The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [93]
She was like my mother—apologizing to me for my own delusion. She was making the best of something she did nothing to deserve but couldn’t fix. And no one, no matter what they wore or what they did, was going to step in and solve it.
I did not sign any autographs after I left that boy. Why should I? My name was as useless as my jersey, a scribble, a stretch of ink, and nothing more.
Chapter Thirty
I was operating under the assumption that after the game we’d head back to the hotel and go to sleep. You know what happens when you assume. It turned out, instead of catching some much-needed Zs on a nearby hotel pillow, I was riding another five hours on a bus as we made our way to the next town: Midland, Texas.
I had been awake for twenty-four hours by this point. All I wanted to do was sleep. My mind was so heavy with thoughts and my body with fatigue that even the notoriously uncomfortable seats of a minor league bus would be like clouds beneath my ass. However, this was no Lake Elsinore where I had bus-seating dominion. All the seats had been decided on, and I would be the guy standing in the aisle while everyone pretended to be sleeping, deaf, or dead.
I had to beg players to let me sit with them. Unlike the tour bus in Lake Elsinore, the bus here was older and smaller. Most of the guys I could pull the time card on were already doubled up. I sat with Cesar Ramos, another of the team’s starters, and though he did not outright tell me he hated me for ruining his seating arrangements, it was clear he did not enjoy the company.
A side effect of spending way too much time in A-ball was that getting choice bus seats had spoiled me. I could no longer sleep with a man pressed up next to me, bumping my thigh with his, jutting his elbow into mine when he adjusted his iPod. I wasn’t the trooper I was when I first signed, the player who could sleep folded in a suitcase, if necessary. Now I could not fall asleep without the luxurious space provided me by two open seats. I felt like a sardine wedged into a can. I sat there thinking about sleep, thinking about what it would feel like to get some of it, and wondering what it would feel like if I could never do it again. I began to envision hell as a place where people desperate for sleep were constantly jerked awake by a bumpy tour bus and seatmates who couldn’t pick the right song on their iPod.
Eddie gave me eighty dollars in meal money, and I ended up spending it on a seat. I bought a pair of twin open seats from the team’s strength coach, a man we called Juice. He had been in the back playing cards with Woot and Ward and had lost his meal money. He happily exchanged his seat for a chance to buy back in.
I took Juice’s seat, but despite how hard I tried, I still could not fall asleep. I tried every awkward angle, leaning my head on the glass, trying to curl up over both seats, letting my legs dangle across the aisle. Nothing. Finally, when I got remotely close to slumber, I felt the urge to pee.
Exceedingly frustrated with my life at this point, I made my way back to the bus’s bathroom. I had to climb back to it, picking my way over seat backs, trying not to step on other players’ heads as I went. The aisles were populated with obstructions such as card games using coolers for tables. It was as if the bus were a casino on wheels, and as dingy and cramped as it was, it was still better than the Lake Elsinore Hotel.
The high rollers sat in the bus’s rear, next to the bathroom door. To get in, I had to interrupt their game. They made me wait until the hand was over. Woot won on a bluff, to which he