I did, I didn’t have to be there long before I was reminded why I stayed away. Yet, I had to come home, they deserved to know what I was thinking. My parents were there at the start of my baseball career, and they should know how it would end.

My dad sat at the kitchen table, smoke streaming up from the cigarette pressed in his off hand. I took a seat across from him and waited for a chance to talk. A gray smog had collected in the air above us, hanging there, dimming the light. He was so silent, one might suspect he was dead, stuck in place save for the way the smoke-filled air moved when he breathed.

I didn’t know how long he was like that—minutes, hours, or days perhaps. The only way to measure was to check how much ash had accumulated in the tray in front of him. If I had to guess, he’d been motionless for about two hours.

Stomping could be heard upstairs. My mother and brother were moving about. The thumps came and went with long breaks in between—water running, toilet flushing, someone taking a shower. It was just a matter of time before they crossed paths.

I tried to think of something to say to my father as we sat, but how to begin? Small talk? Something light before telling him I really wanted to quit my dream and ruin the family’s big hope of something better for just one of its members? What was there to say?

He had no life, nothing to chat idly about. On the off chance we did speak, he’d regurgitate television programs he’d watched. Some show on how things were made. That’s all he did now. Unemployed, angry, unmotivated to live, he sat in front of the television or in the silent haze of a cigarette. We’ve passed a lot of hours like this: neither of us talking, both sitting in front of his television drug.

My mother’s voice broke in above us. The sound of my brother’s retort followed—yelling ensued, foot stomps, more yelling. Refreshed, they’d awoken to resume the fight. As much my mother’s fault as anything, she couldn’t let it go. I’m not sure I blame her, but since she was unwilling to lock him up, the fighting would just meet the same result it always did.

Today was Saturday. My brother was probably drunk last night. Came home late to my mother, who stayed up to ambush him about his debauchery. They fought, maybe something got broken, maybe someone got hit, maybe both. My dad, unwilling to stay in bed and listen, would get up and start screaming at the both of them in a voice that made you wish the world would end. Then, when he couldn’t take it anymore, he’d implode, start to cry, and wish he were dead—maybe more than wish, maybe try again. He’d say he hated his life, hated the family, hated everything. Upon losing her ally, Mom would turn on Dad. She’d say he needed to toughen up, quit being a baby, and act like the man she used to know.

Vindicated, my brother would laugh mockingly, calling them both fuckups, horrible parents, the reason for his drinking. And then there would be more screaming, more breaking, and more hitting, followed by a call to the cops, not to make an arrest, but to scare away the drunk. He’d leave, wreck his car, stumble back, and pass out on the floor in his own vomit. Come morning, when he was hung over, the fight would continue.

My dad sighed at the sound, lifted his head from his hands, and snuffed his cigarette into the ashtray. He was both as sad and angry as a person could be; you could see it when you looked at him, the way his body worked as if under some heavy, invisible weight.

Acting on the urge to leave, he reached down to put his shoes on. His crippled hands grabbed at them with all the finesse of a rusty wrench. Next, he reached for a wooden spoon, his makeshift shoehorn. He attempted shoeing his feet into his Velcro shoes, but the simple motion was too complex and he dropped the spoon. He tried to pick it up, but his fingers would not grab as instructed. Extreme frustration trumped the sadness that kept him in check and he exploded.

“Goddamn worthless fucking hands!” he screamed. Then he began clubbing his hands into the table with the same force someone would smash dry tree limbs. He couldn’t feel the blows, the same reason he couldn’t feel the shoes or the spoon. Repeatedly, he beat his hands until the frustration gave way to sadness again; then he began to sob. He slumped back into his chair defeated, head in broken hands, heaving.

At one time he built million-dollar machines. Perfect lines of metal intersecting in perfect mathematical harmony. He drafted things, complex mechanical things that would themselves build more complex mechanical things. All of it, pristine, flawless, designed never to break. Now the man behind all that perfection was broken. He couldn’t even tie his shoes, Velcro shoes.

I said nothing. I hadn’t spoken the entire time I was there—not even hello. I was a spectator in my own home. I was slowly remembering what drove me out in the first place to fight my way toward the big leagues into a better life.

The battle above us stopped. My mother must have detected my father’s outburst. She made her way downstairs, rounded the corner into the kitchen, and stood with her hands on her hips, staring at him, a puzzled look on her face. I could see the remnants of compassion in her eyes, deeply buried beneath a layer of resentment, as if her emotions moved away years ago, leaving the place to deteriorate.

She surveyed the two of us. Then, looking to me, she asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

I shrugged.

“Sam,” she said, turning to my father, “what’s the matter?”

No answer.

“Sam, tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing, just leave me alone.”

“Tell me what’s the matter. What happened? What was all the banging?” At one time, she asked the question in a sweet and caring way. Now, after years of no change, she was tired of being Mary Poppins about it. She asked in a sterile, near annoyed way.

“Nothing, goddamn it, just leave me alone!” my father roared.

My mother sighed. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked, looking at me.

“He couldn’t get his shoes on,” I said, but that wasn’t what she was really asking.

“All this screaming and banging because you couldn’t get your shoes on? Jesus, Sam.”

Anger began to win over my father again. He was so volatile—explosive one moment, despairing a second later. One more push and he’d blow, and this little family reunion would turn into chaos.

My brother began his way down the steps. His footfalls were much heavier than my mother’s. He rounded the corner, nudging her out of the way with his beer belly. Full of attitude, he now stared at the head of the house, laughing to himself like some movie villain at the failed attempts of those who would overthrow him. “What the fuck’s your problem?” he asked.

I’ll answer that one. My dad fell from the roof of our house while he was laying shingles. He fell headfirst, dropping twenty-odd feet before crashing into the rough ground below. He shattered his nose and blew out disks in his neck and back.

I can remember it all, like a memory recalled at the site of a scar. I was the only one home at the time. I heard my father shout, tumble, and hit. I ran from the house to see what had happened and found my father motionless, a pool of blood forming around his face. I asked him if he was okay, even though I knew he wasn’t, but what else is there for a thirteen-year-old son to ask?

He told me, in gurgles and gasps that he couldn’t feel his body, that he couldn’t move. He told me to walk away, to leave him because he was dying, and he didn’t want me to have to see it. I ran into the house and punched 911.

He wouldn’t walk again for two years. After all the rehab, when he could finally stand on his feet without assistance, he was a different man. A shell of one, not the father we had grown to love.

Outsiders would tell me I should be thankful he could walk, what a blessing it was, and all that jazz. I didn’t feel that way about it. Maybe I should’ve, but it wasn’t like the feel-good stories used to sell bracelets with trendy slogans. My dad could walk, but he did so like Frankenstein. He couldn’t feel his hands or his feet. His bowels didn’t wait for his consent to go. His vision suffered and his flexibility disappeared. He couldn’t tell whether he cut his legs or whether he was bleeding. He slept with constant discomfort and medicated himself heavily. When the pills stopped working on their own, he began mixing them with alcohol. The mighty perfectionist was unequipped to deal with his new imperfections. He was disgusted with everything, including himself.

For a time, things plodded along. It seemed as if, despite all of my father’s issues, the family would survive. Things were hard, but we were getting the hang of it. Then dad lost his job—the salary, the benefits, the sense of purpose were all gone. His hands, cumbersome and mangled, could not work the computer keys like they once did. When the company he worked for restructured itself, my dad was restructured by a fresh college graduate with no experience for half the salary.

The termination snuffed out the last remaining pieces my father had to build with. He could not work and so he felt useless. Having already reconciled the demise of his sports hobbies, no longer a softball or basketball player, he was at least a valued member of his work team. Now he was nothing. Coming from the generation that did not require degrees to get a job, any hope my handicapped, undereducated father had of competing in the present market was gone. He had lost his employer and the rest of his identity.

My mother’s job supported us while my father looked for work. Then she too was fired. Suddenly, we had nothing but a few waning months of unemployment. My dad had to take manual-labor jobs and simply could not keep up with the work pace. He was let go from all of them.

My brother turned to the bottle to help him cope. He fell into alcoholism about as hard as my father fell from the rooftop. He was a mean drunk, violent and irrational. He’d toss my crippled father aside like a rag doll. He’d smack my mother, choke her, and knock her down. He’d flat out beat the shit out of me. He put my head through picture frames, through coffee tables, and into hospital beds. He hated me because I was the family golden boy, sheltered by the success sports had brought me. I was the enemy—a relationship I’d become accustomed to.

My brother spent a lot of his early life getting into trouble. He had a poor self-image. ADD and a cleft pallet can do that to a person. When he grew up, failed relationships and drunk-driving charges galvanized him. He was convinced he was a bad egg because all his endeavors met with disastrous results. He dreamed as big as any kid, yet always found himself in situations where no one understood what he was dealing with.
Why isn’t he normal? Why doesn’t he look like the other kids? Why can’t he stay on task?
And, maybe worst of all,
Why can’t he be more like his brother?
He would come to wear judgment around his neck like a scarlet letter. The only time he felt relief was when he was drunk.

And so it went. Some days were worse than others, but so common was the domestic violence that the neighborhood cops knew us on a first-name basis. They’d show up and ask if anyone wanted to press charges, and my parents would both say no. When we got hurt, they’d lie about it. We wanted everyone to think we were normal, to keep up appearances. We had a great athlete in the family from a functional home. Nothing was wrong.

Once, when I was so tired of getting my head busted, I made up my mind I was going to lock up my brother and get it over with. I would put an end to the drama. My mom got on her knees and wept at my feet, soaking my ankles with her tears, begging me not to. I told her I had to. It needed to be done because we couldn’t keep living in fear of him. She told me I was just as bad as my brother and threw me out. I grudgingly dropped the charges, but I refused to live at home again. I packed up my tiny ship of dreams and set sail for the horizon. Instead of a bright future, I ran aground on the other side of the city, minutes away from my high school, employed in a run-down machine shop, living under the roof on my grandma’s asylum.

Today I made a pilgrimage back my parents to talk baseball or rather to talk about quitting baseball. Yet watching them tear each other apart, I didn’t have to ask why I should keep playing. If I did it for no other reason than just to escape my home life, it was reason enough.

I stood up from the chaos and walked through their battlefield, out the door, and into the winter wind. I stood in the drive, listening to the echoing shouts, watching them through the window, wondering how to fix it.

There had to be more than this, more to life than titles and jobs and roles to fail at. My father was a broken heap without a purpose. My brother was a drunk and branded a failure—my mother, a victim. What title would brand me? Was I to be the baseball player who didn’t make it? Would I always wear the jersey of a career minor leaguer? Would I be remembered as a washout, a failure, or a nonprospect?

I wanted to find out what I should do with my life from here on. I wouldn’t find it in the chaos of my family. I wouldn’t find hope there either, just a reason to put my key in the ignition and drive on.

That night, after I met with my family, I lay on my air mattress at Grandma’s, flicking a baseball up into a cloud of swirling thoughts. I sent the ball back spinning in tight, four-seam revolutions, trying to see how close I could make it come to the ceiling without striking it. Next, I tried to make the ball spin like a slider, seams forming a tight, red dot, indicative of a well-spun punch-out pitch. The ball clumsily wobbled up and thunked against the ceiling, then wobbled back down. I caught it on the return; then, irritated, I heaved it into an open suitcase across the room. My bags were packed, though I had no idea why. I couldn’t fix my slider, I couldn’t fix my career, and I couldn’t fix my family. Spring training was around the corner, and the only reasons I had for going was it was better than being at home.

Someone once told me a great way to take your mind off your own problems was to help people with theirs. I’m sure it was some great spiritual leader who said it, the kind who frequents mountaintops and deserts for perspective. I could use some perspective myself. Unfortunately, Ohio doesn’t have any topographical features that lend themselves to enlightening breakthroughs. Even so, the idea of helping someone was appealing to me, if not for perspective, then at least to know that there were some things in the world I could fix.

The next day, after a lard-soaked marathon breakfast, I made my way to a homeless shelter on the eastern edge of Canton called the Total Living Center, or TLC. It sits in a run-down area on the tip of the city’s sprawl, surrounded by project homes and government housing. Cops patrol the streets at all hours, and I swear I always hear emergency sirens echoing in the distance when I drive through the area.

I should tell you, this wasn’t my first time volunteering at TLC. I started doing it a few months before because, to be perfectly honest, I thought it would make me look good. I can’t blame all my actions on the institutionalizing of pro baseball, but one thing a public opinion–based job had taught me was that appearances meant something. Just like people assume things when they hear the words “pro baseball player,” they assume things when they hear “volunteers at a homeless shelter.” The words conjure visions of caring and self-sacrifice: humility, mercy, and charity.

All I did was take names. I sat at a desk by the door, signing people in, making sure too much warm air didn’t escape, doing a job a pencil on a string could have managed. I was a regular Mother Theresa. Originally, I wanted to fly over to Calcutta and help heal people who got bitten by tigers or by whatever they had over there. I didn’t research the topic that well; I just thought I should go. When I found out how much it would cost to buy a plane ticket, I had to settle for working at the shelter a couple miles from my house. It wasn’t exactly playing baseball with the kids from the “just seven cents a day” style commercials, but it was better than sitting on my hands, I guess.

The experience was a letdown, actually. Taking names at the local shelter wasn’t as dramatic or as awe inspiring as picking fleas off people who speak in clicks and pops. No witch doctors grabbed my head and prophesied my fastball’s future. No women with rings in their noses fell in love with me. No one thanked me for saving his life with my semicelebrity presence, and I didn’t walk away from the place transformed, ready to market Kabbalah water.

Today I sat at the shelter’s door, lethargically making clicks and pops with my pen. Most of the folks who came for the shelter’s meal and grocery handouts had already shuffled in. I signed them in, as usual, directed them to the meal, and then closed the door so the winter air didn’t leak in. There wasn’t much else for me to do except twiddle my pen, wrestle with my thoughts, and wait for the remainder of my time playing benevolent saint to pass.

In hopes of jump-starting an enlightening experience, I brought a collection of my minor league baseball cards. I had this ingenious idea to bring cards so I could sign them for the people who frequented the place. I got the notion because a lot of people asked me for cards once they found out what I did. Some thought it would be worth money someday, if I made it big. Some wanted a card to commemorate their brush with a quasi-famous person. Most wanted it so they could pass it on to their kids. Whatever the reason, there was an undeniable ego stroke from doing it. Someone was asking me to sign a picture of myself like a person would ask a movie star or Pamela Anderson. I thought every smiling face that asked for one of my cards would inspire me to keep soldiering on in my career.

In the same pocket I kept my cards, I kept the meal tickets—nothing more than worthless shards of scrap paper you could forge at home. In my boredom, I plucked one of my cards free and looked it over. It wasn’t a great picture of me, my face was puffed out like a blowfish and my hair desperately needed a cut. I wished I had a more impressive picture, let alone stats. I didn’t even bother reading the back side where words like “Hayhurst ranked among the top 200 pitchers in the Cal League in ERA and mound visits” were inscribed.

I placed the card back into my jacket pocket and resumed clicking my pen. The door of the center opened, and the room filled with a gust of frigid air. In hobbled a ragged, old man. His face was worn, weathered like cracked leather. His eyes were dull and gray, sunk into his face. He looked like some old prospector who lived his life on the edge of humanity back during the years when the West was wild. Multiple layers of clothing, all of them stained with what looked like dirt or grease, made a patchwork outfit that shielded him from winter’s bite. His scraggly beard was matted and tangled in clumps and knots. A green stocking cap covered his head, the top pulled up high like a cartoon elf. His pants were filthy, splattered with road salt toward the bottom and well into the later stages of fray. Slung over his shoulder was a stuffed sack, bulging with lumps on every side. He pushed his forearm across his face and snorted.

“Good afternoon,” I said with a big beaming smile. I was clean, well dressed, and ready to sign for such an obvious charitable cause.

This was his lucky day, and I knew it. He didn’t respond to my greeting, but walked over to the desk in a side-to-side motion, continually smearing his hands on the sides of his outfit as he came. He took my offered pen, hunched over the table, and began to sign.

“Will you be dining with us tonight, or just here for some groceries?” I asked in a saccharine-sweet voice.

The ragged man coughed, finished scribbling his name, then let the pen drop. He mumbled to himself, wiping his hands on his sides again.

“Will you be eating with us today, sir?” I repeated.

“Yeah, yeah. What ya havin’?” He traced the architecture of the room as he spoke, like an animal measuring its cage.

“We are having yummy roasted chicken with noodles,” I said. Then I added in the same camp counselor voice I used earlier, “It’s mmm-mmm good.”

“Shit, ain’t as if it matters….” His voice trailed off and he returned to mumbling to himself.

“Well, Phyllis and the girls are fantastic cooks, and I’m sure you’ll love it.” I beamed back at him.

It was as if I were Willy Wonka. Everything I said was uttered with an über-excited ring, as if eating chicken and noodles were orgasmic. “Well, you certainly seem excited about it,” the ragged man said. “Can I have my tickets now?”

“Oh, right.” I reached into my pocket and grabbed for the meal tickets. I felt a baseball card’s stiff, cardboard backing, and I pulled it out instead.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, but,
I
am a professional baseball player. I pitch in the minor leagues with the San Diego Padres.” I’m surprised I didn’t brush my nails on my shirt after I said it.

“Uh huh.”

“I brought some of my cards with me. I can sign one for you if you like.”

“
You
are a professional baseball player?” the man asked.

“Yes, sir, I am,” I said, as if I were allowing him admission to a very elite club.

The ragged man reluctantly took the card from my hand, looked at both sides as if it were a shiny rock, then tossed it back down in front of me. I watched the card as it twirled down and spun on the table.

“There,” he said, as if he had done me a favor.

“Do you, uh…do you want me to sign one for you? A lot of people like that kind of thing.”

“No.”

“Are you sure? I mean, I am a real pro athlete.”

“No.”

“I’ll go ahead and sign one for you and you can give it to your wife or son or…”

His eyes came out of the dark clefts of his dense silver eyebrows. His face, so worn and beaten, still had such intensity. “Look at me kid. What in the hell am I going to do with a goddamn baseball card?”

“I, uh…I just thought it would make you feel good,” I said, and then smiled.

“Make me feel good?” he heckled. “I live on the goddamn street!”

“Well, I know, but—”

“Do you know why?” he interrupted. I did not, and my blank expression proved it.

“’Course you don’t, why the hell would you bother to find out?”

“…”

“My wife got sick. I lost my job, and our insurance went with it. With no insurance, we couldn’t afford to keep her in medicine. Then”—if he was remorseful, it was buried in his frustration—“she died, ’cause I couldn’t get a job to pay for treatment. We were married twenty years. Twenty years! I lost everything trying to keep her with me and now she’s gone. I got nothing and nobody. I walk around, and everyone thinks I’m on the street ’cause I’m some crackhead or something. I live handout to handout, and you think you’re just gonna fix it all with your goddamn baseball card?” He stared right through me, his words stealing the noise out of life around us. Then he picked my card up and looked at it again. “Oh, you look real good underneath that jersey, don’t you? Not a care in the world.” Then he crumpled the card in his dirty hand, and tossed it at me. “You can keep your bullshit card.”

All I could muster was, “I’m sorry.”

“You can keep that too!”

I sat at the table, trying to escape his gaze.

“Can’t a man just get a meal here?” he bellowed. “I gotta get preached to before I can eat so I started comin’ late. Now, I gotta listen to your bullshit about how great your life is?”

I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out his meal ticket as ordered. As I plucked it free, the entirety of my pocket’s contents poured forth. Baseball cards and meal tickets splattered on the floor. Cards, worthless cards, with glossy pictures of an inconsequential idiot littered the space at our feet along with precious meal tickets written with a ballpoint pen on nothing more than shards of scrap printer paper.

I bent down on one knee and picked up the mess as fast as I could. The ragged man watched me labor at his feet. He wore black workman’s boots that were falling apart. One boot had duct tape wrapped around it and both soles looked like blown-out tire treads.

“Looks like those shoes have had it?” My voice was back to normal. I must have found my natural tone somewhere in the mess on the floor.

The ragged man kicked out one shoe. “These pieces of shit? Bought ’em at the Super Walmart just a month ago. One month! They’s already fallin’ apart.”

“Why didn’t you take them back?”

“Won’t let me. Didn’t believe me, and I didn’t keep the receipt neither—I finally got enough money to buy me some decent shoes and this is what I got.” He mumbled curses, looking down at his feet.

This time of year in Ohio, the cold weather turns from snow to rain almost every other day. The ragged man’s feet had to be wet; there was no way, with so many standing puddles of slush-filled water, he was keeping his feet dry.

I looked to my feet. I was wearing Bass Company boots, fancy leather workman’s boots but not for working—they were too dressy. I got them a few years back with some extra Christmas money and kept them in fine condition, only wearing them when the weather necessitated.

“What size are your boots?” I asked.

“They’re a ten.”

It was in my brain. Something was pulling at me. Maybe it was always there, and I just did my best to tune it out. My mouth started talking, “You wanna switch?”

“What?”

“I’m asking you if you wanna swap shoes?”

The ragged man frowned at me as if I were playing a cruel joke. Then as if this was a bet he couldn’t afford not to take, he wiped his face, tugged his matted beard, and said, “I’ll switch, but you’re the one getting the raw end of the deal here, pal.”

“I’ll be alright.”

“Okay then,” he said, and he wasted no time kicking off his mangled boots. I unlaced mine, slipped them off, grabbed the pair together gently above the tongue, and handed them to him. He kicked his across the floor to me to complete the trade. He placed my boots on his feet and tied them up.

“How do they fit you?”

“Real good, these are real good, and”—he took some steps—“fit perfect, like they was made for me.” Reaching down, he pressed the tip of the boot to indicate where his toe snugly stopped. Then he almost began to smile, but stopped himself and eyed me with suspicion.

“Enjoy man. They’re all yours.”

His eyes and face changed, almost softening. The wildness left his countenance. He seemed like a person, like a man, a broken one but no longer disconnected. As cracked and cold as it was, his face began to warm. Maybe it was the way I viewed him now, maybe he was always that way.

“Thank you,” he said, in voice of the most genuine appreciation I’d ever heard. “This is a great kindness you’re doing.” The rough grains of his voice had smoothed out, and for a second I thought he might tear up. Instead of speaking, he reached out a dirty hand. Without hesitation, I took his hand in mine, and we shook.

“Thank you,” I said, stunned by it all. I gave him his meal ticket, and out of my life he walked in his dry, new boots, enroute to a chicken noodle meal that was mmm-mmm good.

Having nothing else to wear, I put on the ragged man’s old boots. They were, as I expected, soaked through. The damp soles discharged icy water into my socks on contact, and I almost tripped when the blown-out soles caught the corner of the steps. Wet, cold, blown apart, those boots were the best shoes I’d ever worn.