The Bullpen Gospels (17 page)

The batter’s head shifted slightly and his eyes bounced back. He was looking at Sanchy’s hand, alright,
That motherf
—. I stepped off again. Sanchy popped up and called a time-out. He jogged out to the mound to meet me.

“Uh, is you okay?”

“He’s peeking at your signs, Sanchy.”

“He pee-king?”

“He’s looking at your hands.” I said it slower, pantomiming with my hands as I talked.

“Oh, he see my hands!” Sanchy looked back angrily at the batter, but I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him around to me. “You want hit that fucking guy?” he asked, making a fist and pounding his glove. I smiled. He didn’t speak the best English but didn’t need to.

“No,” I said. This wasn’t the time.

If there’s any reason a pitcher can hit a batter, it’s for stealing signs. But then he’s on base. Next thing I know, I’m watching the three-hole hitter lift a fly into the High Desert jet stream. What was a fun bonding experience with Sanchy is now a bloated ERA. “Go back there and set up outside.”

“Fastbol?”

“Yeah, just set up away. Let him see the sign too.”

“What, why jou wanna—”

“Let him see it.”

“Let’s go boys,” the umpire said. He had walked out to the mound now, anxious to keep the game moving.

“Sorry Blue, we’re good,” I said. I nodded at Sanchy, who still looked confused.

Sanchy jogged back to the plate and squatted, the umpire followed. I reset on the mound and the batter stepped in. I watched the batter’s eyes as Sanchy put the sign down. He peeked again, just like before. I nodded to Sanchy, accepting his sign, though I never had any intention of throwing what he called, even though I told him to call it.

Leg back, hands up, rock, pivot, step, just like back at Mazz’s place.
Alright asshole, you wanna peek, it’s gonna cost ya
. I drove down the mound and snapped my best into flight. The batter squared up, full swing, locked in for the down-and-away fastball. What he got was a hands-high four seamer, inside from the start. A high fastball is too juicy to lay off, but the ones on your hands are like the poison apple. It continued riding in, even as the batter realized it was too late to stop his stroke. White leather bored into the handle of the bat, detonating it on impact. The bat blew up in the hitter’s hands, spraying kindling all over the infield while the ball spun to second, flipped to short, and fired to first—double play.

As the peeker jogged back to the dugout, Sanchy handed him what was left of his bat and said, “No more fucking pee-king!”

You tell ’em Sanchy. You tell ’em.

We lost, showered, and packed up. Before we boarded the bus for Modesto, our clubbie served us our final meal in High Desert. It’s called a getaway meal, named because it’s the meal we skip town while eating. In A-ball, players typically don’t eat after the games like Double- and Triple-A players do. And we wouldn’t have been fed were it not for the six-hour trip ahead of us.

Tonight’s meal was barbecue. Pulled pork or chicken sandwiches with baked beans—we got to choose. I opted for the pulled pork—mistake. My sandwich looked like someone fed a grenade to a pig. What did I expect?—the food was just leftovers served from the stadium’s concessions. Minor league stadium food isn’t exactly five-star cuisine. Hell, I’ve had better barbecue from vending machines.

Bad sandwiches were only a short-term issue. Baked beans was the real problem. A bus trip meal simply cannot contain a time bomb like baked beans. It’s only a matter of hours before stomachs start to explode, and the bus takes on the scent of a barnyard. Inevitably, someone will drop trow in the bus’s poorly ventilated bathroom. That brown torpedo will remain for the next four days of our trip, marinating while we drive, baking when we play. The trip home will be eight hours in a portable septic tank, with the aroma continuously recycled through the bus’s air system.

What can I do? Try explaining the ramifications of poor bus meals to a group of hungry minor leaguers who rarely get a postgame feed. This was a feast! Cold pig flesh and a scoop of turd pills—the team mauled it like lions on a zebra carcass, snapping and clawing when another player got too close.

We left around 11
P.M
. The team, fed and sedated, reclined in their seats while the clubbie inserted a movie into the bus’s on-board DVD player.

Nowadays, buses equipped with DVD players and at least six televisions to watch the media on make team trips smoother. The sets are staggered throughout the bus, hanging down from the ceiling above the seat backs. Most players take proximity to a screen into consideration when choosing their seats.

The movies played on team trips can be a welcome distraction or an unceasing annoyance depending on how many times you’ve seen the flick. Usually, during the first trips of the season, the same popular bus-trip movie staples are watched. I can bet, with almost one hundred percent accuracy, the movies most teams watch during this time frame in baseball are
Dumb and Dumber, Old School, Wedding Crashers
(the unrated edition so more boobies can be seen),
The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Gladiator
, and
300
. Sometimes they watch them more than once in the same season, and sometimes more than once on the same trip.

Dumb and Dumber
ate up an hour or so of tonight’s trip, distracting us as the bus made its way north. The next movie was
Gladiator
, a good action flick to change things up. The third movie was one I had never seen before,
Midnight Express
.

It was early in the morning when
Midnight Express
came on. Most of the team was out of it, trying to sleep in the uncomfortable coach bus seats as we went. The movie was older, produced in the later 1970s, with substandard production values compared to the previous two we viewed.

With no promise of perky female nudity, or at least some mindless explosions, none of us had the desire to trade sleep for its viewing. Several of the players’ heads drooped, succumbing to sleep. Headphones went in or over ears; pillows separated craniums from glass-panel bus windows. Things were quiet, peaceful, stinky.

Twenty minutes could not have gone by before the bus came to a complete stop. Instinctively, all players woke up, operating under the assumption we had come to either a rest area or the new town’s hotel. The streaking sounds of horns blaring in our freshly woken ears as cars blew past the bus told us something was amiss. No signs or lights marked the outside areas. We were stopped in the middle of the highway.

At the helm of the bus, the cross-eyed bus driver was whimpering to our trainer. The manager’s voice chimed in and then the radioman. I couldn’t make out what was going on, but news soon trickled back as the grapevine of players passed it along, bus seat to bus seat.

“We’re lost,” came the headlines.

“What? How? It’s this guy’s job to know where we’re going.”

“Have you seen his eyes? I’m surprised we made it this far.”

“Easy, it could happen to anyone; cut him some slack,” I said, trying to act mature.

“Oh yeah, how many times have you been lost on a bus trip before?

“Maybe we just missed our off-ramp. Do we know how far lost we are?”

The question went down the vine, and soon the answer was brought back. Each time this answer traded mouth to ear, it left the person who heard it angry. Finally, it made it back to me.

“We are like an hour and a half in the wrong direction.”

“WHAT! That stupid son of a bitch! It’s his job to know where we’re going!”

The bus’s engine turned over and we started going again, though no one knew where. Information circulated. Ideas were generated. Road times calculated. The bus got off the highway at an exit near a hotel. We hoped we might stop and figure things out in the morning instead of spending all night on the bus. Fingers were crossed, breath was held, and souls were inevitably crushed as the bus sped past the possibility of a comfortable bed and back onto the highway.

Anger, magnified by lack of sleep and the promise of three extra hours on a vehicle that smelled like a horse stall, made sleep-deprived personalities volatile. At the rate we were going, we wouldn’t make it to Modesto until 7
A.M
.

Meanwhile,
Midnight Express
chugged along on the screens above us, with footage of men scrambling about a Turkish prison. We had missed most of the plot and had no idea why they were imprisoned to begin with. We watched anyway, like zombies with no will to live and too irritated to slumber.

No one spoke. The wrong words would set off this powder keg of bush leaguers. As far as we were concerned, this bus was our Turkish prison, purgatory with coach seating. Our last glimmer of hope rested with this grainy, seventies flick. It was now this movie’s responsibility to enrapture us and distract our tortured souls from our present dilemma.

Then as if there was no doubt we might be on the midnight express to hell, the movie ambushed us with a shower scene portraying two male prisoners bathing each other, followed by a passionate make-out session. Time and space stood still as the images washed over us. Then, the spark hit powder and a scream split the night, “WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE WATCHING?”

Chaos ensued. Bottles were thrown at the television screens. Shouts of anarchy, outrage, and frustration mixed with swear words.

“Who picked this fucking movie?”

“Why does it smell so fucking bad in here?”

“Whose fucking hand is on my thigh?”

Oddly, all I could think about was the conversation I missed in the pen, the one about which guy on the team you’d have intercourse with if abducted by terrorists.

The bus came to another stop. The prisoners continued to bathe. You could hear frustrated conversation at the bus’s helm and see sexual frustration on the screen above. The radioman was obviously pissed off now, and we could hear his anger, though not the specifics of it. The prisoners were obviously confused, though we did not understand the specifics of it. The nuts and bolts of the situation trickled back through the bus. Water trickled off nuts and bolts above us.

“We are lost again.”

“Oh my God! Are you kidding me?” It was beyond frustrating; it was now completely ridiculous—absurd even. It was late, the bus smelled like a Turkish prison, and we just saw two dudes go at it—neither one a hot hermaphrodite.

Our anger subsided only when fatigue overcame frustration. The bus turned around and started going in a new direction. The movie finished, and no one dared put anything else in. It was almost five in the morning, and everyone was thoroughly miserable. Exhausted, uncomfortable, we slumped back and wished for any sleep we could get.

The next time the bus stopped, the sun was up. We were at the hotel in Modesto. Somehow, some way, I shambled through the check-in process and made it to my room where I passed out. An hour later, I was woken up by power tools. The room next to mine was being renovated.

No batting practice and a late stretch time—the manager was giving us a break for our enduring the sentence we served to get to Modesto. Even with the relaxed schedule, it felt like a blink from departing High Desert to the time I found myself sitting in another bullpen.

Modesto’s stadium was newer. The facilities were good for A-ball: breathing room in the clubhouse, no fly strips, separate rooms for the coaching staff. The stadium itself was situated next to a golf course surrounded by green trees and grassy fairways, a far cry from the barren flats and nosebleed-inducing altitude of High Desert. Though the bullpen was nothing more than a row of chairs stretching down the side of the left field fence, at least there were enough chairs for all of us.

Getting up for a game on no sleep requires copious amounts of caffeine. Some of the guys were nursing their second Red Bulls, others suckled strings of coffee cups. Our eyes were bloodshot and our faces washed out. We looked like animated corpses. Having thrown the previous night, I would have tonight off unless we got into a real mess. I refrained from energy drinks in favor of a nap, inconspicuously nodding off, my hat angled down to hide my closed lids from fans and coaches alike.

“Come on, Hayhurst,” Slappy said. “If we have to stay awake, you have to stay awake.”

“Why?”

“We’re a team.”

“You can think of something better than that,” I said, pulling my hat back down. “Good night.”

About the time I reached the weightless point of half sleep, one of the guys screamed
heads up
, jerking me awake. I tumbled out of my seat and hit the ground as a line shot came screaming into the pen. The ball struck the fencing behind where my head was, bounced off, nicked a chair, and spun in the dirt of the pen.

“Jesus…I almost died,” I said, watching the ball twirl to a stop.

“You angered the baseball gods by not staying awake,” Slappy said.

“Yeah, right. I don’t believe in baseball gods.” An old heretical wives’ tale of supposedly mystical beings who watch over games and act as the ultimate judges of on-field karma—which I don’t believe in either. The baseball gods will humble players who get too confident, exalt players who’ve struggled, and embarrass players who think they’re cooler than they are. Essentially, all the unexplainable, ironic, and coincidental stuff that happens in this game can be blamed on the baseball gods if you try hard enough. Most of their god-worthy events are a combination of stupidity, averages, and ego, but it’s more fun to say some higher power did it.

“Don’t let them hear you say that,” Slap cautioned.

“Or what? What are they going to do? Trap me on a rancid tour bus and subject me to gay shower scenes? Send me back to A-ball? Hit me in the nuts with a line drive?”

Another line drive came whizzing into the bullpen. I sidestepped it as it hit the dirt and one hopped into the fencing. “Hit fair, I’m trying to sleep, goddamn it!” I screamed at the hitter. Turning back to the pen, all the guys had moved back from me.

“You’ve angered the baseball gods, Dirk,” Slappy said, pointing at me as if he were some type of witch doctor speaking on the behalf of his volcano god.

“Maybe I should sacrifice you to appease them?”

“You better do something,” he countered.

“I’m not sitting by him. I’m going to end up dead,” Pickles said, genuinely concerned and picking up his seat to relocate.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Sleep with a fat chick, a slump buster.”

“Like the chick that shut you down at the Diamond Club?”

“Ha. Ha.” He gave me the finger.

“Sorry, I can’t right now. I don’t think the coaches will let me leave the game for that.” I righted my chair and sat down again.

“Besides, it won’t work,” Rosco said, matter of fact. “It only works for slumps, hence the name slump buster. Also, Hayhurst is pitching well right now, so—”

“He won’t be anymore, not now that he’s pissed off the gods.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I said.

“Well, you could play with a hangover,” Slappy said, still intent on the issue.

“That won’t work either, since he’s not a starter,” Rosco said.

“Why do these baseball gods require me to sleep with fat chicks or play wasted? Why not donate to charity or something?”

“Obviously, because they’re
baseball gods,
” came the harmonious response.

“Well, I don’t drink, and I’m waiting for marriage. The baseball gods are out of luck,” I said, flippantly. “I’m just going to have to wear it I guess, right?” I turned to face the field, but the silence behind me turned me back around. The bullpen was staring at me as if I walked into a party I wasn’t invited to and the record skipped.

“Wait—you’re a virgin, Hayhurst?”

“Yes. Why?”

“As in, you’ve never had sex?”

“That would be the requirement of virginity.”

“Holy shit!” Pickles blurted.

“You’ve played five years of pro ball and never had sex…wow. Are you gay?” Slappy asked.

“Come on!” I protested. “Just cuz I’m waiting for marriage, doesn’t mean I’m gay.”

“Do you even look at porn?”

“I’ve seen porn before.”

“Like what kind? Like the hard-core stuff or just the soft, cuddly, no money shot kind.”

I paused to sift through what I was just asked. “How did I get into this? How did we go from baseball gods to what brand of porn I look at?”

“It’s important, uh…
for the baseball gods
.”

“I doubt that.”

“Are you religious or something?” Slappy asked.

“Baseball god religious or real religion religious?”

“Real religion religious.”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve looked at porn before?”

I shrugged. “I’m only human. I’m definitely not the best example of—”

“And you don’t drink.”

“No. I don’t.”

“Are you a Mormon?”

“No, I’m not Mormon!”

“Well then why don’t you drink?”

“…”

“Do you think there’s something wrong with people who drink?” All the guys currently on the team drank.

“No, I don’t think it’s evil, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Well, what’s your reasoning?” Curious looks turned to suspicious ones.

I shook my head and took a long look into the outfield. “The reason I’m waiting for marriage is because it’s something I believe in, and it’s spiritual for me.” I’d told this little tidbit with the foreknowledge the boys didn’t much care for my personal reasons as much as they wanted to know I didn’t think they were sinful bastards. Baseball players in our age group are a lot like the regular nonbaseball-playing-type guys; both like women and pursue sexual relations with them as often as possible. It wasn’t easy for me to hold out for as long as I had, and it made me the brunt of a lot of jokes, especially since the movie
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
came out.

Your sex life is private if you want it to be, and I could always cite religion to make the skeptical questioning stop. The drinking thing, however, was a male-bonding ritual. Tossing back a brew with the crew was part of donning the uniform, and guys would frequently remind me that even Jesus put down a glass of wine now and then. The fact is, a lot of guys, baseball or otherwise, don’t feel comfortable around a guy who won’t throw one back occasionally. Baseball players and drinking go hand in hand.

“The reason I don’t drink is because my brother is an alcoholic. He’s practically ruined my family’s life with his drinking.” The words hung for a second. “I hate him for it. As long as he drinks, I won’t. That’s my reason, and I don’t care what you think about it.”

There was a moment of silence as the guys thought about the words.

“So you’re saying you like whips-and-chain-style porn, then?”

“You just never stop, do you?”

“It’s a simple question!”

We all laughed at Slappy’s persistence, which broke the tension. I smiled and turned back to the group. “Actually, I like the soft, cuddly, librarian kind.”

“That’s what I thought! Totally suits you!” Slappy shouted. We all laughed again, especially Rosco, who kept on laughing long after the others. He laughed so hard and so long, it became obvious he was no longer laughing with us, but at something else.

“What the hell crawled in your pants?” giggled up Stubbs.

“Oh man, no offense, Hay, but you being a virgin reminded me of this retarded kid I know.”

“Why is it people think if they say ‘no offense’ before a line, they feel they have the freedom to go ahead and be offensive?”

“He was a virgin too, but, well, it’s just funny because if you could have met the guy.” He started laughing to himself again. “Oh boy, that guy,” he labored for breath as he cracked himself up. “This one time he crapped his pants and…the grape jelly…the tear gas,” then came more laughing. We stared in wonder. When he finally caught his breath, he looked at us soberly, wiped his tears of laughter away, and said, “Anyway, the point is, you’re a virgin and he’s not. Amazing really.”

“Christ Rosco, are you going to explain this story or just laugh at yourself.” Slappy was obviously interested.

“He probably met some other nice person with a handicap and they—” I began rationalizing but was interrupted.

“No dude, she was hot.”

“Well, hot for him, I’m sure,” I said dismissively.

“No, hot for anybody.” At this, I stopped trying and buckled down.

“Spit it out, Rosco,” Slap said.

“Okay. His name was Carl, and he was a handicapped batboy we had on the team.”

“What kind of handicap?”

“I’m not a doctor. I don’t know if it was autism or what Rain Man had. Whatever. He was higher functioning, but not quite normal, you know?”

“So like Slappy?” Maddog asked. Slappy offered the finger to Maddog.

“Sorta. This kid’s problems were diagnosable.” Slappy offered the finger to Rosco.

“So Carl was our batboy. Actually, he wasn’t really a boy, he was more like a batperson. He was older. Older than me at least, but he still acted like a kid.”

“So he was a batman,” Stubbs said, giggling.

“Sure,” Rosco said. “But he was a good guy, meant well, like everyone’s little brother repeating what he saw us do or say. We’d hack on each other, so he’d hack on us, and it was fine, funny even. But he’d miss some of the finer points of how guys would bust each other’s balls. Sometimes, he’d go too far. Like telling a guy who just blew a save, ‘Nice job blowing the game, dumbass.’

“He didn’t know any better. So when he messed up, instead of getting pissed, most of the guys would just tell him to fuck off or something.”

“Wait, you told a retarded kid to fuck off?” I asked.

“I never told him that,” Rosco said. “But that’s mostly because we never talked. He didn’t think I was cool and ignored me most of the time.”

“So a retarded kid thought you weren’t cool.”

“Man,” Rosco said, correcting him.

“Sorry, a retarded man thought you weren’t cool.”

“Correct.”

“Okay, so he was like everyone else in that respect.”

“Pretty much.”

“Got it. Continue.”

“Anyway,” Rosco said, “when the stadium hired a cute new concession stand girl, Carl was the first to talk to her.”

“Oh shit! He nailed the concession stand girl! Awesome! What did she look like?” This was Slappy, of course.

“Relax Slap, let me tell the story. Carl followed the new girl around like a lost puppy, but he didn’t nail her.” Slappy deflated. “The girl was nice to him, but the kind of nice that doesn’t necessarily mean I like you back. You must be used to that, huh, Dirk?”

“Religious preference, dude, just tell your story.”

Rosco continued. “We all knew what was going on, but no one said anything, letting Carl make his own mistakes. Of course, the pretty, new girl liked the players more than Carl, but we all played dumb for Carl’s sake.

“Then, in the middle of a losing streak, Carl did that thing where he said something dumb at the wrong time to the wrong player, and instead of ‘fuck off’ he was told, ‘Oh yea Carl, well I took your girl home last night and fucked her brains out. She says she hates you!’”

“Oh boy. How did Carl take that?” Pickles asked.

“He snapped. He charged the guy like a wild animal, flailing and punching and kicking. It was actually pretty noble, him defending his lady. Unfortunately, it ended with him getting stuffed headfirst in a trash can.”

“Oh my God, that’s horrible!”

“Yeah, it wasn’t our best moment,” Rosco said, shaking his head. “Carl took it bad too. Not the trash can thing, that had been done before, but the woman thing. We’d seen him upset, but this was like DEFCON 1. He didn’t talk to us for a while, didn’t even tell anyone to screw themselves like usual. Instead, he started writing up some kind of letter, like a last will and testament. He left it on the table of the clubhouse where the team could read it. It said something about how he was so sad he would die without ever knowing the love of a woman. It was pretty deep stuff.”

“What did you guys do?” I asked.

“Well, uh…” Rosco scratched the back of his head, clearly a little embarrassed. “We did the only logical thing a minor league baseball team could do to fix the problem. We bought him a hooker.”

“You what?”

“Oh, don’t act so shocked. You said you’d have sex with a three hundred pound dude if the Taliban put a gun in your face.”

“First off, that’s because I’d have a gun in my face, and second, if I was sleeping with him, none of the other dudes would mess with me cuz he’d be my bitch. It was the smartest scenario.” The rest of the guys agreed. “I rest my case.”

“Whatever makes you sleep at night. Anyway, the hooker wasn’t really a hooker, she was a call girl. She was higher class. We had to book her and stuff. At least that’s what I heard. Our dirtbag clubbie with supposed mafia connections said he would set up the whole thing for us, and we just needed to raise the cash. Before I knew it, the idea had legs, and guys were pitching in money for the Get Carl Laid Fund.

“We ended up raising a decent amount,” Rosco said, rather surprised. “We passed the cash onto the clubbie, and he took care of the details.”