Читать книгу The Bullpen Gospels: - Dirk Hayhurst - Страница 13

My grandma didn’t exactly come to see me off as much as she came to stare eerily at me one last time for good luck. She lurked by the open garage door, safe from the harmful rays of direct sunlight, watching me like some carrion bird, as if I might take a dump in her yard. I threw my big suitcase and my Padres-issued equipment bag in the back of the cab and smacked the top of the trunk signaling I was ready to go. Then, despite myself, I managed to play good grandson long enough to hug my grandma even though the risk of being bitten on the neck was considerable.

At the airport check-in counter, I was informed that my bags were both overweight by about ten pounds. It’s hard to pack six months of stuff in one suitcase and an equipment bag. As I forked out one hundred dollars for the overages, I promised myself I’d ship my stuff next year. Then I recalled, I’d promised myself I’d do that last year.

Airplanes can be depressing, especially when you wind up with a middle seat between two chubby businessmen. When I boarded they followed me in, squeezing into the seats on the left and right of me and forcing me into that awkward game of chess involving armrest space. If this were a team flight, my compatriots and I would be smacking each other on the back of the head by now, ringing call buttons, annoying the stewardesses, and generally making asses of ourselves. There is safety in team numbers, a confidence not present when you’re alone. As it was, I pretended I was a mime, and flipped open SkyMall magazine while the business brothers broke out their BlackBerrys.

While I marveled over SkyMall’s life-changing ingenuity, the brothers sparked up a conversation, speaking through me as if I were invisible, rambling on about widget sales and gross national product or something. Suddenly excited, they hit on some bar they knew in the area they were headed to and how they were going to get ripped, how there was a dancer there, and how if their wives knew about all of it, they’d be in the doghouse—again. They laughed very mischievously, like the Dukes of Hazzard business edition, and might have shared high fives if my head wasn’t in the way.

I gave up on SkyMall and made a break for my iPod. I had to rummage through my carry-on to get at it, dredging up all the items I had packed in the process, including the worn chunk of leather I passed for a glove. When I took out my mitt, the Duke Brothers took interest.

“You a ballplayer?” Bo Duke asked from the window seat. He motioned toward my glove.

“Yeah,”

“College?”

“No, professional”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’m reporting to spring training today.”

“Oh, right on, man. What position do you play?”

“I’m a pitcher.”

“Righty or lefty?”

“Righty, unfortunately.”

“How long you been playing?”

“This is my fifth year.”

“Hey Luke, this guy plays professional baseball, how about that?” He called to his buddy, but there was no way he couldn’t have heard me as tightly as we were packed in.

“Oh yeah?” Luke Duke said from the aisle seat. “What position do you play?” he asked me, but the guy by the window answered.

“He’s a pitcher”

“Righty or lefty?”

“He’s a righty who wishes he were a lefty,” Bo said.

“How long you been playing?”

“He’s been playing for five years, Luke.” I didn’t even know the guy sitting next to me and already he was talking as if he edited my Wikipedia page.

“Got any time in the big leagues?”

“No, no time yet.” I answered for myself.

“So you’re just a minor leaguer then?”

What’s that supposed to mean? “Just a minor leaguer?” What are you, just a vacuum cleaner salesman? “Yes, sir, I’m just a minor leaguer.” I exhaled.

“Well, keep playing, never give up. You’ll hate yourself for the rest of your life if you do. You’ll wake up every day and feel terrible about it.” He said it, and then sighed, shaking his head as if I just brought up a dead relative.

How was I supposed to respond to that statement? Did he really need to drop the “hate yourself for the rest of your life” line? There are a lot of people out there with sports-themed regrets, but this was a tad excessive. I nodded very mime-like.

“I’d still be playing today if I hadn’t had kids,” he continued, forcing an empty laugh before elbowing me in a “know what I mean” type way, but I didn’t.

“Did you play pro for a while?” I asked.

“No, I got my girlfriend pregnant in high school and had to quit ball to get a job. The kid ruined my dreams of playing. Don’t have kids. They wreck your life!” Again he laughed in an inside-joke kind of way, and again I didn’t feel as if I was on the inside. I laughed with him to make him feel better.

“Yeah,” he continued, “I was one of the best players on my high school squad. I was looking at colleges and was going to try for the pros, but life gets in the way, you know?”

“Yeah, that’s a shame,” I said. “Someone should really tell life to quit doing that.”

“I had a knockout curve,” he continued, staring off into dreamland, “and I had to have been throwing at least ninety miles per hour. We didn’t have radar guns or nothing, but all the guys told me I was throwing real hard.”

“Oh. Wow,” I said, highly doubtful but mastering it.

“Yeah, she said she was on birth control, but I don’t believe it. She knew I was going to be something special. She thought she’d just lock me down, you know?”

“Hmmm.”

“My advice to you, buddy, don’t trust women.” He stopped and looked at me with a queer smile. “I’ll bet a guy like you gets women after him all the time, what with being a ballplayer and all.” He stared at me as if I had the power to possess women with my uniform. I thought about the only woman in my life, my grandma, and felt the urge to tell him she was available. Instead I said, “Oh you know it, man! All the time,” and elbowed him back.

“Attaboy! Don’t ever give it up son, trust me. Say, you know my cousin’s kid has one hell of an arm. Do you think you could get me in touch with a scout to come watch him? I think he’s got what it takes. I’ve been working with him. Taught him the old hook.” He wrung his arm as best he could in our tight seating to demonstrate.

“Looks like a good one.”

“Yeah, it’s nasty.”

“I’ll bet.”

“So, can you get me in touch with a scout?”

“Yeah, sure. We do that all the time.” We never do that.

“What do I do, just give you my info then?”

“Yeah, I’ll pass it on to the Padres for you.”

“Ooh, the Padres?” he cringed.

“Yeah, why?”

“Um…I was hoping you could get the Yankees.”

“…”

I spent forty-five minutes I’ll never get back listening to Luke’s life story before the plane touched down in Chicago. He handed me his card as we exited the plane. I threw it away as soon as he was out of sight.

The long connector flight to Phoenix had me sitting next to a senior couple. They wore big, Terminator-style sunglasses that covered up their whole head. They had to use the bathroom every fifteen minutes and kept complaining about how much they hated today’s music compared to the good ol’ days when you could understand lyrics and women didn’t dress like hussies. When they saw my mitt, they asked me if I was a ballplayer. I told them it was a present for my kid brother in Arizona. I told them he was having an operation due to a rare disease called turf toe, and he was going to be off his feet for a while. Baseball was his favorite sport, so I got him the glove from this really nice, caring, and handsome pro pitcher named Dirk Hayhurst, who played for the Yankees. They said they’d keep an eye out for him. I told them my name was Eric Heater. They said it was shame I didn’t play baseball with a name like that.