The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [109]
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