Book Review: Dirk Hayhurst, The Bullpen Gospels

Dirk Hayhurst's book will open your eyes to a baseball world few ever see.

They say a writer should read more than he writes; maybe that explains why I'm such a hack. I read at glacially slow speed, which I guess is fitting for an Alaskan. Most of the instances in which I pick up a book it takes me days, if not weeks, to get the 100-page mark. But every once in a while I find a real page-turner, a masterpiece of literature that I can't put down. A book that I burn through in two or three days and wish desperately that there was more, that maybe if I went back through the pages I could find a chapter that I'd skipped and it would give me one more afternoon of reading pleasure. The Bullpen Gospels by Dirk Hayhurst was one of those books for me.

While the autobiography doesn't have anything to do with the Alaska Baseball League specifically, it does have a lot to do with the type of players we see busting their humps on the fields of Alaska each and every summer, many -- if not most -- of them chasing a dream of extending their baseball careers and being paid to do so. There is an assumption among many of us fans, and perhaps a few guys on the other side of the fence, that the world of professional baseball is all glamor. Big paychecks, limos and leer jets, fame and fortune, all that jazz. There is definitely some of that in pro ball, for the A-Rods of the world anyway, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

And then there's the minor leagues.

Hayhurst takes us to a world where players are paid poverty wages and live & work under conditions most of us would turn our noses up at. Coming from a broken home with an alcoholic brother, a father unable to work after a debilitating accident, and a mother whose nerves have been frayed trying to hold the home together, Hayhurst entered the world of minor league baseball hoping that as a professional ballplayer he could win back some of the dignity and security that his family had lost. Throughout the book, he takes us on a roller-coaster of emotions and even to the brink of giving up on his dream all together, which he might have done if it weren't for the knowledge of what he'd have to face if he did.

Hayhurst explains to us that minor league baseball is a place where you get paid a pittance -- and for only half the year at that. It's a place where each spring you have to show up, be poked, prodded, observed and measured before finally being allowed to participate in the month-long re-audition for your job (for which, of course, you aren't paid). It's a place where you can be fired at any moment for any reason, left sitting on the curb outside the ballpark on the phone with your agent, hoping he can find an indy league somewhere that will take you. This book was an eye-opener for me, and I already had an idea that the minors were rough; for the average Joe on the street I'd think it would be almost unbelievable.

Of course, it isn't all gloom and doom. What kind of a book would that be? Throughout the piece, Hayhurst manages to consistently cast things in a humorous light. For parts of it, perhaps it's because the only thing to do in that situation is laugh. But he also gives us a peek into a unique part of baseball: the life of a bullpen pitcher. Not only do we get to laugh along at the immature antics of a bus full of 20-somethings who get paid to play a kids game, we also get to see the warped world of its most interesting subset: the guys left out in the bullpen with nothing but their own twisted imaginations to keep them entertained through the first six innings or so. Hayhurst takes us through some of the interesting scams and exploits that his bullpen crew managed to come up with to pass the time and even scrape up a few bucks.

Without giving too much away, Hayhurst seems to pull it all together by the end. The scope of his work spans from the lowest of the lows to the ultimate heights of pro ball, and out of this experience he has crafted a masterpiece that should be a delight for any baseball fan. It's raw, genuine, and hilarious. It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry, and it made me actually finish a book within a reasonable amount of time so that's gotta count for something.