The Bullpen Gospels (12 page)

We spent the next few nights at the Lake Elsinore Hotel and Casino, ironically, only an hour north of San Diego itself. Casinos are one of those things that have flashy, movie-quality associations attached to them. When your brain hears the word, it gets giddy, and the mind’s eye conjures forth a movie reel of flashy lights and showgirls. The Lake Elsinore Hotel and Casino is pretty much the opposite of that fanciful imagery in just about every way.

It’s as if someone took a truck stop, a bad truck stop, with mysterious stains on the bathroom floors, racks of sticky-paged magazines, and shady travelers, then bred that scene with a dilapidated bingo hall. The place is full of sun-dried mummies wearing BluBlockers and Hawaiian print shirts. They fight with comic convention fan boys toting fanny packs and shifty Asian tourists for table minimums, propelled by a never-ending stream of mentholated cigarettes and white Russians.

In the hotel and casino, there’s a bar the baseball community refers to as the Star Wars Cantina. It was christened such because you never know what kind of alien life you’ll discover within it—women with sagging, pruny faces balanced by plastic, buoyant chests who will do things for poker chips that would make a sailor blush; broken-down old men who have drunk themselves out-of-bounds of space and time; and with every Lake Elsinore home series, the visiting baseball club.

The Lake Elsinore Hotel and Casino is the Lake Elsinore Storm’s official hotel, as well as the official accommodations of the visiting team. It leaves its stink in the clothes of many a Cal League player. I’ve stayed in it my fair share of nights, and I know how bad it is. When the new-to-the-Lake faces started circulating how shockingly awful their living arrangements are, it came as no surprise to me. I already knew the covers beneath the comforter had pictures of airbrushed women riding white tigers à la Ronnie James Dio. I knew that if you turned a black light on in the room, it would look as if Jackson Pollock had painted on your bed. I knew the cinder block walls have bullet holes in them. I knew the hotel restaurant’s food is made by someone who seems to shed pubic hair. Yes, I even knew that is what blood looks like when it dries. The Bellagio, it ain’t. But home it is, unless you get a host family pronto.

The host family business is an interesting one. Essentially, a local family agrees to shoulder the burden of an extra person, a baseball-playing person, during the length of the season. They provide a spare room, a few meals, and transportation if they have it. It’s a lot to ask, but a host family is an absolute necessity as living in Southern California isn’t cheap.

The Adopt-a-Player campaign starts before the team arrives in hopes willing families can be lined up for a seamless transition. However grateful we baseball players are to the families who adopt us, we also know not all host families are created equal.

Beggars can’t be choosers, so there’s a certain degree of luck involved when getting paired up with your new family. Some families are the perfect model citizens, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Host family with their white picket fence and adorable little children with cherub faces who can’t wait to be just like their new older brother. Some families are wealthy and treat you like the draft pick you always wanted to be. Some host families aren’t even families at all; some are just one person: a well-toned Cougar looking for an after-hours power hitter to keep her company between filming.

Depending on the makeup of the player, all these choices are desirable. However, they only represent one side of the coin. On the flip side, there is the family who has a pack of misbehaved trolls for children with parents who don’t believe in discipline. The reason your PlayStation has peanut butter leaking from the optical drive can be chalked up to “youthful curiosity.” You may live with a super fan who wants to play coach, manager, and parent. He’ll live vicariously through you and evaluate, criticize, judge, blog, and call the organization about you. Or you may end up with a miserable old spinster who loves cats and hates men. She’ll give you a sleeping bag next to the litter box. She’ll turn off the air-conditioning in the hot months, yell at you when you don’t polish the spoon you used, curse you for coming home after sunset, and accuse you of going through her things when she’s away.

Players aren’t saints either, and it takes a special family to agree to house one. If you’re a devout Catholic family, getting a Mormon player can make things a tad awkward. If you’re parents of little children, getting that Bostonian player who uses “fuck” for greetings, good-byes, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and prayer might be more than you bargained for. If you’re the proud parent of daughters close to the legal limit, it doesn’t matter who you get, you’re asking for trouble.

For the most part, players get paired with families somewhere in between the best-and worst-case scenarios. Just normal folks lending a helping hand. I had the good fortune of getting paired with good hosts every year I was at the Lake, including this year. I landed a big-hearted family with an extra car. They had a pool, a spare room, and all-you-can-eat groceries. To balance things out, they also had a dog who hated me. A little Jack Russell terrier who thought I was pure evil. It would growl at me whenever it saw me, lurk around corners giving me the stink eye, and crap in my shoes. I got even with it by waiting for it to fall asleep on the family’s plus-sized beanbag, at which time I would leap on the bag launching the dog like a mortar shell across the living room and into the wall. Jack Russells are surprisingly aerodynamic.

The first few days with a newly formed club serve as orientation for the players. For most of the players, it’s a new routine in a new town. We’ll be playing at night, with games ending at 10
P.M
. instead of us going to bed at that hour as we did for the last forty days of spring training. In order to get acclimated to the time differences, practices are scheduled late in the day, under field lighting. Our bodies won’t adjust in the few days we have before the games start their inexorable march to September, but it’s a start.

This is also the time that jersey numbers are fought over, lockers are chosen, uniform pants are altered, and hats, bats and gloves are broken in. Franchise front-office faces are linked to names while hands are shaken and pictures are taken. Video clips for the big display board in the outfield are recorded. Come-out music for batters to walk to the plate and pitchers to take the hill are selected.

My number that year was 35. I didn’t pick it, I just took what fit. Some of the guys fight over more prized digits. Numbers 21, 22, and 23 are always hot commodities. The 7 or numbers with 7s at the end are also highly sought. Double digits are precious as well. Certain digits endear themselves to different players for different reasons. A player may have had a great college career in a number, and he hopes to keep the streak alive by wearing it in the pros. Maybe a relative wore a certain number, and it’s family tradition to keep it. It could be the number of a former baseball hero, and it gives you the goose bumps every time you put it on now that you’re a pro too. They’re all great reasons; it’s a shame there’s only one of each number.

A pair of guys ended up gambling over a digit. They turned to the precision-crafted, divinely empowered, age-old, time-tested decider of rock-paper-scissors. Rock won in the decisive third round, capturing the honor to wear number 23. Scissors was left with 28. I have also seen numbers bargained for using the baseball equipment commodities market. Dip, chew, extra batting gloves, bats, and mitts have been used to leverage jersey numbers.

Come-out songs, are selected in a much more metaphysical way. Guys will skulk around with their headphones on, iPods cranked, trying to gauge the “power” of favored songs. Then they’ll turn to their teammates. “Listen to this. Which one do you think sounds more badass?” The head phones will get passed, the music replayed, the headphones passed back. “I don’t know; they’re both good.” Very few players have one song they favor over all others, and it usually comes down to the wire.

Country boys will choose country songs—tunes about their homeland, their heritage, and their pickup truck. The prima donna with the flashy car and the jet-setter wardrobe will select a hip-hop ballad declaring what a stunner Pimp, or Baller he is. The hard-edged guy with the short temper and addiction to Red Bull will require a rock song that makes him feel like Bruce Banner on the verge of becoming the Incredible Hulk. All these choices are safe, but the ones that make for the best are those that stray from the beaten path. Some guys may like the path they’re on just fine, but personally, I believe a little originality makes a player and his tune memorable. This year I decided that if I didn’t pitch well, at least I would be remembered for my song. I picked “Give It to Me Baby” by Rick James.

I enjoyed my few days before the start of the season, planning out player appearances, talking with front-office people, and getting to know my host family and their dog. There was too much to do to think about roles, futures, and demotions. I was angry of course, but I pressed it deep down inside, where it bubbled and stewed. Whenever I let it creep up, the antics of Slappy and the boys kept me distracted. I had nearly forgotten that I had been banished back to A-ball. At least until the night of the 2007
Meet the Storm
Diamond Club dinner party, that is.

Four of us sat in a row, perched on the Diamond Club’s bar stools like bachelors in a dating show. The audience was composed of host families, season ticket holders, fellow teammates, coaches, and front-office staff. The lighting was dim, not too dim, just enough to give the occasion an air of class. Something not easily done since the players being met wore suitcase-creased collared shirts and tastefully frayed blue jeans.

Behind the Diamond Club’s bar, tall windows stretched up to the setting California skyline. Oranges and sapphires blurred together at the pointed, glassy peak. Not only did the club make its home down the left field line of the Storm’s stadium, it also resembled its jewel namesake in construction with its angled glass prismatic.

Candles flickered on tables, and canned heat burned under trays of catered food. Next to the trays were homemade desserts furnished by the host families—cookies, cakes, and pies. Some were store-bought in a pinch, others painstakingly labored over by loving hands. Tupperware bins filled with ice held bottles of Sierra Mist, Dr Pepper, and spring water. A bartender dispensed adult refreshment—free to the players, a benefit that became a liability every year.

The club’s radioman, an excitable, energetic fellow with a goatee and a silver tongue paced about in front of us with a microphone. The first time I met him was in 2004. I was called up from Low-A toward the end of an all-star caliber season to get a taste of the Cal League. I did terribly. The team was selfish, the casino was a nightmare, and my pitching abysmal. It was my first time shouldering expectation, and I did not shoulder it well.

You’ll talk to anyone when you’re doing badly. I quickly exhausted my teammates with my woes. What were they going to say? They all had their own careers to worry about. After my last outing of the year, a particularly bad one, I found myself outside the hotel room of the team’s radioman. When he opened the door, the first thing he did was offer me a beer, something he was rather notorious for. It was kind of him, but I refused in favor of his ear. He listened as I exhausted myself trying to figure out the dilemma of my career in High-A. When I was done, he told me something very simple. This level was like a classroom. Each level was. Our job as players was to learn in each classroom and get As. It was okay if we didn’t yet make the grade immediately; the important thing was, we try to learn as best as we can. Next time we’re tested, we’ll do better, he said. It was about the most poetic thing a man in his boxer shorts, white undershirt, and dress socks could say to another man while polishing off a Bud Light.

Unfortunately, instead of taking it for the insight on life that it was, I insisted on harvesting the sour message that I had gotten an F. In fact, I got an F four years running. I’m sure he didn’t remember that conversation while he acted as the night’s MC. But I did.

“Tell us about your hometown, Dirk,” he said, lifting the tip of the microphone into speaking range.

“I was born in Canton, Ohio, home of the Football Hall of Fame.” This is the third time I’ve told him this little factoid, complete with the Hall of Fame reference. I don’t care for football, but the town is rather unremarkable in all other aspects. We have a few chain restaurants, manufacturing on the decline, and potholes.

“Where did you go to college?”

“I went to Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.” Another repeat.

“Did you graduate?”

“Not yet.”

“What will the degree be when you finish?”

“Communications studies.”

“Thinking about going into radio when you finish?” he asked, in a coy manner.

“I don’t know if I have the personality for it,” I mumbled.

“Now, we both know that’s not true, you’re quite the talker.”

The radioman spun around and faced the audience. He smiled, recalling a particular memory, then turned back to me. “For those of you who don’t know Dirk, he has been here before. This is his fourth year with us, and he’s become a bit of a fan favorite…” My mouth curved up at the enthusiasm in his tone, but my eyes betrayed me, falling downward. My head followed.
Fan favorite? The only reason I’m a fan favorite is because I never leave!

“Dirk is in contention for a Storm Record,” he continued. “He’s only…”

Who cares? Contention for most something of some stat that didn’t even remotely matter to me. Some pile of minor league numbers I’d gladly exchange for being a step up or a single second of big-league time. He talked happily though, enthusiastically, as if I won on a game show.

“Dirk, I have to take a moment here and go back in time with you. I want to go back to a game in 2005. Do you remember that championship game?”

“Yes, I do.” Of course, I did. How could I forget that giant mental splinter?

He replayed the tale of the most infamous game of my life. The six dominant innings I pitched. The horrible feeling when the bullpen blew the game. Of course, he said it all more cheerily than I would have. “That was one of the best games I’ve ever seen pitched, certainly one of the best Storm games ever played.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Why don’t you tell us what that felt like, pitching in a game like that?” He brought the microphone up to my lips to collect my answer. Those sitting around perked up for my insightful monologue.

Sure, I could tell you what it’s like: it’s as if your soul gets ripped out of you. It’s like someone stomps on your neck and then giggles. It’s as if, oh, I don’t know, you’re getting told you had a good spring, but you’re going back to A-ball.

“Best moment of my career,” I said.

The radioman was so well meaning. Nothing he said was meant to hurt, and still I felt as if I was being flogged in public. It’s no fun lying to make yourself look good, but worse still is keeping up a lie so others can believe in you. I wanted to escape, but the microphone wasn’t going anywhere, unfortunately, and neither was I.

“It’s good to have you back Dirk, though we doubt you’ll be here very long. What are your thoughts on this upcoming season?”

This is the part where the player says he’s going to do great, where he’s sure the team will win, and where he’ll pitch the hell out of it. I didn’t want to lie, and so I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t even want to speak. The anger and the disappointment would surely come out if I opened my mouth. I wished Maddog or Slappy would do something stupid and distract the audience so I could sneak out. I wished for Armageddon, as I did minutes before the championship game we just blissfully discussed.

I dropped my head. The radioman shifted awkwardly. I’m sure the crowd thought I was choosing the right words, but I wasn’t thinking about that season. I was thinking about my life, and how I got up on this stage, and how I had had enough lying about the situation.

I lost faith in the game, lost faith in myself, and felt chained to something I didn’t care about anymore. How it was all a sham. I was tired of being a stat, a bad one, and I didn’t want to be remembered for what I almost did. You sell your soul to this game, and it gives you nothing to go on but the promise of chance. We chase it like donkeys after a carrot until we are put out to pasture or ascend to what? Gods of entertainment? Who cares what happens this season?

This is a wicked business, hiding behind soft candlelight and homemade desserts. I was tired of being a commodity and tired of lining up and thanking people for the opportunity of almost making it. I was tired of getting dragged up in front of people and having bad things spun clean by nice-speaking people. If I was going to be lost in the folds of some minor league town, then I go out on my terms. This rage and disgust was coming out, and I didn’t care what happened. I was already a loser, how much worse could it get? Send me back to my junkyard of broken dreams, I will find another way if I must. I was a competitor scorned, and believe me, I had a few things to say about it.

All the emotions of my private battle with the game swirled up to my tongue. The radioman lifted the microphone to my face, and I felt the fire coming up inside. When the heat came to my mouth, it melted away the Diamond Club walls and burnt the roof down. The whole place disappeared like smoke, and before I could puff out a word, I choked on something like an epiphany or a parable.

I was on a ball field, atop a mound, with fans and players and families standing behind me. Across from me, in the batters box, the Baseball Reaper came up to hit. This was it, where it all would end. I swore I would beat him. I would not stand in fear of him any longer. I dug in on the mound, wound up, and threw my best fastball in for strike one. The crowd behind me cheered, and I lapped up their praise. The Reaper, however, stood motionless. No emotions to be seen underneath his dark mysterious hood as I showboated.

I wound again—a fastball again. I felt my arm would snap as I gave it everything. The ball shot from my hand like fire and down the middle it went, popping into the glove for strike two. The Reaper did not move, his cloak blowing lazily in the wind, with the bat still motionless on his bony shoulder. The ball returned, but the praise and support were gone. Somewhere in the distance, some prospect of unknown origin stood surrounded by the people who once watched me. They had moved on. I was alone, forgotten, and suddenly cold.

The Baseball Reaper did not forget. I owed him another pitch. Once I started this challenge, there was no backing out. Silent, ominous, and sixty feet away, he stood piercing me with his gaze. The reaction came up inside me again, the fire that raged at the game and all its lies. Who cares if the rest of the world was here to see it or if I was alone? I would beat him, or I would watch my career go down in flames trying—it didn’t matter anymore. This was now a competition of will, something beyond muscles, velocity, or baseball talent. All I could control was my approach, and so I wound up with the will to win, unafraid of the worst.

The ball went into flight, rolling off my fingers the way it did so many times before. It spun over and over as it made its way to the mitt. The reaper stood motionless, waiting for the ball to come to him as though he was waiting for the demise of my career.

The ball whipped by him, slamming into the glove for strike three. He did not move. Everything froze. I stood staring at the Baseball Reaper—no emotions, no fear, no joy, no fans, no cheering, no lights, no reporters, nothing but him and me. The reaper dropped the bat, reached up to his cowl with his bony fingers, and pulled back the fabric that hid his face. It was me underneath. It was always me.

The radioman’s microphone lingered near my mouth. “So Dirk, your thoughts?” he asked again.

“I feel very optimistic,” I said, and for the first time in a very long time, I meant it.