I've read a lot of baseball books. Now I've read the best.
Perhaps that's biased, as my passion and life run through the minor leagues. Maybe there's better. Sure, Red Smith's "On Baseball" is the bible for any baseball writer. Roger Angell has a large part of a shelf in my bookcase. And David Marannis "Clemente" changed my life. But Dirk Hayhurst's "The Bullpen Gospels" is the closest you (or I) will ever come to understanding the baseball life and particularly, the Minor League baseball lifetyle.
There's so many words one hopes to find when describing something they love. You don't want to just say you loved it, you laughed, you cried...no, this book deserves more. But I don't know that Webster (do I have to say Merriam-Webster?) has created any word to quite express how magnificent this book is.
Hayhurst, a relief pitcher currently with the Blue Jays, though on the 60-Day-DL, has been telling his story in other ways, writing "The Non-Prospect Diaries" for Baseball America. And though 'Gospels' was released earlier this year, it was only recently that I noticed it in the baseball section of a bookstore. Why did this gem take so long to get to me? I expect anyone reading this to throw a high heel shoe at me for that. Because this is the book for any Minor League fan, writer, player and so-called expert to read. Each verse sweeps you into a new phase of the bus leagues lifestyle, the physical and emotional pain mixed with the absurd and exciting. Anticipation. Hope. Humiliation. It's all there the minors, and Hayhurst puts all of it under the hot lights with gorgeous and excruciating detail.
For all my time spent writing about Minor League baseball, there's certainly a million things we can't comprehend as writers. There are simply things that only players know. And Hayhurst gives the bare-bones portrait. Things I didn't know, for example: that groupies are called "beef" (I was sure it was cheesecake). Or, according to one coach, you want to handle a baseball like a certain part of a woman's anatomy. That lesson must not get passed around in Little League. There's also a mortifying tale of Hayhurst experiencing a stomach virus. Well, sure, we can all relate. How about with a roommate a few feet away, though? Or the fact that there's six stalls to a Minor League clubhouse bathroom. The teammate relationship is illustrated in a whole new way here, folks.
While you'll likely find yourself laughing out loud, just as quickly you'll be snapped back into a killer reality. Hayhurst's humor in many ways is a survival technique. In order to get through the constant uncertainty and disappointment, he finds the funny. Though when he describes going home to his parents house and dealing with the toxicity of some of the relationships, it's achingly sad. He lets you in, so that you will know why baseball is so important to him.
There isn't much in the way of wild tales of sex with groupies, so if you're a guy looking for stories that confirm all your ballplayer fantasies, Hayhurst doesn't give it. Though there is a story involving a teammate during a game, that makes you wonder what your fourth grade teacher was like outside of the classroom. And, also, if you're a thin girl you aren't what's considered a "slump buster." The ballplayer logic!
Hayhurst is great at weaving a story with vivid detail, giving you a feeling of being with that teammate sitting on the curb after his release. Or, unfortunately, the Elsinore Casino and Hotel, where he explains the lay of the land all too well.
"I knew that if you turned a black light on in the room it would look like Jackson Pollock had painted on your bed," Hayhurst writes.
Having spent two weeks on a bus with a baseball team, I heard it all ("Wedding Crashers" is a repeat favorite in Indi league too). I don't embarrass easily. However, I found myself cringing and gagging at that description. But it works. You see how bottom-of-the-barrel the conditions really are. It can be gross.
The humor is steady, as is his willingness to do what he must to keep a job in baseball. When he thinks his job is safe out of camp, he learns there will be more cuts later in the day. He can breathe, then, just as quickly, he can't. He goes to his hotel where he contemplates his existence in the silence of the room he no longer shares with a just-released teammate. He has some peace. Then he gets a phone call from a coach who tells him not to bring his stuff to the field the following day. When Hayhurst describes going to the ballpark the next day, it's a gut check.
"I came to the executioner's office and walked in without knocking," he writes. "The stark expression I wore did all the talking." Moments later he's told he has an opportunity though it isn't a dream one - he's offered a spot at Single-A Lake Elsinore.
But the narrative doesn't skip a beat. In the next chapter he's on the bus, day one of his time at Single-A. You understand his desire and dedication. And, yes, his desperation.
There's the theory that players lax once they make it to the majors, that in the minors everyone is still battling their hearts out. This book gives new meaning to that belief. Each page pulsates with a gushing, hopeful, battered heart. Even when he's making you laugh, you know the life he's lived was rough. As you read the unfolding journey, you feel the authentic rawness of a path chosen out of boyhood dreams. And in adulthood the inability to let go...or, perhaps, the inability to imagine doing anything else.
Hayhurst is willing to be vulnerable and show the fear, anxiety and self-loathing that creep up on players through a long season of "auditioning." He opens the clubhouse doors, the bus doors, even the doors to Kangaroo Court. In doing so, he allows the world to see the men behind the numbers we so obsessively track.
Roy Hobbs, that mythical baseball hero from Bernard Malamud's mind, had a great line and it came back to me as I wrote this review. In searching for words about this book, I've decided to borrow:
There goes Dirk Hayhurst's book about Minor League baseball. The best there ever was.
Note: I don't normally write with so much personal tone on my blog, but I went out of the lines for this. It was hard for me not to inject just how meaningful and personal the book felt to me. Journalistic, no. But from my heart.
