Rays reliever Hayhurst doing it by book
2/25/2011 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
By Roger Mooney
Published: February 23, 2011
PORT CHARLOTTE - Dirk Hayhurst is a baseball player, a pitcher with big league time to be exact, one of a handful of relievers hoping to make the Rays bullpen this spring.
Hayhurst is also a writer, the author of "The Baseball Gospels," a New York Times best-seller on his life in the minor leagues.
It's a most unusual combination.
Baseball players are supposed to pour their lives into making the big leagues. Writers are supposed to pour their lives into their stories.
Hayhurst has managed to do both.
"The book is something I couldn't have done without laboring in the minors," he said. "Making it in the book world was like saying I have a voice. I can speak to people. My thoughts and my experiences are relatable. There's a reason for this beyond accomplishing something in baseball. I have a value as a person, not just as a player, and that was really good to find out."
"The Bullpen Gospels" details the 2007 season when Hayhurst was a prospect in the Padres organization. It begins with disappointment when Hayhurst is sent back to Class A to begin the season having pitched in Triple A the year before, and ends with him helping the Padres Double-A team to a championship.
It is filled with the shenanigans of minor league baseball as well as the deep fear of failing at the game he loves.
There is a dark side, too. Hayhurst wrote about his father's suicide attempt and how his brother's battle with alcohol has crushed the family.
"I was honest about my family, and my family was glad that I was," he said. "I wanted people to get something from it and know that we are relatable people. Athletes have the same problems as everyone else, so why would I hide that?"
He was also honest about baseball, and that was far trickier than exposing his family.
"It kind of goes against the culture of the clubhouse, for sure. But I think he went about it the right way," said Rays pitcher Mike Ekstrom, who is mentioned by name in the book. "He kind of watched from afar and warned us. He said some of these stories might come out, what do you think? He was up front about the whole thing. At the time, I don't know if the majority of the guys thought it would turn into a New York Times best seller."
Hayhurst was careful to protect his teammates, giving most of them, as Ekstrom said, "code names" that only the players could decipher so as not to embarrass them when he described the sophomoric antics of a minor league clubhouse.
"It was fun for all my friends and family to kind of see what actually goes on," Ekstrom said, "because I tell them bits and pieces, but then they read the book and saw the full picture."
Hayhurst has a degree in communications from Kent State, where he was a teammate of Rays pitcher Andy Sonnanstine. His first foray into writing was "The Non-Prospect Diaries" for baseballamerica.com and a column for his hometown newspaper.
With so much free time as a baseball player, Hayhurst saw writing as a hobby.
Now, it's another profession. Each afternoon Hayhurst returns to the house he's renting this spring to continue work on his sequel to "The Bullpen Gospels," which details his 2008 season when he got married and finally reached the big leagues.
"Don't get me wrong, I am here to play baseball," he said. "But I am an artist and that artistry takes place in words. That's something I will never be able to separate from my character now. If the book wasn't as successful as it was, I could have said it was a hobby. But I'm getting paid to make those now.
"I'm a competitor in the book world, too. When I hear about girls kicking beehives or wearing dragon tattoos, I want to beat them. I want my book to be better than theirs."
