Dirk Hayhurst

This seems to be happening a lot lately, doesn’t it? Someone we love, or in this case, someone we want to continue loving because we’ve become used to the idea of them as a hero, starts to muddy the water with irrational behavior. Well, irrational in our eyes at least.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you’ve never made 20 million dollars a year to play baseball? Yeah, well, me neither. There are only a handful of people in the world who have actually, and one of them is Derek Jeter.

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Travel days— they can really break a player down. In bed at midnight, up again at 4 a.m. Grab a cup of coffee then get on a bus to a plane to a minor league town you’ve never heard of. Some of us will play on no sleep, others on just a few hours snagged between bouts of turbulence and security check-ins. It’s hard on the mind and the body, but its part of the job and I am not complaining. Not in the least.

Let me tell you about another job, one that also had me up early in the morning…

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Since the holiday season is coming, I’ve had quite a few requests for signed or personalized copies of The Bullpen Gospels. However, I wasn’t comfortable giving out my home address (for those willing to ship me a copy), and its tricky setting something up with my publisher (since they’re located in NYC and I’m  in podunk Ohio) that could practically accommodate personalization. Then I had this idea… (more…)

I used to do pitching lessons in the off-season. Since paychecks stop coming in when the season ends, lessons are a great source of player revenue for desperate minor leaguers. In fact, depending on what level of the minors you’re in and how many students you have, you can make more doing off-season lessons than actually playing during the season.

However, it’s not as easy as just putting your name in the paper and advertising your pedigree. There are other baseball instructors out there competing to get their brand of lesson to your potential student. Most don’t have a lick of pro experience, but they still draw kids, touting promises and success stories all the while. Sometimes the competition is so thick, it can confuse potential students in to wondering who, exactly, is the best teacher to learn from? The one with the most years doing it? A pro guy or a collegiate standout? The one that tells parents (who are paying for it, after all) what they want to hear? In a competitive market, someone has to be the best, right? (more…)

Dear Dirk,

My name is *Beaker Humperdink*.  I was drafted as a catcher out of high school by the Mets in 2009.  I have played 2 years of rookie ball so far, and I am currently spending my 2nd fall in the Dominican Republic for Instructional League.  After spending last fall down here, with nothing to do after work outs and playing games, I knew I needed something to turn to to occupy my time.

I was in conversation with a few of my teammates and coaches during the regular season and into our playoff push (we won the Wild Card and got eliminated in the first round), about good baseball books to read.  The Bullpen Gospels kept coming up in conversation and a bunch of guys said it was a (more…)

This past weekend I was asked to be the Key Note speaker for the Bethesda Big Train’s (a collegiate summer league team located in Bethesada Maryland) annual live auction and benefit dinner. It was a big honor, usually reserved for guys with long, detailed baseball careers full of war stories and  commnents like, “in my day, we didn’t have things like K-zones and slow motion, and penicillin…” This year, they got me and my ever evolving list of embarrassments. (more…)

The news was significant for a lot of reasons. First off, I get nervous around celebrities. I feel like they have the power to pluck me from my otherwise mundane existence with a simple gaze of recognition. Everyone feels this to some degree, I believe, that if we interact with a powerful pop culture figure the interaction somehow counts as social currency which we can use to buy “Ooo’s” and “Awww’s” amongst our friends. It’s glorious having a name we can drop, and knowing others wish they could drop that same name makes us feel good, superior, and fulfilled as the shallow, needy people we really are.

Second, his picture hangs on the wall above my therapy table. In fact, it was widely considered HIS table. His steely, slightly psychopathic eyes loomed above it, judging all those who would occupy it in his absence. On more than one occasion I felt as if they were locked upon me in disappointment as I writhed and squirmed in effort to get back to health. His massive arms were thrown up in a V for victory, flexing beefed up super muscles that look as if God made them under inspiration from a comic book. “I will kill you,” says his facial expression, “I will kill you, and I will deeply enjoy it.” He is all that is man, right down to the tight leather pants and tapped wrists. The poster reads: “I AM THE GAME”… Hunter Hurst Helmsley, also known as, Triple H.

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Yesterday I caught a post from Buster Olney over at ESPN that read something along the lines of how older pitchers want to go to San Diego to rebuild value. He didn’t cite any names, but he did say the reason was “Spacious Petco park”, implying the field is forgiving on less effective pitchers. After I read it, I thought to myself, “my, isn’t that cute.”

Yes, I said cute to myself. Cute because while that spacious reasoning may have something to do with why older pitchers want to go to San Diego, I don’t think it’s the real reason, or even a primary one. I say this only because I was around the Padres organization back when some older pitchers landed there, like David Wells and Maddox the Merciless (no one calls him that, but they should). Allow me instead to offer you what I think is a far better reason for veteran migration; one you can understand without a veritible algebra class of statistical break downs concerning baseball flight patterns in Petco. (more…)

Quit, a verb meaning to leave, depart, or withdraw from. For the competitor, the word quit carries a meaning so potent, it seems something closer to suicide or euthanize would better define it. I guess it depends on how it relates to your life. Quitting doesn’t belong in an athlete’s vocabulary, but I had been throwing it around a lot lately
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I never felt more guilty for using the term then there in his office. The place was a shrine to overcoming adversity, full of pictures of long shot guys hosting trophies over their heads. But this wasn’t like beating an undefeated team or hitting the goal in overtime. This was life, outside the playing field.

I wasn’t defeated, not broken or beaten by the game itself. Maybe before I got started with the game I believed it was something it wasn’t. I guess you could say I was infatuated with it. I thought it would make sense of life, like young lovers think marriage will fix everything. But life is too complicated for any career change to make sense of. After five years of baseball, there seemed more loose ends then tied ones. (more…)

I had the pleasure of flying through the Cleveland airport the other day. I say pleasure because the place has been efficiently renovated and brought up to date with other icon city airports, complete with stylish nods to what makes Cleveland, Cleveland. There is now a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame store, a few nice bars that feature Great Lakes Brewing Company brews, and clean, spacious bathrooms you’ll savor crapping in. However, the main detail that reminds you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are indeed in Cleveland Ohio is the giant poster slamming Lebron James.

I know I’m going to catch hell for writing this because once you’re in the public eye, if you say something overly critical one way or the other, you get a good ripping for your view points. I’m also a resident of the greater Cleveland area, so I know this will make a few local readers hot, but I’ll risk it. I just have to say it: gosh darn it, Cleveland, I’m disappointed in your behavior lately. (more…)