In exchange for not yet profiling any member of the Eugene Emeralds’ pitching staff in the eight weeks I’ve covered the team, I decided to spend Saturday night mingling in their bullpen. (I owed it to them.) There were promises made to Eugene Emeralds manager Pat Murphy and by Emeralds reliever Chris Wilkes that I wouldn’t take any notes or quote anyone specifically.
“The bullpen is a sanctuary,” Murphy said to me during Saturday’s practice, advising me to treat it as such.
He most certainly didn’t mean “sanctuary” in its most common definition: “a place of refuge or protection.” The only thing the Emeralds’ relievers protect are late-inning leads.
Instead, he meant: “the most sacred part of a religious building.”
For the pitchers in the bullpen, this couldn’t be more true. The atmosphere of the game from right field at PK Park is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. The pitchers’ mix of their knowledge of the game and the camaraderie they have with one another made for a hilariously fun, enlightening environment.
As a lifelong baseball fan, I felt like I was having a religious experience of my own. (Note how I said “lifelong fan.” There’s a reason why I’m writing and not playing. We’ll put it that way.) It’s difficult to get any sense of players’ characters through postgame interviews; you can get a slightly better sense of their personalities through sitting down with them during practice. But nothing compares to being able to interact with players while they’re in their own element.
Each of the pitchers has his own quirks. (Wilkes spent the first two innings laying down on the ground facing the field, watching the game through the chain-link fence; Juan Herrera sings every batter’s walk-up song in broken-but-overenthusiastic English.) But they’re all dedicated to their craft, and pretty effective to boot — only three of the pitchers who have made more than half of their appearances from the bullpen have ERAs greater than 4.00.
But in interacting with them, I was reminded of something far more important. Though I’ve been treating everyone on the Emeralds as a professional athlete, spending time with them made me realize something I often forget: They’re the same age I am. They’re just college-aged kids living the dream. I’ve spent the entire summer saying, “I get paid to cover baseball. How awesome is this?” These guys get paid to play baseball. I can’t imagine how awesome that feels.
But lost in that shuffle is that they’re all normal guys who throw really hard. (Well, “normal” might be a stretch for a few of them, but I digress.) They have the same discussions that 20-something guys have, with good-natured ribbing being the primary mode of communication and admiration.
When I ran into reliever Kyle Brule later that night in a moment of serendipity, I mentioned that I was disappointed that I saw the quickest game of the season — the 1-0 win by the Tri-City Dust Devils went by in a brisk 2:09. He said the bullpen wasn’t even full and that it gets even more entertaining with a full complement of pitchers.
I can’t imagine what that would be like, but I’m certain it would have been baseball sensory overload. Even this devout baseball believer barely knew what to do during his brush with divinity.