The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [11]
My days start with mornings full of obscenities aimed at woodland creatures banging and screaming. I trudge through the snow and run the squirrels off, but they come back—rinse, lather, repeat. It appears the squirrels and I have a common enemy. I guess maybe we should work together. Someday I could leave the door unlocked and let them in when she’s sedated, watching Judge Judy. They could ambush her. I’d act as if I didn’t know anything. I’d feign devastation to the authorities and make a good sound bite for the local news. As soon as it all passed by, I’d throw the rest of the birdseed out, burn those feeders, and drive off into the night cackling maniacally. But, and this is no joke, she already suspects we’re up to something.
Something about lying in my underwear with snow boots on while my right arm throbbed got me thinking. Suffice to say, this was not how I pictured my life as a professional baseball player. Me shacking up with the withered old puppet of evil I called grandma, hanging on to a crumbling dream while the world passed me by, is not how things were supposed to go.
There is so much you don’t know when you get into the baseball business. You think you know it all. You’ve certainly seen enough of it on television to form an educated guess. But the stuff that happens on television isn’t real, no matter how bad you want it to be. I thought signing a contract to play was going to be my promotion into the glamour lifestyle. I would walk down the street and people would whisper, “There goes Dirk Hayhurst, professional baseball player.” Maybe they’d stop me for an autograph or ask me what it was like to be so awesome. I was going to live the big-league dream life. What the hell happened? Where were all the millions? Where were the luxury cars? Where was my first-class jet to paradise? Where was my dignity?
Instead, my career has crash-landed me on the floor of Grandma’s sewing room. If this is a dream come true, then dreams come packed in mothballs, smell like Bengay, and taste like lard-flavored turkey leg. My dream has made me into a commodity, a product, only as valuable as the string of numbers attached to my name—like some printout stuck in the window of a used car. The reality of my professional baseball player’s life is that most people have no idea who I am, nor do they care. The pay sucks, the travel sucks, the expectations suck, and, recently, I suck. Instead of gaining ground in life through my dream job, I’ve lost it. I’m further behind than when I started.
People always say they’d do anything to play professional baseball. The feel of the grass, the smell of a hot dog, and all that other Disneyland bullcrap. Don’t lecture me about the magic of the game; I’m all magicked out. I’ve heard every cliché, read every quote, watched every Disney movie about overcoming. I know what Hollywood fabricates the sports life to look like, and this ain’t it. In real life there are no symphony scores playing in the background while we go through our moments of doubt. There aren’t always coaches pulling for us or family members spouting inspirational soliloquies. Sometimes there’s just you, your bed on the floor, and a mean old lady telling you to go to hell.
Sure, I smell the hot dogs, and I feel the grass, but I also smell the scent of urine splashed on the walls of the minor league tour bus while the coach seats dig into my ass. I see sugar-crazed gremlins lining park fences, begging for baseballs. I say no, and those cute, innocent, dreamy little faces cuss me out like the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. Every two weeks my minor league paycheck affords me another round of value meals, and