Out of My League (30 page)

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Authors: Dirk Hayhurst

BOOK: Out of My League
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When the plane started moving and Hoffman switched the song blaring from his Bose mini-system to “Arms Wide Open” by Creed, an undeniable feeling of “fuck yeah” washed over me. I felt like I was really part of something when I heard it, some inner circle.
My God,
I thought,
I’m on a big league jet! I’m floating in the heavens with the rest of the gods of red-blooded children’s dreams
. I stared out the window and could feel greatness take hold of me like the g-forces that threw me back in my luxury seat. I looked down upon the masses from my flying chariot’s window. I was supreme among men. I was a big leaguer nervously sipping crappy red wine from a plastic cup!
Behold my greatness ye mortals, and cower!
I had a quick vision of myself in my hometown, strutting down the street like I was in a Bee Gees video. Childhood enemies were blinded when they looked upon me; women were struck dumb, ensnared by my aura. Children ran to me, but a cop with gentle eyes and an Irish accent shooed them away saying, “Run along now, children. Mr. Hayhurst has important business to tend to. Top of the morning to you, Mr. Hayhurst.” He’d tip his cap and I’d continue walking, walking right into the sunset, where dreams fluttered ’round like little butterflies.
After a few minutes of daydreaming, I turned back to the plane, where my butterflies fried and exploded on a naked Jilly. While I was frolicking among my manifest greatness, he had stripped down, jammed one of the tiny airplane pillows onto his head, and tied a blanket around his neck like a cape. He looked like a naked bishop with a can of Bud Light as a scepter.
“You gotta take this fucking game serious, boys! Take this shit serious!” he declared. Then, up and down the aisle he ran, bellowing, “This is a serious fucking game and you have to have a serious approach. I’m tired of all this fucking around. We’re better than this!” He put a leg up on the armrest of one of the other rookies’ chairs so that his bagpipe was dangling ominously before said rookie’s face. “I’m just tired of us dicking around. We are better than this, and I believe that! Lotta season left, boys, but we have to fucking want it!” He did a bit of dynamic stretching as he spoke, creating a swinging motion, which, in turn, created a rocking motion between the rookie’s face and the object it was trying to avoid.
Jilly took his foot down and resumed pacing the aisles, eventually making his way back to me. Thank God I was in the window seat. “How about you, Hayhurst? You take this shit seriously?” he asked, hands on naked hips. I felt strange for retaining this detail, but his entire body was tan and shaven, and when I say entire body, I mean
entire body.
I stared at him, my plastic cup of hardly touched red wine in hand, wearing my wrinkled suit from Goodwill that smelled like dead old people. I had just carried a garbage bag full of beer past federal agents and witnessed a grown man wearing a blanket as a cape nearly tea bag another man. I said the only thing I could think of: “Your penis is tan.”
“What?”
“Oh God, I take this shit very serious, sir,
very
serious.” I slammed the glass of wine.
“Good!” Jilly roared. “Good, because we don’t want guys up here who are just going to fuck around.”
I nodded. “No sir, no, we don’t.”
Chapter Fifty-four
A stewardess brought me a fresh garbage bag of beer cans after the plane landed in San Diego. Again, those with the least service time stayed seated until the vets deplaned. Upon their exit, I gathered up my stuff and followed them out and onto another set of buses that parked on the tarmac for our convenience.
The buses took us to Petco Park, the great cathedral of San Diego baseball I’d been trying to get into since I first signed my contract. I had actually been inside its hallowed walls once before, back when I was playing for the Lake Elsinore Storm. It was meant as a treat for us minor leaguers, though the experience wasn’t quite the same as being a big league resident. The Storm was not permitted in the big league locker room; we changed inside an auxiliary dressing room that was smaller than some of the smallest minor league lockers. There were rules about unnecessary activity on the grass, rules about what mound to use in the bullpen, and rules concerning where we could watch the game. We were given minor league meal money for the day since, technically, it was an away game, but it didn’t go far. Concessions in Petco Park were nearly ten dollars for a slice of cheese pizza and a small drink.
Even so, it was an amazing experience. The stadium was gorgeous and the crew at Petco put our names up on its gargantuan display board. The bright lights, the manicured turf, and cavernous seating, it was the genuine article, the perfect place to fantasize about what could be if everything came together. I didn’t get to play on the field that day, a stroke of bad luck that left a thorn in my side for years. But—I smiled to myself as we circled the stadium—in five days I would be the genuine article as I took the mound to start against the Rockies.
The buses stopped in front of the players’ and staff entrance to wait for the gates to open. There, just beyond the entrance, was a group of people: super fans. They waved at us, homemade poster board signs held over their heads, clapping and hopping up and down. They all wore Padres-logoed paraphernalia. Some, mostly the ladies, went overboard with Padres’ earrings and visors with twenty or so pins stuck in the bills. There were lawn chairs next to them, indicating they’d been hanging around the place for quite some time, anxiously awaiting our return.
For some reason, I connected the size of the crowd to our win-loss record. I imagined the Yankees had larger crowds; maybe some of them were women, clad in bikinis, waving signs that said something more provocative than “Keep your chins up!”
“What the fuck is wrong with these people?” came a reply from one of the older guys on the team, staring out the window at them, smiling and waving despite his commentary. “Get a life!” he said with the same happy-to-see-you countenance on his face.
The buses pulled us into the player parking lot located under the structure of the stadium. It was full of hundred-thousand-dollar cars stocked with every luxury and amenity imaginable, including Barbie-esque girls with identity-shielding sunglasses in the driver’s seats.
Our luggage, which I hadn’t seen since giving it to a clubby in San Francisco, did not come with the team. Instead, it was unloaded by the Padres’ clubhouse staff and brought to us. While the team waited for their bags, they went to the lockers to lounge around. I followed behind them, feeling very much the way I did when I was about to enter the lockers in San Fran.
Even if you weren’t a baseball player who struggled for years in the minors with self-doubt, even if you didn’t look upon reaching the big leagues as akin to entering the holy of holies, even if you’d never seen a baseball game in your life, you would, without a doubt, blurt a resounding “Wow” upon entering the Padres’ clubhouse.
To start, the facility is round, like the kind of room King Arthur’s round table would be located in if King Arthur had access to a hundred-million-dollar budget and stylish leather couches. The lockers formed the outer wall of the space, all of them custom-cut wood with drawers and cabinets and cubbies and plug-ins for accumulated goodies, baseball and otherwise. Mounted overhead was a ring of flat-screen Sony televisions. In all, the locker room was home to over a dozen sets facing every angle, making sure there wasn’t a bad view in the house. The leather couches formed the inner circle of the place, surrounding a Padres’ logo stitched into the carpet on the floor.
There were hallways on the north, south, east, and west portions of the circle. From the entrance to the locker room, the hallway directly across from me led out to the field, batting cages, and the cafeteria. The Padres had a fully stocked kitchen where I was told you could order just about anything you wanted and a clubby would make it for you. Or you could make something yourself from the vast supply of groceries in the industrial refrigerators. There were racks of chips, cookies, Cracker Jacks, and other calorie-stuffed garbage the minor league strength coach would have a conniption about if he caught us eating it. They sat on shelves for anyone to take at any time, even now, the evening after a game in another city.
The hallway to the west went to the bathroom, although the term
bathroom
didn’t do it justice. The showers were marble, or some similarly expensive-looking stone. Next to the showers was a sauna, followed by a room just for pooping and reading magazines about guns, yachts, cars, and the habits of naked ladies. Finally, there was a set of sinks and mirrors surrounded by hair sprays, razors, and lotions—to make sure you looked good for the ten people standing at the gate when you left.
The hall to the west led past the coaches’ offices, the clubhouse laundry space, and the weight room. What a weight room it was, too, full of the best equipment and more of those fabulous flat screens. The strength coach, that huge guy with the shaved head I saw earlier, kenneled all his powders and mixes here. There were barrels of the stuff, not to mention can after can of readymade shakes and boxes of protein bars.
I had a locker in the main room, and I spent a good deal of time looking at it, running my hands across the wood of its custom edges, feeling the fabric of my jersey hanging inside it. There was something about putting my hands on it all that made it feel more real to me. As the other guys buzzed around me, going through their post-trip routines, I walked about the place slowly, staring in awe at it all. The thing that struck me was how vast the difference was between what I knew and what I was seeing. After a career in the minors, a player comes to appreciate things as simple as Gatorade mix in the water cooler instead of water, or two choices of peanut butter for a pre-game spread. By comparison, the spartan existence of the minors made this display feel excessive to the point of absurdity. I wouldn’t dare complain about it, and yet, I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could ever get used to this. How could any player say this was what he deserved? And I had only tasted the tiniest spoonful!
My thoughtful ramble came to a stop in front of the snack shelf in the cafeteria. I wanted to take one of the packs of Fig Newtons there, but I stayed my hand. I felt like I was in someone else’s house and taking the Newtons would be like stealing. As I stood there, one of the other players I didn’t know, who had changed out of travel clothes and into a set of street clothes, pushed past me and started wantonly grabbing items off the shelf and wedging the goodies into his computer bag until the sides bulged.
He noticed me staring pensively at the treats and said, “Go ahead, dude.”
“Am I allowed?”
“Are you allowed? Jesus.” He rolled his eyes and looked around to see if anyone else was hearing my talk. “You’re in the damn big leagues, man. Big leaguers are allowed to eat Cracker Jacks and Fig Newtons.” He pulled a few off the shelf and threw them at me. They bounced off my unready hands. I picked them up off the floor and put them all back, except for one pack of Newtons. One was enough, I decided.
“Look, you pay fifty dollars in dues a day to be here whether you eat one or twenty. Might as well get your money’s worth.” He grabbed another item for himself and walked out of the room. I remained, looking at the snacks for a while longer. I took one more pack of Newtons and walked out.
 
Our bags came shortly after our arrival. A clubhouse attendant brought mine to me, then gave me a ride on a service cart through the stadium, outside, across the street, and right up to the front of the Marriot Gaslamp Hotel, where new Padres stayed. He dropped me off in front of the hotel’s doorman, who, as odd as this spectacle would have been at any other hotel, didn’t bat an eye as he opened the door and bowed his head at my passing.
Much like the hotel in San Fran, the Marriot Gaslamp was stunning, and a reservation had already been made for me. While explaining all the luxuries the hotel offered, and on which floors I could find them, the lady at the front desk said the bar on the roof—known as the Sky Lounge—offered one of the best views of the ballpark anywhere—and since none of the hotel guests had to stand in line for access, I should definitely experience it. After dropping off my bags in my room, I did just that.
She was right about the view. From the edge of the rooftop bar, I could see over the Western Metal Supply building that made up the left field portion of Petco. I could see the huge banners of the great Padres icons in all their glory, including a nearly hundred-foot poster of Hoffman. I marveled at it, wondering what it must feel like for him to drive to work every day and see a building-size mural of himself on the side of a stadium. I gazed on the field, welling up with pride that I was one of the people who would say they got to play on it.
“Number Fifty-Seven!” came a voice from behind me. That was my number. I turned to see Bentley standing there with two drinks in hand. He casually made his way over to me with a big league smile stretched across his face and handed me one. “Welcome to the Sky Lounge,” he said, and clinked my glass with his.
“Thanks for having me,” I said.
“Enjoying your seven and seven?” he asked, referring to the seven nights in a hotel and seven nights’ worth of meal money—just over a grand in cash—the Padres gave me to get settled in with.
“Very much so,” I said, turning back to the view.
We stood there looking off the roof and onto the field. Bentley had been here longer than me and his seven and seven must have run out by now, which prompted me to ask him, “Are you staying here the whole time?”
“Yeah, it’s cheaper than moving into an apartment since we’re only here for a couple days out of the month. Besides, you can’t find a lease for just a month and a half. You’re committed to the hotel. Which is fine. I have an elite membership card. You should get one too”—he nudged me—“the points add up quick.”
“How much is it per night?”
“I think the rates here are something like two hundred sixty dollars for a normal guest.”
I choked on my drink. “Two hundred and sixty dollars?”
“Something like that.” He looked to my gaping mouth and raised an eyebrow. “You’re in the Show, you can afford it.”
“Maybe, but that’s still a lot of money.”
“Not anymore.” He took a sip of his drink.
“That blows me away,” I said. “I mean, this off-season, I was working at a television store, and now I’m sipping a mixed drink from the top of a five-star hotel overlooking at the major league field
I
play on. I can’t believe this is actually happening.”
Bentley said nothing.
“Maybe I’m wrong for thinking this, but it makes me wonder why there is such a huge gap between the guys up here and the guys in the minors. I mean, if you just spread out the smallest portion of all this to the guys below it would make their lives so much easier, don’t you think?”
“That’s a terrible idea,” said Bentley.
“Why do you say that? There is so much here.”
“Because it’s meant to be this way. It’s a grind for a reason. The guys who can’t take it don’t deserve to be up here. Besides, the union fights for us to have all this. There have been guys up here who went through hell to make it like it is. It’s not for just anybody.”
“Maybe. I guess I’ve just never experienced anything like this. I know I’ve worked my ass to get up here, but I feel like I don’t deserve all this. It’s so much so fast.”
“I feel like I deserve it,” Bentley said, and then gulped his drink.
“Really?”
“Of course. We beat the odds; we deserve all of this. If this is what they want to give us, then take it. Don’t ask questions. Besides, this here”—he waved his arms as if to claim everything around us, the field, the hotel, the bar—“this is the only level you can make an impact at. It’s the only one that matters—the only one people care about. All the rest of that stuff is just practice to get here.”
“But—”
“No buts.” He stopped me. “This is the only league that matters. Your career in baseball starts here.”
I started to speak but stopped as his words sank in. I had never thought of my life in the minors as practice. I thought of it as surviving, enduring, grinding. All of the suffering for this, now written off with one, single word. I couldn’t believe he could say such a thing to me. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized he was right. The Bigs were the only level that mattered. Everything done in the minors was done to get players here. More than anyone, I knew there was no reward for those people who came close. Everything in baseball revolved around this league.

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