The Bullpen Gospels by Dirk Hayhurst

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 trainers introduced themselves next, followed by some front-office staffers whom we’d most likely never see again after today and ending with the clubbies. It was all very quaint, if not boring, and I spent most of my time picking up loose wads of grass and tossing them on other nearby players, pretending Frenchy was responsible.
    Grady ended his portion of the morning with, “We have high expectations for this camp, and your job is to make our decisions at the end of it as hard as possible.”
    Earp took the floor again, pulling a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Alright men, let’s go over some rules for camp. First, if you’re late for anything, it’s fifty bucks plus a dollar for each minute after that. If you don’t tie your shoes in the weight room, you’ll be thrown out. Don’t be in there without the proper gear on. Don’t be jack’n around when you are in there….”
    I looked over at Frenchy who was trying his best to act as if it were as serious as Earp made it out to be, “Hold on, it gets better,” I said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “The hotel hot tub is not a washing machine,” continued Earp. “Don’t try to wash your laundry in the hotel whirlpool or you’ll pay for it to be cleaned.”
    “What? Is he kidding?” Frenchy asked, smiling as if it were one of those jokes speakers mix in just to see if you’re still paying attention.
    “No. About two years back, we had a guy in camp who honestly tried to wash his clothes in the hot tub. He took detergent and his dirty drawers and threw them in. I think he was trying to hand wash them when he was busted. They had to drain the whirlpool and clean out the jets. The hotel billed the Padres, and they were pissed.”
    “Was this guy retarded?”
    “No, but he was from a very undeveloped part of the world.”
    “Wow, that’s unbelievable.”
    “Oh, just wait—”
    “No cooking in the hotel bathrooms. In fact, no cooking in the rooms at all.”
    “What does he mean no cooking? If you got a suite, can’t you use your microwave?”
    “You got a suite? How the hell did you