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By Root 1219 0

long connector flight to Phoenix had me sitting next to a senior couple. They wore big, Terminator-style sunglasses that covered up their whole head. They had to use the bathroom every fifteen minutes and kept complaining about how much they hated today’s music compared to the good ol’ days when you could understand lyrics and women didn’t dress like hussies. When they saw my mitt, they asked me if I was a ballplayer. I told them it was a present for my kid brother in Arizona. I told them he was having an operation due to a rare disease called turf toe, and he was going to be off his feet for a while. Baseball was his favorite sport, so I got him the glove from this really nice, caring, and handsome pro pitcher named Dirk Hayhurst, who played for the Yankees. They said they’d keep an eye out for him. I told them my name was Eric Heater. They said it was shame I didn’t play baseball with a name like that.

Chapter Six

Car after car came buzzing around the Phoenix terminal while I lingered in the shade, hiding from the high-voltage sun. Cops made people who loitered too long move; families hugged hello and good-bye. I stood curbside with my luggage looking for the Padres shuttle van, a plain, white, eighteen-passenger van, with one small sign that read Padres printed out on standard computer paper and taped to the bottom right of the windshield. About a half an hour after I landed, it scooped up me and a few others and whisked us to our team hotel.

The Padres’ spring training hotel is a Country Inn and Suites nestled right up against the highway about fifteen minutes from the Peoria Sports Complex. It’s a nice place, and everyone who was with the Padres before it relocated to the Inn and Suites says it’s a palace compared with the dump the team used to be put up in.

I liked the hotel because it had free, fresh-baked cookies in a glass jar at the front desk. This year, the hotel desk also featured an eye-candy dish courtesy of a well-stacked blonde sporting a tight Padres’ T-shirt. She smiled as I approached, my luggage in tow. Undoubtedly, she would become the object of regular player attention, fielding stupid questions, direction requests, package inquiries, pillow-fluffing needs, mattress-fluffing needs, and other after-hours activities.

I, for example, led off with, “Hi, I’m a player with the Padres. Can you tell me where the check-in is?” even though there were a series of bold signs clearly directing new arrivals, besides my previous years of check-in experience. Nevertheless, she gave me thorough directions in a giggly, bouncy voice that made it completely worth it.

I hefted my luggage to the conference room as directed. Inside were members of the organization’s training staff, which doubled as secretarial staff this time of year, imprisoned behind stacks of papers.

Checking in for spring training can be a hassle. There’s a heap of paperwork to be signed, answering questions ranging anywhere from “Do you have drug allergies?” to “Does it feel like razor blades when you pee?” I’m sure it’s important to the organization to get all urinating habits out in the open, but the biggest part of check-in is getting a room and roommate.

There are only so many suites in the Country Inn and Suites, and a smart player spends the whole year kissing up to trainers to make sure he can score a suite with his buddy the following year. So when I hit the check-in room and met two new faces, I didn’t see new trainer friends, I saw a year’s worth of ass-kissing out the window.

“Name?”

“Hayhurst, Dirk.” Upon my utterance, the questioner sifted through a pile of names and sheets, found my information, and marked me off as arrived.

“Do you have any suites left?” I asked, as he worked.

“I don’t think so,” he said, absently shuffling, “I think we gave them all out.”

“Well, I hate to play the seniority card, but I’ve got five years in this hotel, and if I was ever going to use seniority to get a perk, it would be on this issue. I’ve been looking forward to a suite all off-season, and believe me, if you spent a whole winter