“I’ve done the blood test, and I only did that so I could eat.” This was Ox.
“What about the piss test?” I asked.
“I made the mistake of taking a piss when I got up this morning. Now I gotta wait to go again. I’ll do it last.”
“I wouldn’t expect a ten-year vet like you to make such a rookie mistake.”
“It’s only been eight years, asshole, I ain’t that old,” Ox barked.
“I don’t know Ox. How many Advil does it take you to get through the day again?” Drew asked.
“Kiss my ass, Mr. Big-League Backup.”
“You should draw a picture of Ox with a cane and a walker, popping Advils, listening to Metallica, and cussing at children.”
“Save it, cockface. I hope Grady sees that wannabe Jesus hair you got and fines your ass five hundred dollars.”
“They can fine you that much?” Frenchy asked.
“I don’t know, but I hope he starts with this guy.” Ox fingered me in the chest with one of his thick, caveman digits.
“Hey man, if I were Jesus, I’d raise my career from the dead.”
“Shit, if you were Jesus, you could start with healing me,” Ox said, extending his notoriously cranky right arm out.
Drew chimed in, “I think healing what’s wrong with you would take a miracle even Jesus couldn’t perform, Ox.”
Brent and Frenchy both laughed, but stopped abruptly when Grady Fuson himself walked into the locker room. Carrying a clipboard and a coffee cup, he made his way past, stopping to look at us in a detached and uninterested way before unclenching a very sterile “boys” in a voice like a cross between Lou Brown from Major League and Tom Waits.
We looked back at him like dogs about to get whipped. “Grady,” we harmonized. He locked eyes with me. “Hayhurst, good to see you. Get your fucking hair cut by tomorrow or pay the fine.” Then he walked away.
“What are the chances?” I said, when I was sure he was out of range.
“Wear that, fucker!” Ox belched.
“Why me? Your hair is just as long as mine!” I said to Drew.
“I’m in a big-league uniform. I can do whatever I want.”
“Immunity,” Brent casually noted, nodding his head casually as if Drew’s uniform were irrefutable law.
“Great way to start off my spring. Now Grady thinks I’m a rebel.”
“Have you seen some of the guys in this organization? We gave a kid who bit a bouncer three million dollars and you’re worried about your haircut?”
“So you think he’ll fine me three million dollars?” I joked.
“Hope so,” Ox said, angling past me with a stiff shoulder. “I’m gonna try to piss. See you on the other side, boys.”
Drew patted his pockets. “Wanna borrow my Whizzinator?” A Whizzinator, in case you’ve never seen one, is a fake plastic penis connected to an extraneous bladder where a clean specimen is stored. The Whizzinator slips “inconspicuously” over your own package and makes it seem as if you are really whizzing your own pee. Color options include, Black, Latino, and Flesh. So utterly ridiculous, it has become a joke among most athletes.
“No thanks, I got my own.”
“Don’t be surprised if the piss testers act disappointed with your package, Ox. I’m a tough act to follow,” I yelled after him.
“That’s surprising, considering you sit down to pee.”
It was good to see friendly faces and joke around, but spring training was no joke. This wasn’t a vacation, and our job wasn’t to come into the office and play nine to five around the watercooler. This was a competition, and starting tomorrow, we’d begin fighting for spots. I may have come here with mixed emotions, but now that I was here, I had a job to win if I wanted to go any further. It was baseball in the driver’s seat from here on. To feel even like I’d a shot at something resembling a future in this game, I needed to make the Double-A squad out of camp, no small feat. After all the laughter, roles would be won, at any cost, even if it meant taking it from the best of friends.
Chapter Eight
“Alright men, let’s bring it in.” Wyatt Earp, so everyone called him, was our high-voiced field coordinator. His order to group up meant our first morning meeting was ready to start. The players stopped loitering by the field six fencing and crowded in on Earp’s command, forming a semicircle around him. He told us to take a seat, which we did Indian style in the morning dew atop manicured Arizona sod. The coaches and trainers remained standing, spread out before us like they were going to read to us like kindergarteners. Today would mark day one of camp, a day of intros and rules.
Earp led things off, reintroducing himself, though he needed no introduction. He was already infamous. He was a decision maker, like Grady, which meant he held our futures in his hands. The slope to the top of the game is so steep, it’s hard to like the folks who decide who makes it there. Statistically speaking, the decisions they make you probably won’t like. You learn fast who they are and pander accordingly.
Though Grady was hard to read, Earp was obviously biased. Everyone who’d been around him for any length of time knew he was obsessed with high numbers on the radar gun. He carried said gun with him everywhere, hence his nickname. Since the vast majority of pitchers didn’t generate the kind of numbers that turned him on, it was generally assumed Earp didn’t like anyone. Even if you pitched a great game, he’d bring up that you weren’t throwing hard enough. He always touted this character trait as honesty, but it was a blunt, unhelpful kind of honesty that made you wish he’d just lie to you for a change.
He gave the floor over to Grady, who choked out a greeting to us in his raspy, two-pack-a-day voice. “Gentlemen, welcome to camp. If you take a look around you’ll notice there are a lot more of you than we have roster spots for. I’m sure I don’t have to explain what that means.”
“Way to kick things off on a hopeful note,” I murmured to Brent, sitting next to me alongside Frenchy.
“Yeah, seriously. There are like a million new faces here this year.”
“I’d like to introduce some of our coaching staff,” Grady continued. He turned to face the line of coaches and trainers behind him. The coaches had on their baseball uniforms. Aside from their uniforms, the one thing they all had in common were stopwatches hanging out of their back pockets. The watches weren’t for timing sprints, but to keep track of groups between station rotations. Everything in spring training ran on a tight schedule. Beyond that, some coaches had fungo bats for hitting ground balls, gloves for fielding, clipboards for clipping. Most of the coaches stood in clumps with their friends, just like we players sat in clumps with ours.
A few decision-making individuals sat on golf carts: the “Brass,” as we called them. You could usually find Grady and Earp sitting comfortably in one. It was easier to make rounds on the complex’s seven fields via cart than it was to hoof it in the hot sun. Over the years, golf carts became a symbol of disdain with the players, since a cart was always occupied by some member of the Brass who didn’t talk to you, but could make or break your career.
Grady asked the coaches and trainers to introduce themselves, which they did, in no particular order. They broke ranks and explained their title and previous year’s coaching locations, then fell back in line. I knew some staff better than others, Randy Ready, Rick Renteria, Wally Whitehurst, Tom Tornincasa, and several others whose names weren’t alliterated. I knew almost all the pitching coaches, including Steve Webber, at whom Brent and I giggled like school kids when he spoke, and Glenn Abbott, who labored to teach me a slider for half a season in Double-A.
The