It’s important to understand that, at the time, I was a real Jesus freak.
Most of the guys on the team hated this about me. I can’t say I blame them. I was a staunch, proselytizing evangelical who preached Christ through concussion. I routinely ruined the boys’ nights out, guilt tripped them about affairs with cleat chasers, and tongue-tisked their crude male vitriol.
I was a party pooper, pure and simple. A party pooper with a 10-pound Bible who made a life of following Jesus look about as enticing as a frontal lobotomy.
I was on the team, but not part of it. But I thought that was okay because I didn’t answer to the team. I answered to the Almighty, which is why when my team told me I needed to obey the player code and bean a player on the opposing team in retaliation for them hitting one of ours, I said no.
“Jesus wouldn’t want me to hit someone,” I said, sitting at my locker, arms folded defiantly across my chest while my teammates made their appeals for vengeance.
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” They fumed. “If Jesus were a baseball player, he’d play the game the right way! He’d slide cleats up. He’d break up the double play. He’d truck the catcher. And he’d sure as hell bean a guy to protect his teammates.”
I had my doubts that these players really knew what brand of baseball Jesus played. After all, these were the same players who got robbed by prostitutes in Vancouver. The same ones that got into a fist-fight after it was confirmed the middle infielders had turned a double-play with an outfielder’s sister. The same one that broke into the home stadium’s concessions via an air duct, served unlimited rounds at the team’s expense, tried to walk home annihilated, and then passed out in a kiddy-pool of some local’s front yard.
I guess, looking back, I should have been happy I had them talking about God at all. But honestly, I didn’t much like the guy the other team hit. He was my teammate, sure, but I thought he deserved it, the cocky SOB. He showed up or popped off more than I felt a player ought to.
It was only a matter of time before another cocky show-off took offence at his antics and drilled him. In fact, that’s exactly how we found ourselves in this situation — two big egos showing off at their team’s expense: prophecy fulfilled.
The ball was now in our hands, specifically mine as I was about to make my first career start. I was already nervous without this need for a player code reckoning. I wanted to let it go, but my teammates had taken a mob mentality. They wouldn’t be satisfied until they had blood.
When I called them on this irrational, dangerous thinking, they countered by appealing to my own irrationalities, saying, “Come on! You’ve been a hyper-religious douche all year Hayhurst. Now it’s time to do right by your teammates. Think of this as an evangelism opportunity. God wants you to do this!”
Preposterous. Insane. No rational Christian man would ever think injuring another player was a way to facilitate salvation.
Of course I believed them.
Once I told them I’d do it, they loved me. They promised they’d come to Baseball Chapel the next Sunday. Then they told me that if I got charged on the mound, not to worry because they’d be out there, cleats sharpened, fists flying, ready to deal damage before the batter ever made it to me.
I worried anyway. I’d never beaned a guy on purpose. I’d never been in a brawl before. I’d never started as a professional pitcher before! I should have been going over hitters’ hot/cold zones. Instead, I was being told, “Throw your glove at him when he charges, don’t trip over the rosin bag and make sure you punch with your left hand.”
“I don’t want to have to punch anyone,” I said. “I’ll bean a guy, but no punching. Jesus doesn’t punch.”
“Fine, then run towards first base,” they countered. “We’ll do the punching.”
The sun came up on the day of the start like the raising of a guillotine. Ironically it was a noon game, mid-week and Kids’ Day.
Local junior summer camp children flooded the stadium, 6,000 or so, in little tribes marked by colour-coordinated t-shirts that ran the full spectrum of the rainbow.
The children took their places, blurring together like a giant bowl of marshmallow-rich cereal. Their tiny, saccharine voices unified for a brief chorus of Sponge Bob Square Pants. Attending mothers beamed, pointing at players, talking about role models, integrity and the shape and form of childhood dreams realized.
Meanwhile, I took the mound with my shadow stretching long across its baked, red dirt. I dug in, heart racing, hands shaking, praying for God to grant me the strength to drop a certain minor league showboat with a steaming fastball to the kidney.
I took my first sign, rocked into my windup and uncoiled down the mound.
Be sure to check sportsnet.ca Friday for Part II of If Jesus were a ballplayer…