The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [44]
“I can’t answer that.”
“If you know, you should at least tell me for God’s sake!” I could feel my heart start racing. The volume of my voice was beginning to spike.
“I mean I don’t know, and I don’t. He said you can call. Well, he’s out now, but you can talk with him in the morning.”
“I have to wait till morning for this? You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“I’m just the messenger man. I’m sorry.”
I was teetering on the edge of screaming long, coarse barrages of expletives, but I knew it was not his fault. “Fine,” I gritted out. “Fine.”
He continued speaking but I did not hear him. I was no longer in the conversation. I was tumbling down from my own pedestal. I couldn’t catch my breath as I fell, like falling and suffocating at the same time. “Sorr—.”
I hung up. I was standing, holding the receiver and the set in my hand, though I don’t remember picking it up. I began a hectic search around the room. For what, I don’t know. Maybe I expected to find an answer, but there wasn’t any. A minute ago the room was serene, calm, a safe haven for me and my thoughts. Now it was a prison, and I was trapped with my racing mind scratching feverishly against the walls. I hurled the set at the wall, the corded receiver following after. Next, I grabbed the kitchenette table and flipped it over along with all its contents. An end table followed and then a lamp. Then I sat down, put my head in my hands, and tried to stop the spinning.
Chapter Fourteen
I called my parents first. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I expected to hear them say to me, but it was the first number I came to in my contacts list when I started searching for people I could vent to. They didn’t answer. The phone rang and rang, but no one picked up, not even the answering machine with my mother’s shrill voice declaring, “If you’re a telemarketer, you can hang up now!” That’s funny, because my mom is a telemarketer.
The next person on my hit list was my agent, and unlike my parents, he could actually influence the situation. A good agent is patient. He has to be. If he isn’t, he won’t stay an agent for very long, not with the amount of demanding phone calls he’ll get every time a player gets his feelings hurt.
I remember how many times I called my agent my first year. I thought he was my publicist, legal counsel, and mother all rolled into one. Anytime I got a bad write-up, I wanted him to sue the reporter, spin the bad number so it looked good, and tell me I was a big boy now. I expected a lot, and to my agent’s credit, he never once told me I was a demanding prima donna. So yes, all agents are liars.
Agents can specialize in different areas. Some are great lawyers, talkers, bargainers, arguers, or accountants, but the one thing they’ve in common is they’re all great babysitters. It’s not easy to deal with the massive and fragile egos of athletes who are simultaneously self-impressed to the point of narcissism and yet fearful to the point of paranoia. Receiving calls in the middle of the night from a player who’s convinced management hates him because he’s too good not to have been promoted by now is a specialty all to itself.
When I called my agent, it was about 11:00 P.M. his time. He answered because right now was that odd season when he gets lots of calls to inform him certain players under his representation were looking for new jobs. In fact, Larry and Varner had already called him. When Adam picked up, he greeted me with what had become his standard hello, “Shizzle! What’s up man?”
He called me Shizzle because for a while we thought it would be fun to pretend I was a first rounder with a Snoop Dogg-type entourage. Alright, I thought it would be fun to pretend it. I forced him into it, and it stuck. So far from our natural personalities, it was funny for us to add izzles to the end of our dialogue. Now as I look upon the reasons for calling my breaking ball my curvebizzle, I feel extremely stupid.
“Hey Adam, we got a problem.”
“Alright, lay it on me,” he said. One quality I loved about the guy.
“I might not have a job come tomorrow.”
“You might