Out of My League (edition 2012)

Dirk Hayhurst acknowledges in his author notes that OUT OF MY LEAGUE is not a baseball tell-all. His point is not to “smear his fellow players or air the sport’s dirty laundry”. He also doesn’t focus on the sport’s technicalities which makes the book enjoyable by all, not just baseball fans. Even so, there are plenty of tales of the bizarre and funny happenings, the diverse personalities in the clubhouse, the odd rituals and the tremendously different lives of minor and major league players. He shares entertaining anecdotes as well as heartfelt personal stories. Hayhurst is an anomaly among the players because of his personal moral beliefs and takes a lot of grief for it. He plays along to get along with the rookie hazing but doesn’t let peer pressure cause him to compromise his beliefs. His courage in this is inspiring. He is starkly honest about his flawed relationship with his family and his personal insecurities. He shares the sweet tale of meeting, courting and marrying his wife, Bonnie. At times laugh out loud funny and at others almost depressing, the book is entertaining from start to finish.

Rating: 4.0

Heat Rating: Mild: Mild detailed scenes of intimacy, mild violence or profanity.

Reviewed By: Jeanne Stone-Hunter for My Book Addiction and More ( )

Out of My League is Dirk Hayhurst’s second inside-baseball look at what it is like for those thousands of young men around the country whose only goal is to break into the big leagues. Only a small percentage of college baseball players manage to get to, much less past, A-Ball, and then only a small percentage of that lucky bunch will ever play major league baseball for any length of time. Despite these long odds, some players still find it so impossible to walk away from the game that they will spend the better part of a decade chasing their dreams. Failure most often follows from a lack of talent or physical ability, but sometimes it results from something the player cannot control, such as a career ending injury or getting stacked up inside an organization that has no room for promotion after it has been earned.

Baseball memoirs are, of course, usually written by players with name recognition. These players are so talented that, although the details will differ, their stories are somewhat predictable. What makes them most interesting is the little peek they allow the rest of us into their world – the more honest and revealing they are, the better. Dirk Hayhurst is not a player with a lot of name recognition working for him. Hayhurst spent several years in the San Diego Padres organization before getting his short-lived shot with the big club. His baseball skills, rare as they are, could only carry him so far – good enough to earn him his major league shot, but not good enough to keep him there once he made it. Surprisingly, this is exactly what makes Out of My League such an interesting baseball book.

Hayhurst’s account of his quest is a frank one, one in which he reveals things about his immediate family (parents, brother, and disastrous grandmother) that cannot have pleased any of them. Especially in the book’s first half, he spends as much time describing what goes on in the offseason as he does what he experiences during that year’s six months of baseball. This is both a strength, and a weakness, of the book. While it provides insight into the offseason financial struggles so many long term minor leaguers struggle with, Hayhurst’s recollections finally become a bit tedious, leaving the reader as happy to see the beginning of the next season as Hayhurst himself must have been to see it arrive. But without these insights regarding his relationships with his family and his fiancé, some of the decisions Hayhurst makes during the season would be mystifying. As it is, they still left me shaking my head at times.

Particularly fascinating, I think, is what Hayhurst expresses about what it is like for a rookie to join the big club: the awe these players feel for their surroundings, the everyday perks available to them, and the veteran players on the field with them. Players like Dirk Hayhurst meet good guys, bad guys, and more than a few jackasses along the way. Thankfully, he has decided to share his story (and that of countless players like him) with the rest of us.

Rated at: 3.5 ( )