The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [99]
“Alright, that’s enough…” Dalton whimpered.
“He just wants to be friends. Here, why don’t you hold him for a while.” I reared back with the bucket and made as if I were going to shovel pass the beast onto Dalton. I was faking it, but that’s all I needed to do to run Dalton out of the pen with his hands up screaming like a schoolgirl.
“Now who got Spidermanned?” I called after him. “Make sure you check your bed tonight!”
The rest of the relievers passed Dalton on their return approach to the pen. They came in with quizzical looks on their faces.
“What’s wrong with Dalton?”
“Look in the bucket.”
Each one of them looked into the bucket and jerked back in surprise, all except Ox who peeked in and said, “Aww, look at that little fucker.”
“What do you think we should do with it?”
“We have to stick that thing in someone’s locker!”
“Hell no, I’m keeping it and training it to defend my hotel room,” Ward said, probably thinking of his missing PSP.
Before we could decide how best to use our new pet, we were interrupted. There was no phone in the Rock Hounds’ visiting bullpen, and Abby didn’t use hand signals either. Instead, he equipped the pen bag with yellow walkie-talkies. One in the bag, the other with him in the dugout. The static-garbled sound of Abby’s voice beeped in over the handset.
Ox picked up. “Go ahead, Abby.”
Beeping, static, “Get Hayhurst up. Deago’s only got about ten pitches left.”
“Roger that.” Ox pulled the talkie away from his ear and looked over to me, “Get ’er going, big dog.”
“Ten pitches? Did he not know this move was coming, like, fifteen pitches ago?” I asked, moaning my complaint.
I popped up, slipped out of my wet parka, and took to the mound. Woot was in the pen now, standing behind the bullpen’s dish, ready to receive. I tossed, trying to put a little more on each one, three pitches for every one pitch our starter threw.
After I reached max effort fastballs, I flipped my glove hand at Woot to indicate curve. A few hooks later, I pulled the glove back for changeup. Next, a flick left for slider. Who knew how many of these I’d use once I was out there? Maybe none, maybe all. I knew one thing though: it’s always nice to have options, and I readied as many as I could before Deago burned up his few remaining pitches.
Two singles put runners on first and second. “This is his last hitter,” came the call over the walkie-talkie. I started rushing, trying to get the most of what time I had left. I threw a slider in the dirt; Woot blocked it, but the ball was scratched and muddied. “Shit, can one of you grab me a new one?” I called to the boys still standing over the bucket. I was wasting valuable time. Just as a new ball was flipped to me, it landed in my glove to the sound of a crack on the field—grounder to third. Headley scooped it, threw it to Kazmar at second, who then threw to MJ at first—double play, inning over.
I took a deep breath and disengaged the rubber. I must have made forty tosses as fast as I could just to sit back down again.
“Hey! Your first dry hump in Double-A!” Ox called. He gave me a high five. The rest of the crew did the same.
“It was good for me, Woot. Was it good for you?”
“I’ve had better.”
“Hayhurst’s got the next inning. Hayhurst’s got the next,” Abby called in.
“Roger that, Top Heavy,” Ox replied. He pointed to me, then pointed to the field. “Looks like you’ll get some after all.”
As I jogged from the pen to take the game mound in the fifth inning, I called back to the boys, “Hey, you guys be good to Spot while I’m gone!” They stood over the bucket drawing lots for whose locker they should hide it in.
“You just worry about pitching!” they called back.
Worry? I had wanted to get back up here so badly I was ready to quit when I didn’t make the team out of camp. But I was back now, and I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes I did before—all or nothing, with no half measures and no worries.
Two innings later, I had put two zeros on the scoreboard. I listened to the rest of the game from the warm, comfy confines of the locker room with my arm in