Dirk Hayhurst

I’m sure you’re tired of hearing this, but wow, what a night for baseball September 28^th turned out to be.

I usually don’t like to throw my voice into such an over saturated market of baseball commentary, but I can’t help it. I’m tired of listening to people who’ve never played the game for a living bash, justify, rationalize, and otherwise divine reasons for how two teams that should be in the playoffs are not, while two teams that shouldn’t be are. (more…)

No no no—not steroids. I’m not talking about the kind of cheating wherein in you put your life in jeopardy. I’m talking about the kind of stuff that an umpire like Joe West would have a conniption about if he caught you doing it. The kind of stuff Gaylord Perry, Whitey Ford, or Joe Niekro used to do.

As the old saying goes, “if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying,” and while mommies the world over will line up to tell me what a bad role mode I am for telling this too you, the fact of the matter is, you aren’t trying. (more…)

“Woa, Lady, how did this become my problem?” I barked into the phone’s receiver. The property manager from the Hampton’s apartment complex, the place the team stayed at in Durham, was on the phone with me. She had a sweet Carolina countenance to her—until I started yelling, anyway.

“It’s not a problem, sir, we just don’t have any record of when you left the apartment complex, so we don’t know what to charge you for.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” I moaned, “I signed out and made sure too…” Crickets on the other end of the line.  ”Uhg… Well, I’m going to have to pull up the Bull’s season calendar and see what day I left. Hold on.” I pinched the phone with my head and shoulder so I could twiddle on my laptop. “I was released in September while Gwinnett was in town… It was a Monday night… The 29^th. I checked out the next day, the 30^th.  I turned my keys in that day.” (more…)

“Hey Driftwood, how are ya?” Said an excited Sid.

“What?” I said, getting off my twelve-speed and shaking Sid’s hand.

“Driftwood,” he repeated, “or would you prefer Castaway?”

“Your puns are usually bad but at least they’re decipherable. This one, however, has got me completely baffled.”

“You know, your new name, ‘cuase you’re all washed up.” (more…)

“Did you see Manny got arrested?” I asked my dearest Bonnie, presently standing at my side with matching coffee cup and pajamas.

“Shocker,” she said

“Yeah,” I took a sip, “I guess. Though I was kinda surprised. He wasn’t the smartest guy I played with, but he didn’t seem like the violent type either, especially not with all those female fertility drugs in his system. I thought he’d be more inclined to cry during a fight than smack his wife around?”

“Nothing he does surprises me anymore,” said Bonnie. (more…)

“If I tried to lift that over my head, the weight would crush me like one of those Super Mario Goombas,” I said, making a raspberry noise.

Big J, laughed at me as he stepped out from under the weight rack. He always laughs at me when I say stuff like that. I didn’t mind because saying I was weak in comparison to him was not only true, but also a testament to how okay I was with my manhood not revolving around this obsession with lifting large piles off heavy stuff for hours of a day like Big J’s did. It was a very liberating sense of inadequacy. (more…)

Once again I was on the yellow line edging the football field, the same yellow line this annoying mom with an inferior camera ran me off of earlier because, as she said, “It’s against the rules.”

“I just want some good shots of my cousin, no reason to get your panties in a bunch” I said as her shrill voice assailed me from behind.

“Excuse me?”

“Jesus age, lady. I’m not worried about what line I’m standing on at a midget football game” I say, not bothering to pull my eye from the camera’s viewfinder as I talked.  (more…)

Shoe cleanliness is a big deal to ball players. Don’t’ ask me why—They’re just going to get them dirty again. If you’re the pitcher, they’ll be dirty before you even get on the game mound because you have to warm up first. Hell, if they’re clean, that means you aren’t playing so you’d think you’d want them to be dirty! (more…)

Honestly, I took History of Jazz because it was an easy A. In fact, the instructor knew this was why most kids took it; one of the reasons he didn’t take attendance and kept his tests relatively idiot proof. He wasn’t tenured yet and needed students to pass the class so he could keep his job.

Easy A classes are students dream, right up there with the “10 minute rule.” You know, that rule about how if an instructor doesn’t show up to the class after 10 minutes of its scheduled start time everyone can leave? Well, that was the case in my History of Jazz class the morning of September 11^th, 2001, though no one in the class left. (more…)

“Why do all the people in here look so white and scaly?” I asked, standing outside the mob of people eating the post event spread.

“They’re musicians honey, they never go outside” said Bonnie. “They have to practice all day.”

“Lord, they’re like vampires. I feel like this is the same group that assembles at a midnight preview of a Twilight film.” I took a sip of my coffee and scanned the room from behind the steam coming off the cup, “Which one is their leader. If you kill the leader, they all die.” (more…)