The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [95]
Time travel—that’s a good way to describe it. After a thirty-six-hour travel binge, I was on a new team in a new town a couple thousand miles away from where I started the season. A matter of hours was all it took to remove me from the presence of my old teammates and crudely graft me to these new ones. That is how travel in the minors is though—harsh, immediate, and tiring, with a few hours on a plane, a few hours on a bus, and a few hours on a boat maybe if the roof keeps leaking. The most surprising part, however, is how fast a person adjusts and how quickly he forgets those individuals he played next to only days ago. I was no longer a Storm but a Mission now for however long it lasted.
I took the second shuttle bus to the field. I slept right up until I had only minutes to catch the shuttle. Dalton (now fully clothed) rode with me, as well as two other members of the pen: Boris the Blade, one of the team’s closers, and Handsome Rob, the well-groomed, well-educated dean of the bullpen. Blade was the darker humored of the new pair, who enjoyed lighting the fuses of his fellow teammates and joyously watching them explode. He had a knack for sniffing out weak points. Handsome Rob, on the other hand, enjoyed judging the stupidity of fellow teammates and then pronouncing some insulting verdict. Rob was older, always well dressed, and spoke with an air of refinement. It was like being made fun of by Mr. Belvedere. Blade and Rob worked off each other well: one would instigate, while the other, too noble to instigate, would judge. I would have to be mindful of my behavior when around them.
After arriving, we strolled from the bus, across the walkway to the entrance of the hallway leading to the Midland visitor’s team locker room. On opening the doors of the hallway, two crazed, angry dogs assailed us.
“Jesus Christ! What the fuck!” Dalton screamed.
The dogs, about the size of poodles, were locked in small kennels. They belonged to the visiting clubbie. Apparently, he let them run free when the teams were not present. When teams showed up, he locked the little ankle biters in tiny cages and, for some strange reason, placed said cages by the dimly lit clubhouse doorway. When the doors opened, the dogs ambushed anyone walking in with such ferocity that one would think they’d kill us all if they could get free.
Dalton did not like being startled. So he bent down to the cages and started barking at the dogs that barked back, biting at the gaps in the cage. The three of them barked at each other for a minute or so; then Dalton started kicking the cages screaming, “Shut the fuck up you stupid little rats! Grrrrrr, grrr rarf! Rarf! Rarf! Yeah, keep growling. I’ll flush you down the fucking toilet!” He kicked the cages again.
“That’s really working. Real mature,” Rob said to Dalton, as the dogs continued barking with renewed fury.
“Rarf! rarf! Fuck you, dog. You want a piece of me? Grrrrr!”
“Are you really trash talking the dogs right now?” I asked.
“Wow Dalton, don’t be such a pussy—they’re just little dogs,” Blade said. The dogs really were no bigger than cats.
“I don’t care what size they are. What are they doing here?” Dalton asked.
“Scaring the shit out of you,” Blade said.
“Yeah, you looked like Hayhurst did the other night when he almost walked into your dong.”
Dalton relented on the dogs for a second and looked up at me. “Yeah, you should have seen your face when you got Spider Manned, Hayhurst. You looked like—”
“I just had a dong shoved in it,” I interrupted, not amused.
“Oh, don’t act like it’s your first time,” Blade chimed.
“True, but I usually get paid for the other times it happens.” You have to roll with punches, or you’ll just get more of them.
“How much do you charge?” Rob asked.
“If you have to ask, you can’t afford me.”
“Touché.”
Dalton put his hand on the top of one of the kennels in order to stand up. The dogs