PA Book Club: The Bullpen Gospels
by jscape2000 on Dec 28, 2010 3:15 PM EST
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PrintMost sports books labor under the same burdensome motif: the subject is the greatest example there has ever been.
The Mick is the most tragic tragic-hero, while the Boss is the most contradictory contradiction; or this season or that season most embodies the soul of baseball. It's easy to understand why writers take this tack- why else would we bother to read the book?
So when a book comes along that is relatively hyperbole free, I find it refreshing.
Dirk Hayhurst's Bullpen Gospels is a player's story of struggling through the minor leagues. Early on Dirk defuses most of the Hollywood narratives- he's not playing baseball to fulfill any Mantle-esque debt to his father, or to lift his family out of poverty like Strawberry, or to meet some sort of baseball destiny. Hayhurst doesn't even write of himself as an accomplished athlete- I laughed over his disastrous Spring Training Pitcher Fielding Practice.
It's humor and humanity that makes Hayhurst a compelling narrator. His depression and paranoia are, at times, sparklingly and painfully clear. But the worries are obstacles that can never really be overcome; it's the chapters between the meltdowns on the mound that kept me reading. I love the inside seat at Kangaroo Court, and I laughed at Lars' joke about the octopus. And maybe I'm sentimental, but the scenes of the bullpen scooping up the 3-year old and letting him be the center of their world for an inning or two, and of Hayhurst giving his shoes to the homeless man in Ohio were the most moving scenes in the book. That's when Hayhurst stopped being a kid with a splendid but not spectacular right arm, and started being human.
And in the end, if Bullpen Gospels falls into the Field of Dreams trap- that every baseball story is ultimately about a father and a son- it falls with a smile. Hardly a classic, yet well worth reading, I though it was a fascinating look at life in the minor leagues.
(Yes, that's Hayhurst in the picture. 39.1IP in 2008 and 2009; I don't know if qualifies as more than a cup of coffee, but the Show is the Show).
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Baseball is a great tool if you know how to use it.
More than anything, I thought that brief exchange between Hayhurst and Hoffman was the theme of this book. His depression and anxiety- I wouldn’t go as far as paranoia, though it apparently runs in the family- are key to fleshing this out. The soul-searching they provoke eventually lead him to his answer, which is not illustrated anywhere better than in the scene with the three-year old kid (as emotionally manipulative as that might have been, but I’m a sucker, too.)
You’ve hit most of what I found to be the high points of the book. I especially loved the Kangaroo Courts (have scientists figured out what’s behind the sun?): I’ve been intrigued ever since I’d heard about the Yankees instituting one a couple seasons ago. The list of finable offenses at the beginning of spring training was revealing, as was how comfortable all the players were with male anatomy.
It’s a solid three-star book, but it gets a bonus star for its frankness and humility.
Usqueadbaugham! Anam muck an dhoul ! Did ye drink me doornail?
Two for me
I was not happy at the wsay he treated his family in the book. He was hard on his Grandmother and brother. That stuff, even if true, did not have to be in the book. It was really about baseball. nothing would have been lost with a single sentence on life at home. It was bad.
Enjoyed his view of team and team mates.
"I’m never really surprised, but I am thrilled sometimes." Joe G. 2010
To me, it was pretty important to the book that he included the stuff about his family. Part of his process of learning why he was playing baseball was to learn what a self-absorbed prick he was in some cases. (I also sense there was a certain amount of affectionate exaggeration about his grandmother, but maybe I’m wrong.)
Usqueadbaugham! Anam muck an dhoul ! Did ye drink me doornail?
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