The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [97]
Ward was on his feet and marching into the training room now. “Why are you so mean, Eddie? I’ve been the victim of a serious crime against my person.”
“You drew my face on your ass!”
“Because I love you.”
“Get out of my training room, you fucking jack-o’-lantern!”
“Oh that’s low, bro, that’s low. Why do you have to bring my teeth into this?” Ward feigned injury, though he was anything but. “Just when I was ready to forgive your people for what they did to us in Pearl Harbor, you go and say something like that.”
Rolls of tape could be heard colliding against the wall of the training room. Ward came running out like a solider escaping gunfire. Aware of the events, Blade spotted an advertisement for a PSP in a Best Buy circular. He cut it out and took it into the locker-room pantry. Using tape from one of the rolls launched at Ward, he taped the ad to a milk jug in the refrigerator. Over the ad he wrote: Have you seen me?
I had relocated to the microwave in the pantry watching a bowl of Easy Mac spin in circles when Blade came in.
“Don’t you think he’ll be pissed when he sees that?” I asked.
“He won’t see it.”
“How do you know?”
“Have you seen his teeth? It’s obvious he doesn’t drink milk.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Midland’s park was brand new. Some of the luxury boxes weren’t even finished yet. Yet, from what was complete, the place was shaping up to be a fine park. Everything from the dugouts to the scoreboard was miniature big league. The field was sunken, meaning it was carved out of the ground, placing the playing surface below the surrounding area’s ground level. Grassy berms surrounded the park where fans sat out on blankets and towels. The bullpen was, like in Corpus Christi, a real pen situated beyond the left field fence. Instead of fencing on all sides, concrete walls twelve feet in height made up three of the four walls.
At the start of the game, Ox, Rob, Dalton, Blade, Ward, and I sat in the pen. However, since the weather was still poor, raining off and on with a constant drizzle since the start of the game, my fellow relievers decided to head into the comfort of the clubhouse. The game was viewable via live video feed in the clubhouse, and I would have gone with them, but someone needed to stay behind to play catch with our left fielder when the Missions came out to play defense. I, being the new guy, drew the short straw by default and was left in the pen to hold down the fort in the wet.
The game started to drag along, as it always does when you want it to go faster. Pitchers took their sweet time pacing around the mound, there were an excessive number of time-outs and foul balls. Officials came to talk weather. All I could do was sit in the pen while my parka turned into a wet blanket. Days like that sucked. It’s not raining enough to get the game called and grant us an off day, but it’s still soupy enough to ensure that we’ll play in slop for nine full innings.
I kept my glove dry by wrapping it in a towel and placing it under the bullpen’s bench. The rain wasn’t coming down in buckets, or even big drops, but its persistent misting was enough to wet down everything, including the seats formerly occupied by my teammates.
With no one to talk to, I amused myself by flicking sunflower seeds through links in the fence, folding airplanes out of gum wrappers, and spinning paper cups into the ground to see if I could get them to stand upright on impact. I could just imagine my teammates right then, happily playing cards and drinking coffee from the comfy couches of the warm, dry clubhouse. They could probably see me, the camera zooming in on me while the announcers commentated on how stupid I was for remaining—those bastards.
I was right when I said something was watching me, though it wasn’t the players in the clubhouse. It was something with eight eyes. A tarantula the size of a baseball cap had come out of its hiding place to escape the flooding. It had covered most of the distance between the wall and the bench when I turned to see it. I did a double take, and when I looked back the second