Taking a look at the less glamorous side of baseball

Posted Aug 11, 2010 by Bob D'Angelo

Updated Aug 11, 2010 at 08:36 PM

This is a book I should have read immediately when it first crossed my desk several weeks ago. Because once I finally began reading “The Bullpen Gospels: Major League Dreams of a Minor League Veteran” (Citadel Press, $14.95 paperback), I realized I possessed a baseball gem.

Expanded diaries written by baseball players are not new. Jim Brosnan paved the way in the early 1960s with “The Long Season,” while 10 years later fellow major-league pitcher Jim Bouton published what I believe is the best baseball book of all time, “Ball Four.”

“The Bullpen Gospels” are the views and observations of pitcher Dirk Hayhurst, who documented the 2007 season he spent playing for three of the San Diego Padres’ minor-league affiliates.

Hayhurst is a gifted storyteller with a keen eye for detail. Although some of what he recounts smacks of bathroom humor and various bodily functions, there are some compelling stories. Starting with Hayhurst himself, who by 2007 had kicked around the minors for four seasons and was watching his window of opportunity to reach the majors shrink.

“This was not how I pictured my life as a professional baseball player,” Hayhurst writes. “Me shacking up with a withered old puppet of evil I called grandma, hanging on to a crumbling dream while the world passed me by, is not how things were supposed to go.”

The book bounces along at a fairly rapid clip. I’d read that Hayhurst’s narrative evoked memories of “The Catcher in the Rye.” Interesting concept, I thought. Was Hayhurst a modern Holden Caulfield, with an original and profound look at the world? And if so, who was his Ackley, the pimply, insecure next door neighbor with “mossy teeth”? Or his Stradlater, the handsome guy who was a “secret slob”?

Some of those characters do emerge in “The Bullpen Gospels,” but these are real men and not something out of the imagination of J.D. Salinger.

All that conjecture goes out the window, and Hayhurst really comes into his own when he describes a poignant encounter he had while doing volunteer work at a shelter in his hometown of Canton, Ohio. Hayhurst has a memorable exchange with a homeless man who is definitely not impressed with the baseball player’s career. This is the anecdote that really turned me into a Dirk Hayhurst fan. It was prickly and intense. Dirk (and the reader) learned a valuable lesson. Hayhurst’s spontaneous act of kindness that followed was the clincher and made me want to read the rest of the book.

There is another story covered later in the season when Hayhurst and his bullpen mates made a night special for a very young, cancer-stricken boy.
This is a book written from the viewpoint of a man who was struggling to deal with his personal life (his brother was an alcoholic and his father never seemed to give Hayhurst any indication that he was proud of his son) and his professional life (was he good enough to make it to the majors? — that question was answered when the Padres promoted Hayhurst to the majors during the 2008 season).

There are plenty of laughs, too. The clubhouse antics are as funny as anything Bouton ever wrote about in “Ball Four.” And Hayhurst’s descriptions of his teammates, coaches and managers are vivid and fresh. Bumpy bus rides, grimy locker rooms, obnoxious fans — all come to life in Hayhurst’s writing.

Hayhurst has blogged about life in the game for Baseball America since 2007. “The Bullpen Gospels” is a product of some of those blogs. His writing is easygoing and descriptive, and will give the reader a better perspective of what life away from major-league baseball’s multimillion dollar contracts is like.