The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [23]
Sometime before midnight, Larry blasted the suite’s door open and nearly stepped on my head. “Jesus man, what the hell are you doing on the floor?” My eyes had trouble adjusting to the light from the hall. Larry stood in the doorway, and between my sleep-dilated eyes and the bright backlighting, he looked like a big redneck angel—an angel with a spitter and a goatee.
“Hey, Larry. Good to see you too.”
“Good to see you man, but seriously [spit], why in the hell are you out here on the floor?”
“Well, the rumor is you snore pretty bad. I’m a light sleeper and figured I wouldn’t take any chances.” I smiled at him, sincerely. He looked at me as if I were fucking retarded.
“Dude, you’re fucking retarded.”
“I think it’s pretty smart! This way we both sleep fine.”
“Why didn’t you just buy earplugs? [spit]”
Why didn’t I just buy earplugs? “Well, Target was sold out. I’ll get some tomorrow,” I said, knowing I was lying.
“Well, what if I wanna sit out here? Your bed’s takin up all the room!”
“Don’t give me shit about the bed, not after what you did in the bathroom. I came in today, and it looked like a scene from the Exorcist in there. I had to call maintenance to come and force it down because it scared the maids.”
“Ha-ha, my bad, rommie,” he said, but you could tell he was proud of his bowels. “I got a phone call from one of my good buddies and forgot all about it.”
“I don’t see how you could forget an experience like that.”
“Actually, I thought it was one of my better ones.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Now wait a minute.” He looked at me, suddenly serious possibly offended. “Who said I snored?”
“Everyone who has ever lived with you.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone, Larry.”
“Well, hell [spit], then maybe I do!” He stepped over me and went into his room. “Well, I’ll let you get back to sleeping on the kitchen floor, smart guy. Good to see you again!”
“You too, Larry.”
Chapter Seven
The next day, bright and early, I rolled off the mattress and onto the floor. I lumbered into the bathroom to greet the morning with a nice, long whizz, when I remembered I couldn’t. Nothing was clogged or jammed. Rather, today was testing day, and I would need to save the sample for scientific reasons.
The entirety of testing day is dedicated to getting things stuck in and extracted from my person, along with running for time, being pinched for body fat, and enduring cold, awkward hands while coughing with my pants down. Chief on the list of nuisances is filling a plastic cup under the scrutinizing gaze of Dr. Fondle, whose wonderfully relevant job was to “make sure it comes out of me properly” by standing over my shoulder in a bathroom stall like some lonely trucker.
White, Padres’ passenger vans would be running players from the hotel to the complex every half hour, on the dot. I took the first one, bright and early, under the pretense that the sooner I got there, the sooner I could get it all over with.
The familiar scenery of my spring home passed by as the van rolled down the highway to the complex. The desert was in bloom. There had been enough rainfall to turn the rocky hills of the Phoenix landscape green with bursts of brightly colored flowers. The morning was a cool sixty degrees, with soon-to-be extinct rain clouds hovering in the air. It was a beautiful scene. In a month the sun would be back from its winter break to chase the clouds away and turn the landscape a burnt tan.
When the Padres’ van pulled into the parking lot, nothing had changed. It was as if time stood still in spring training. The cars of the big-league squad were already there. The big-league invitees arrived two weeks ago, their luxurious rides lined up in the choicest parking locations. The remaining spaces, closest to where foul balls landed most frequently, were left for the minors players.
Our eighteen-passenger taxi halted outside the minor league doors. I got out, produced my ID, and headed to the piss testers. They gave me a cup. My piss-test partner and I went into a toilet stall and did our best imitation