The Bullpen Gospels (23 page)

When we made it back to San Antonio, I took the advice of Dalton and Pops and passed on living in the team apartments. Having my roof cave in or someone lurking in my window didn’t sound appealing. Instead, I decided to get another host family. It worked so well in Lake Elsinore, why not in San Antonio too?

I got hooked up with an older guy who was out of the house a lot. He let me rent a room dirt cheap and insisted I finish the groceries he couldn’t eat when he left town. Never married, he had all the cool guy toys that single men of means can afford, like big screens and cool trucks. It cost me about $200 a month, everything included, and I got to watch
SpongeBob
on the fifty-two incher in my underwear during home stands.

The baseball chaplain who found my host dad also found me a car. All I had to do was make a few appearances at his Little League practices in return. That and promise I wouldn’t do anything naughty with a girl in it, and I was fine. He made it sound like I could actually get a girl in it with me, which was very flattering.

Randy’s speech about getting our focus back worked for a little while. We came home and swept Corpus Christi, but the mojo didn’t last. Soon we were dropping the majority of our games in each series we played—Frisco, Springfield, Arkansas, and Midland again. All of them took more from us than we from them, and before we hit the second half, we had fallen from first in our division to last.

If I had to place my finger on a starting point for our downward spiral, I’d have to say the bullpen. The most frustrating thing in baseball is to watch a hard-earned lead slip away, but it seemed to be our specialty. We blew saves with the greatest of ease, making Blade, typically unflinchingly sarcastic and fearless, worry about his future. Then Dalton caught the “blew flu.” His symptoms were walks and wild pitches. He couldn’t keep the ball in the strike zone, and when he did, it got lit. I contracted a mild case of homeritus and nearly gave up back-to-back-to-back home runs if it wasn’t for Drew, who climbed over the centerfield wall to save me. Rob and Ox began bleeding runs, not massive leaks, but enough to cost us W’s.

Then the virus mutated and spread to the hitters. Soon we didn’t have any leads to blow. We didn’t have any runs, hits, or balls in play. I thought the hitters’ limbs would begin to fall off or their bats spontaneously combust. Pops dropped F-bombs like the
Enola Gay
, though the only real casualty was the equipment in the dugout hallway, as frustrated hitters took cuts on it after striking out. On more than one occasion, hitters tossed our lumber onto the dugout floor, kicking it around and screaming at it to try to wake it up. If you were a fat chick looking to score, this was a very good time of the season for you.

The virus resulted in several amputations. A few guys were released, most notably, Woot. Skip, the legendary designer of our bus boob billboard, was also released, losing his job as the utility man, a moment that left more than just Skip in tears. White Chocolate was lost in the shuffle of utility outfielder. Our shortstop was sent back to High-A, followed shortly by our second baseman. A stud left-handed starter was taken off the forty-man roster, claimed off waivers, and disappeared into another dimension. And Chase Headley, or should I say, Chase the magnificent, went up to play third base in the big leagues.

After a few pieces were removed, some patchwork inside the wound was made. Guys changed roles. Blade lost his job as the closer, and Dalton lost his role as setup man. Some position players auditioned for other spots, and new batting orders were devised. Guys who didn’t see a lot of playing time started seeing more.

We kicked around the Texas League trying to find our new identity. Sometimes it feels like a team expects to lose, and I guess that was a fair assessment of us at the time. We felt like losers and played like it too. At one point, after eking out a win, Handsome Rob made the comment, “Did we win last night or just run out of time before we could lose?” Diego, the pitcher I relieved in my first Mission appearance, actually threw his glove in the air after a series of consecutive fielding errors were committed in front of him. He swore to the heavens in Spanish as a pile of unearned runs buried him under a losing streak.

We started to give up on each other. Then the season seemed to slow down to a painful crawl. I would sneak into the clubhouse, eat chips and salsa, and play web boggle with the clubbie to pass the time between outings. The travel seemed to take longer, and we got grumpier. Yet, just before the feeling got so bleak that we wrote the season off, some new faces came up.

With so many players going here, there, and home, we had spots open. Fellas from the cast of characters in Lake Elsinore came up. Frenchy and Tiny were both promoted and filled in holes in the starting rotation. Anto, the stud first-round-hitting standout, came up to play second and raked at the plate. Chase, who was never meant to be a permanent solution in the bigs, came back to the oohs and ahhs of his Double-A mortals. Edwin Moreno, aka “El Gato,” a soft-spoken Latin teddy bear with a bazooka for an arm, was acquired and fell into the role of closer.

Inspired by the fresh infusion of talent, some guys started to recover. Blade’s fever broke and so did Dalton’s. Soon the turbo sinker/slider pen was back in fighting shape, contrasted with the addition of the poo-throwing smoke and trickery of Stubbs, the balding lefty. Ox was cured after picking out a new Godsmack song to exit the pen to.

New fielders, new pitching, new rules, and new results all worked to stop the bleeding and even producer a win or two. Then a few wins became multiple. Then we began to catch fire. We hadn’t gelled yet, but it was easy to see we had all the makings of a tremendous team.

Just as things seem to go bad in a viral way, teams can get infected by a positive bug. We started coming back to win games. We held leads. We trusted each other to be successful. We expected victory. It probably sounded arrogant, and maybe it was, but when all our cylinders were firing, we were the best team on the field. I guess being a good team was just a matter of belief and consistency. If we kept the flame fanned, we would have a chance to get back into the race for the playoffs—maybe.

Despite our team troubles and a few lumps of my own, I pitched strongly. I don’t know whether it was my sweet new ride or my bachelor pad, but I was the poster child for consistency. I gave up a few runs here and there, but I was nothing like the old Dirk who lingered in the pen for weeks at a time before the coaches found enough courage to throw him out there. I noticed I was having success in every role I was put in. I didn’t ask any questions about why things were going so well, but I didn’t have to. Sooner or later, people start asking them for you.

A week or two into the second half, Abby began pulling pitchers into his office to have little discussions with them about their seasons thus far. He closed the door behind some of them, and left it open for others. When it was my turn, he called me in saying, “Hey, Hay, why don’t ya come on in here for a second?” I obeyed, entering the room. He did not shut the door, but gestured for me to take a seat. I plopped on a chair he had next to his desk while he began pulling cards that looked like miniature spread sheets out of a stack. He produced one with my name written across the top.

He looked over it as if he was reviewing my resume, his glasses sitting low on his nose, staring at the numbers while taking big breaths. He folded his legs, leaned back into his seat, and then shifted his gaze from the card to me.

“What’s on the sheet?”

“Yer numbers for the year. I like to keep my own records on how guys is pitching. Things like first pitch strikes and how often each pitch is thrown, how often you’re in a certain count.” He looked back down to the cards and ran his finger down a column.

“I’ll tell you what Dirk, you’re having a real good year. One of the biggest things for me is the first pitch strike, and you’re throwing it. You throw a first pitch strike more than seventy percent of the time—that’s real good.”

I knew things were going well for me since my promotion. I knew that my ERA was the lowest it’d been in years and that I wasn’t getting pulled out of games as often. I also knew I was walking fewer guys. Those were about the only stats I kept track of, the only stats I felt really mattered to me, personally. I couldn’t control wins or losses, and strikeouts are great when you can get them, but outs—no matter how they come—are the goal. I was throwing harder too, which I’m sure Abby didn’t care about, but it made me feel slightly more macho. Over all, I felt better.

“I know the organization is big on getting hitters out on three pitches or less and yer doing well with that….” His finger continued tracing the numbers. The television was still on in his office and a muted
SportsCenter
played highlights in the background. I peeked at the screen as he searched his numbers.

“Your slider’s come a long way,” he said, looking up at me. “I can tell you was working on it in the off-season. I said that to the Brass, I says, ‘Hayhurst’s been a working on that slider.’ You know something, I think it’s made yer curve better, too. It’s tightened it up.”

“It feels better this year.”

“It
is
better.” He looked back at the notes as he spoke. “You’ve been throwing all your pitches for strikes. Avoiding hitters counts, staying ahead of guys.” Now he looked up at me. “You are definitely my most improved pitcher from last year—and people are noticing.”

I smiled and put my head down. I didn’t know what to say.

“What do you think is the biggest difference from this last year to this?” he asked, pointing at me with one hand while placing the cards back on his desk with the other.

I took a moment to reflect. I thought about how my mental approach changed and how I might explain it in a way that didn’t seem as if I had developed a marijuana problem or had wanted Abby to join a cult or, at the very least, convince him I needed a therapist.

“Well,” I began, “I won’t say I just don’t care about what happens out there, because I do. I want to win when I take the mound. However, I don’t care about what I can’t control once I’m out there. I mean, the way I figure it is, I’m going to go out there and give everything I’ve got. I’m going to go right after guys. It’s all or nothing. I guess this year I’m fine with the nothing part. I’m not afraid of failing.

“Does that make sense?” I replayed the words back in my mind. It made sense to me.

“It’s all or nothing, huh?” he repeated back.

“Yeah. Like I was afraid to ante up before, but now I’m not.”

“Hmmm…” Abby murmured, his face scrunched up in a confused manner.

I wondered if I’d said something wrong. Part of Abby’s job as pitching coach was to turn evaluations of me into the Brass. I hoped I didn’t volunteer any incriminating information by saying I didn’t care about my results.

“Let me ask you something,” Abby said. “Why would you ever go out there with any other mind-set?” In his matter-of-fact country accent, he made it sound as if the things I just spoke were blatantly obvious facts everyone in the game already knew.

“Well, I…uh…”

“I mean shit, what were you thinking all those other years?”

“…”

“You have to go out there and go right after guys; you can’t be scared to—”

“Look,” I said, “it’s different for everyone I suppose, but I put so much stock in what it meant to be a baseball player, I became afraid to fail at it. I’d be out of a job, and out of an identity. I thought I’d lose everything without it.”

“Well hell, Dirk, we’re all gonna be done at some time or another.”

“I know. I guess I thought I’d be done sooner rather than later.”

“Maybe, but don’t you think you’d be done sooner by not doing your best?” Again he used the commonsense country tone.

“I know what you’re saying, but I want you to understand, I wasn’t able to get to this point until I was okay with the idea of baseball coming to an end. I could miss every bastard spot, walk the bases loaded, challenge hitters, and lose. I could take risks and fail, and then I’d be out of my job.”

“Or you could succeed.”

“But I was only thinking about the failure part, what I had to lose. Now that I’m not concerned with it, I don’t think about it.”

Abby mulled over my words for a moment, then sat up from his chair. “You know baseball isn’t a hiding place, don’t ya?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, this is a profession, not an existence. You can’t hide in it, no matter how well yer doing. I’ve coached a lot of guys, and some of them have all the success in the world but no means to enjoy it. When they’re done, they ain’t got nothing even when they have everything.”

I stared at him, waiting for more information, but it did not come. He shuffled his notes, then smiled at me quite pleasantly and said, “Well, whatever yer thinking about now, keep thinking it. Keep doing what you are a doing. Yer havin’ a great season so far, and there ain’t no reason you can’t keep having it.”

“Thanks, Abby.”

“Alright then. Send Frenchy in wouldya please?”

We had been to Frisco, Texas, before, when the team was laboring to get through games without completely breaking down. Now, after our rebirth, we were back for another round. Frisco was one of the best teams in the league, and if we were to have a shot at playoff baseball, we’d have to beat up on the Rough Riders.

Easily one of the nicest ballparks in minor league baseball, Frisco’s park is the gem of the Texas League. The outfield fences are giant LCD display boards that show hundred-foot advertisements, stats, and graphics. Big-league parks don’t even have such things. In fact, the entire park benefits because it is a minor league stadium. It does things its own unique way. The architecture of the facility reminds me of a high-class horse track, with custom loges featuring balconies, outdoor ceiling fans, and exposed walkways. It’s like proper ladies with large hats and fancy, one-time-use dresses should be alongside gents with tall leather boots and coats with tails, not dudes in frayed ball caps sucking down Budweisers.

All the stadium seats are angled toward the center of the field, meaning there is no bad seat in the house. A waterfall and swimming pool occupies the space behind the right field fence, and the bullpen has spent more than one night ogling the ladies occupying it with a set of binoculars. A display board the size of a small house towers above left field. However, as distinct as the field is, the one trait I found most unique was its bullpen.

The bullpen in Frisco is located in the stands—literally in the seats. A set of stairs actually climbs up into the stadium’s bleachers down the right and left field line allowing access to the pen. Surrounding the pen are seats on all sides. I have never experienced anything like it. Being thrust into the stands and surrounded by fans sets the table for unique fan-player interaction. Our last trip to the park, a group of high-school-aged kids came down to heckle us. They wrote signs that said You fucking suck, You’re going nowhere, and You aren’t never going to make it! The grammar gaffe on their part opened up the door for us to hammer them. The end result was security confiscating their signs and tossing the kids from the stadium. We asked if we could keep the signs, security obliged, and the relief corps hung them in the locker room as motivation.

Indeed, the park was a fantastic place to come of age in. If the team could rally against the Rough Riders, then we could feel good about our chances for the rest of the season. It would be a good test for us. This was a big series, big for a lot of reasons, though just how big would not be as simple a story to summarize as a line score…

Another notable feature I discovered during my last visit was that the grounds crew’s clubhouse was close to our own visiting clubhouse. The grounds crew had an Xbox in their clubhouse, something I told myself I would go and play during the nights I knew I wasn’t going to pitch. Our first night in town, I was on the shelf and unusable for relief, so I made the most of it. I felt like such a rebel, playing video games when I should have been out watching the real one, but honestly, sometimes sitting through game after game can be boring as hell.

During the first couple of innings of the game, I paid a visit to my favorite field workers. Outside their clubhouse was a dry erase board with tombstones drawn on it, each stone inscribed with a name. The last time I was in Frisco, I asked what it meant. The stones represented the names of individuals who were either fired or quit. There were more stones this visit than the last. It’s hard to comprehend why or how people got fired from grounds crew—it wasn’t exactly rocket science—but most of the crew members were high school age and preferred wearing giant-sized foam hats, aviator sunglasses, and playing Halo in between prank calls to Mexican porn numbers. In fact, that’s what they were doing when I stopped by.

“Hey, guys,” I said, peeking my head around the corner. I had my spikes on, and I’m sure they could hear me coming as I click clacked my way down the poured concrete hallway.

“Hey, bro, what’s up!” The ones I knew from my last visit got up and shook hands.

“Nothing man. I came to get a round of Deathmatch in with you guys while I wait for this game to end.”

“Absolutely! Let’s light it up!” said my pal in sunglasses, holding a bag of corn chips. There were empty boxes of Mountain Dew cans and beef jerky wrappers. I felt like I was inside a sixteen-year-old’s car. They were watching some reality television show at the time when I sat down. Folks on the screen had videotaped their amateur wrestling moves, involving idiots jumping off trailer home rooftops onto the bodies of their opponents, but missing and cracking their skulls open. It was damn good television. The crew flicked the channel and soon the screen went Microsoft green.

“Let’s rock and roll!” I said.

“You want to put some money on this one?”

“Let me get warmed up first, and I’ll think about it.” They were always trying to get me to bet.

Around this time, the team mascot, a giant, fuzzy prairie dog walked by the door, stopped, looked at us, shook his head and walked away. The Rough Riders mascot was not rough or a rider, he was a giant orange with a tired act.

“You guys like your mascot guy?” I asked.

“He’s a total assbag,” the dude with the corn chips said.

“Why’s that?”

“He acts like he’s a Hollywood star, Mr. Big Shot. Like his act is the most important thing on the field.”

“Yeah, get this, man”—sunglasses dude smacked me in the arm—“he had a meltdown because I drove him around the field too fast, and he didn’t get to maximize his exposure time. What the hell? He’s a fucking orange prairie dog!”

“Do any of the players mess with him?” Players have a long history of screwing with mascots. Mostly, this involved buckets of water and the drenching of fuzzy suits. Some mascots thrive on it and use it as a chance to entertain the crowd. Others hate it and want to be left in peace while grinding out another day of acting like a Lumber King, or a Prairie Dog, or Beaver.

“No, some team tried it once, and he had a conniption. He had our front office write a formal reprimand to the team that did it.”

“Wow, what a puss. You know, I’ve had some pretty good runins with mascots. There was this one dude, he was a Hawk or an Eagle or something, and he drove around the field on some kind of mini motorcycle.” I talked while the game started, and soon we were all firing rockets at each other, explosions echoing down the hall.

“The first night of the series, when this dude came rolling by, everyone in the pen smoked him with cups of water. He got real pissed about it, and later on in the game, he came over to the pen during one of his acts and yelled at us in his mascot hand-movement, mime language. We were like, ‘Dude, we know you’re a man in there. You can talk to us. It’s okay.’ So he started screaming at us about getting him wet and how we better stop or else, which, of course, made us do it again the next night.”

“Of course,” the crew said. I blew one of them up and watched his body fly into a wall like a Jack Russell terrier.

“So we did it again the next night, worse, aiming for the face mesh part of his costume. We almost knocked him off his bike. He decided he would get even by making water balloons and soaking us during the game, when we were getting warmed up to go in.”

“No shit? Did he?”

“Yeah, he soaked one of our guys—the wrong guy. The dude he hit with the balloons was a maniac with a full back tattoo and a thing for German death metal, and he almost went over the rails to kill the mascot.” The crew laughed as I went over the rails and fell into a deep chasm to my doom while trying to avoid a grenade. “The next night, when the mascot rolls by, our dude gets up and charges at the mascot. He didn’t tackle him, but he caused him to wreck. The mascot gets up and mimes that he wants a piece of our boy. Nothing happens there, but that night, more water balloons come raining down on our pen.”

“Damn it!” a crew member cried. I had stuck a plasma grenade to his character’s back and he blew up, giving me the lead.

“What did you guys do to get even?”

I finished the game before finishing the story. I lost, but it was close.

“Oh, yeah. Well, the next day, we got there earlier and got into the mascot’s dressing room, like the one your mascot has down the hall here. Our dude who wanted to kill him took a dump, scooped a turd into a bag, went into his dressing room, and ground it into the mascot’s helmet.”

“That’s awesome!”

“Yeah, it was hilarious. The mascot didn’t even come out that night. Ruined his whole show, but you know, he had to have put it on before he figured it out.” The grounds crew looked around at each other and smiled deviously. “You didn’t hear that from me,” I said.

“Hear what?”

“We playing again? No rockets this time?”

“Yeah, what level—”

Suddenly, Dalton’s head popped into the room. “Jesus dude, been looking all over for you, Abby wants you in the next inning. You gotta get loose, like now.”

“What!” I said, springing to my feet. “Holy shit! I thought I was down tonight!” I dropped the controller and ran out the door, rounding the corner so hard my cleats slipped on the smooth concrete causing me to wipe out and eat floor.

When I hit, Dalton stood there laughing at me. “I’m just kidding dude, you’re fine. Abby didn’t call. Gotcha.”

“You son of a bitch!” I said, rolling over.

“Oh my God, that was one of the best things I’ve ever seen!”