Dirk Hayhurst’s Pursuit of Happiness

Zach Sommers
February 28, 2012

DIRK THE TV STAR

If Dirk Hayhurst were a TV character, he’d be Abed Nadir from Community. Now before you go all Senor Chang on me, please allow an explanation. There are differences, yes. Dirk isn’t a film major at a community college, although perhaps an argument could be made that Community College are to Universities as the Minor Leagues are to the Majors. He isn’t half-Arab, half-Polish, but with a little imagination there are some physical similarities. And no, the former Tampa Bay Ray never led his peers in an intense, ballpark-wide game of paintball that ultimately ended in Evan Longoria (clearly the Jeff Winger of the Rays) shooting a paintball into the face of Tampa Bay GM/Dean Andrew Friedman.

Where Dirk and Abed (In The Morning! OK, I’m done) share similarities mainly concerns their trait of intense self-awareness. Abed lives his life as if it was being played out as a TV show. He recognizes plot twists, points out concept episodes and is, for the most part, unable to connect with people without the benefit of TV-speak. Hayhurst’s self-awareness exists as an atheist in the Church Of Baseball. While a large number of Major Leaguers worship at the alter of the Splendid Splinter and happily reap the (occasionally immoral) benefits that come of it, Hayhurst instead sits on the sidelines. He observes, he laughs, and then he writes about it. Although he respects the game, he doesn’t buy into the magical qualities that infiltrate the narrative of the sport. That seems to make him happy. It’s also the reason why, during an injury-riddled 2010 season, he found himself depressed. 

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DIRK THE WRITER

While in the minor leagues Hayhurst gained an underground following as the author of the Non-Prospect Diary, an outlet showcased at Baseball America that gave Dirk the opportunity to explain the life of a minor-league pitcher that rarely gets mentioned on ESPN; it was the trials and tribulations of a player who endured long-road trips and crappy hotels, but didn’t follow the Disney-fied ending of said player eventually “making it” in the majors, achieving wealth, fame and women. In other words, all of the things that make the modern man jealous of ballplayers. With article titles including Baseball Players Are Nothing Special and The Life Of A Reliever Isn’t That Glamourous, Hayhurst was giving credence to a side of baseball that many people didn’t really want to hear. A lot of times, being a professional ballplayer sucks. It’s not Dirk being emotional, it’s Dirk being honest.

That honesty helped parlay Hayhurst into writing a full-length book. The Bullpen Gospels was released in March of 2010; it was largely a success, debuting at No. 19 on the New York Times Bestseller List. It was hailed by many as the best baseball book since Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, with several others claiming it had no equal. It was successful enough that Hayhurst was commissioned for more. His sophomore book, Out of My League, which chronicles his first foray into the majors as a member of the San Diego Padres in 2009, comes out this month. Judging by the volumes of positive blurbs that litter Dirk’s personal website, Hayhurst has beaten the sophomore slump. As an author, Hayhurst had become more popular and well-known than he ever was as a player. But that popularity in the literary world did not translate into the clubhouse.

DIRK THE BALLPLAYER

Baseball-wise, 2010 wasn’t a great season for Hayhurst. He had already reached the high of his MLB debut with the Padres, and in 2009 found himself up north playing for the Toronto Blue Jays. An injured shoulder during off-season workouts forced the reliever into surgery. The 2010 season, as a result, would not be spent playing, but instead rehabbing and promoting his upcoming book. As much of a success as The Bullpen Gospels was, it wasn’t enough. The inability to pitch, coupled with a growing resentment from his teammates over the book, was enough to drive Hayhurst into the deepest of slumps.

“It was a terrible experience for me.” Hayhurst told The Good Point. “I was really depressed, and it was the first time I had ever dealt with clinical depression. I don’t want to say I was suicidal, but I was OK with not being alive anymore. I didn’t want to kill myself, but I was like, ‘If I die, whatever.’ [I just had] this ambivalence towards life.”

There are many paths one can take when faced with those thoughts. Some bottle them up because they are too afraid to share, or don’t believe it’s appropriate. Some find the courage to talk about it. Dirk, however, worked at a job where admission of those types of problems are less-than-frequent, and aren’t necessarily recieved with the most open of minds. As well, there were outside factors that made this particular bout of depression ultimately more difficult than others.

“My family, they have a lot of problems because they have this history of some sort of degenerative mental disorder,” said Hayhurst, “Which you definitely notice if you read my grandmother’s chapter (in The Bullpen Gospels). My parents have had issues with that, too. My dad is bipolar. And so, I was taking the depression really hard. There was this huge fear that heredity kind of cursed me with some mental disorder, which is why I couldn’t handle being an athlete. The two things you’re not allowed to be as an athlete is hurt and depressed. Depression is such a metaphysical thing that it’s hard to quantify, and it’s hard for people to understand it, especially not type ‘A’ personalities, they don’t get it.”

Whether or not Hayhurst’s Toronto teammates knew of his bout with depression isn’t a talking point; it’s not known whether or not the events at the end of 2010 would have occurred if they did. What is known is that Gospels had been out for over six months and had given Hayhurst a burst of popularity. And this popularity didn’t come at the expense of anyone else. Anyone who has read the book knows that it was not a tell-all gossip-fest written by a fringe Major Leaguer eager to make his name known and earn a few bucks. It was an honest and revealing look at the type of player that populates the majority of minor league rosters. But his teammates didn’t care.

“At the end of the year I [got] cornered by a couple of guys on the team.” Hayhurst said. “Esseantially, [I had] been away from the team the whole time and I ran into the guys at rehab, and we’ve been getting along with each other just fine at the beginning of the year. At the end of the year, they’ve had all the time away from me, and they’ve seen the book become a success […] and they said, ‘Look, the team is really pissed off at you for what you’ve done.’ And I was like, ‘What?’”

The sudden change of attitude blindsided Hayhurst. In this unofficial meeting, he was told he had to apologize to the team for writing the book. When Hayhurst asked why, the reasoning confused and irratated him further. There was no admittidly no logic behind the demand. Hayhurst would be forced to accept his punishment and not ask questions; it would be the only way the team could accept him back in the clubhouse.

“I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ I don’t care if I’m ever a baseball player again. I don’t like what this does to people. It changes people, and I just don’t want to participate in this again.”

Added Hayhurst: “That moment was the lowest that I’d ever had with baseball. It was like being told, ‘You’re not like us, and that’s a problem. So, while we can’t make you like us, we can make your life miserable until you conform or quit’.”

Two weeks later Hayhurst was released by the Blue Jays. There’s no proof the two incidents are related, but it’s not hard to reason that to some people in high places, Dirk Hayhurst may not have been worth the trouble.

“At that point, I had spent all this time questioning, ‘What the hell am I doing this game for? Am I ever going to be mentally sound, am I ever going to be able to throw again?’”

Between the injuries, the confrontation and the mounting unhappiness, he was as close as ever to quitting the game. A game that, even if others can’t see it, he truly does love.

“The generally accepted thought process on a person who does what I’m doing is always villainous, and I’m always going to have to play that role. It’s the only game in town, so to speak. You either play the role, and suck it up and deal with it, or you get out. And with my mental health at that time I wasn’t sure I could play another season.”

DIRK THE RAY

In retrospect, the Tampa Bay Rays always seemed like a perfect fit for a personality like Dirk Hayhurst. Stuck in a division ruled by mythical franchsies with larger-than-life payrolls, the low-key, low-money Rays had no choice but to be different. After toiling away in the dungeon for the better part of the franchise’s history, the (then Devil) Rays stockpile of smart signings and high-end draft picks bore fruit with a surprise World Series appearance in 2008. Not many can claim they saw it coming.

Closer than ever to leaving the game forever, Dirk, with credit going to his wife Bonnie, continued with this chosen path, signing a minor-league deal with the Rays in January of 2011. It didn’t take long for Hayhurst to realize he had made the right decision.

“(Tampa Bay Manager) Joe Maddon and (Tampa Bay General Manager) Andrew Friedman had a meeting with me and said, ‘Hey, we appreciate what you have going on off the field. We have no problem with your writing, just please don’t write about what goes on in these inner sanctum meetings’. I said, ‘Sure. Not a problem. I’m not out to get anyone…. unless you release me, and then I’m going to burn all of you guys to the ground’. There was a dead silence when I said that. I added, “I’m just kidding.’ We all had a genuine laugh over it, and never looked back. They’re a quality, progressive organization.”

For Dirk, the Rays represented a fresh start. The Blue Jays lockerroom was run by an old guard of veterans whom had a certain view of how things were supposed to go. The Rays, on the other hand, were a young clubhouse led by a manager who once succesfully challenged Major League Baseball’s ban on wearing hoodies during gameday (Bill Belichick would be so proud).

“I got there, and everyone was like, ‘Oh you wrote a book? Awsome dude.” said Hayhurst. “’You gonna make a movie? Dude, get me in there!’ It was younger, hipper guys.”

Hayhurst never made the Rays big-league team; he spent the 2011 season with the Rays AAA farm team, the Durham Bulls (the same Bulls made famous by Crash Davis and Nuke LaLoosh). But the progressiveness that attracted Hayhurst to the organization wasn’t just apparant at the Major League level.

“I never saw any tension between Dirk and his teammates,” said Charlie Montoyo, Hayhurst’s manager with the Bulls. “It was natural for the guys to be a little skeptical of Dirk, because they knew he likes to write about his baseball life and he also had a blog. [But] I never had any concern with what Dirk was doing.”

It wasn’t a perfect marriage; Hayhurst recalled occasional tension between he and the team as the season wore on and the writing continued. Even when he would tell the truth about what he was writing, that there was nothing inflammatory or hurtful in the text, there were still trust issues. However, it never reached the level that occured near the end of his tenure with Toronto, and for that, there were no hard feelings when Dirk was released by the organization at the end of the 2011 season.

THE NEXT STEP

“People always say you should keep playing as long as you can, because there are so many other people in the world who would love to be you, they want to be you. Play for them. That’s so ridiculous. I’m not going to kill myself doing something because there’s someone else out there would would love to try to do what I do. They should see that there are things they do that I’d like to try, but nobody sees it that way.”

In between the interview that provided the basis for this piece and its publishing, Dirk Hayhurst announced (via Twitter, of course) that he would be spending the 2012 season not riding buses between small towns in rural America, instead taking his talents to Nettuno, Italy to play professional Serie-A baseball for Danesi Nutteno. For Hayhurst, the dream isn’t about the throwing the final strike in the World Series, it’s about finding what makes him happy and going to that place. The opportunity to play somewhere new, learn the cultures and eat some of the best food in the world was a more attractive option than the overnight bus trip from Birmingham to Jackson City. And really, who could blame him?

About an hour after announcing his future plans, the following message was delivered to Hayhurst, alsovia Twitter (pardon the spelling): “y u giving up?!?!? Part of bball is being a role model. What message r u sending kids by giving up!”

It’s an attitude that surely breeds the combination eye roll/sad sigh from Hayhurst. Dirk’s only crime was an attempt to find something he enjoyed. Baseball was one part, writing was another. The two crossed paths, and it gave Hayhurst a kind of fame not usually reserved for players with his career stats. What makes him different and deserving of that popularity is that Hayhurst knows his path and isn’t stepping on anyone to get to it. By his own admission, he doesn’t want to be looked up to because he’s a baseball player, and he’s 100 percent right. He should be admired because of his convictions, his intellegence, and his pursuit to do what he thinks is right, no what is expected of him.

For those who watch Community, Abed is a loveable character who everybody roots for and wants to see succeed. He knows what he is and does his best to understand his surroundings, even if his surroundings don’t understand him. Dirk Hayhurst is no different. Reading about Hayhurst’s life it’s hard not to root for him. You want him to win a World Series and gain international fame, but that’s not what he wants. He knows what he wants and isn’t willing to compromise his integrity in order to obtain it. If it doesn’t match what other people in his position want (and it usually doesn’t), Dirk doesn’t care, and nor should he.

Derek Jeter may get the fame beacuse he play’s the game right, Dirk Hayhurst deserves the fame because he plays life right.

Pick up Hayhurst’s “Out of My League” at Amazon.

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The Author:

Zach Sommers