Dirk Hayhurst

My lovely wife, and camera woman, came to visit me this past week while I weathered my sentence in extended spring training. Extended, as we in the biz call it, is not exactly the most fun place in the baseball world. For starters, it’s the bottom rung of the professional baseball ladder, and farthest away from the promised land of the Bigs. It’s also typically located in an area of the country that feels like a sauna as the summer months come into their glory. There are rarely more then ten fans at an extended game (because of the heat), no one has earned any veteran privileges, (because there are so many youngsters) and it’s a continuation of the drills done to death in spring training (hence, “extended”). If you can survive the sun and the suck, you still run the risk of your head turning into a bowl of oatmeal as your brain gives way to the monotony. (more…)

We’ve all been there: the sky is gray and lumpy, rain is coming down in buckets, the countryside is speckled with standing puddles. It’s been non-stop precipitation all day, and if you were a betting man you’d put your chips on a weather assisted off day. As you watch the parking lot outside your minor league hotel turn into a river, you think to yourself, “why even go to the park since I’m just going to sit around and do nothing? Why can’t people look at the radar and make the obvious decision, and not waist my time? Look a this mess! Tonight is an off night, no doubt about it.”

Unlike most normal folks, minor leaguers tend to get euphorically happy about bad weather. You don’t get many off days in this sport, and when the weather turns nasty, there is always that chance you’ll get a free evening to spend at the bar instead of the bench. Players will turn into crash meteorologists about the matter, charting the movement of radar masses, checking the wind’s direction, going outside to report on the issue live. They’ll convince themselves there is no chance of playing to the point that random sarcastic shouts like, “traps off,” or, “suns’ out,” or, “game on,” successfully freaks out fellow teammates who’ve already made post cancellation reservations. (more…)

Everyone gets ready for a game differently. Everyone’s body has different demands, be it heat and stretching, or Red Bull and Advil. Learning what your body needs to perform at it’s best is an integral part of the professional sports craft, and after years of playing you too shall develop a routine that factors in all the feedback you’ve received from your muscles, joints, and, occasionally, bowels. In time, this routine will become a part of you, so second nature you’ll find yourself wondering how you ever played without it.

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Most hitters would say all pitchers are moody, primadonna’s with psychological defects. Most pitchers would say position players are type A jar-heads who only worry about what they can club. As crazy as it sounds, both diagnoses are true, at least to a degree.

Every player goes through extreme emotional highs and lows during the season. A hitter on a hot streak is very different from one weathering a month long slump. The pitcher who just tossed a shutout might buy a round for everyone after the game, while a pitcher who just got touched up for 8 earnies in 2 & 1/3rd innings might need rounds bought for him. It’s during these peaks and valleys that teammates find out just how much Jekyll and Hyde are in the guy one locker over. (more…)

At some point in your career, you will find yourself in front of a television showing a Big League game wherein someone you’ve played with, or against, is in the Bigs while you are not. You will see the back of his jersey as he winds up on the mound, or hear the announcer call his name as he digs in at the plate. And in that brief moment, when all you’ve ever known to be true and good seems to vanish in a puff of smoke, you will choke in your haste to scream, “How the *#@%! did this guy make it to the Bigs?” (more…)

Why do you need to know about eating at a gas station? Because you’ll be eating there a lot. I mean, A LOT.

When you’re a manager  burning down the interstate in route to the next town, hoping to grab some ZZZ’s before that double header against the Iron Pigs, or Stone Crabs, or Lug Nuts,  you can’t afford to waste two hours grazing the farmhands at a sit-down restaurant. Time is always of the essence in pro-ball, and managers don’t want to dillydally. If it wasn’t for refueling, he probably wouldn’t have gave the bus driver the OK to stop at all. Now that he has, I can guarantee you what the FDA says passes for food is the last of his concerns. (more…)