The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [12]
I don’t have a slick car or a nice condo. I don’t have a designer wardrobe or a good investment strategy. I’ve been slaving away at this job for the last four years, heading toward my fifth, and the only thing I have to show for it is an uncanny ability to hit squirrels with snowballs.
This is my question—my giant, dinosaur-turd-sized question: How much longer do I want to keep living this dream? Truthfully, not very much. I know folks would say that walking away from such a great opportunity would be a mistake. But what if giving up some of the best years of your life for something that may never happen is the mistake? There comes a moment in life, no matter what your line of work is, when you have to step back and wonder if you’re heading in the right direction.
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.
Chapter Three
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