Can you top the week that Dirk Hayhurst, the blogging pitcher interviewed in this space in July, has had so far? He got married on Sunday. He also got put on waivers by the San Diego Padres and claimed by the Toronto Blue Jays, who put him on their 40-man roster.
"I was driving down I-70-something," Hayhurst wrote in an e-mail from his honeymoon, "my car covered in just-married inscriptions, cans dragging noisily behind, when the phone rang. Padres front office was calling me to tell me they had a player move involving me, which was just a fancy way of saying they took me off the 40-man.
"I stared over at my new wife with a stunned expression. She just kept mouthing the words 'What, honey?' I had been un-40-manned by the Padres and re-40-manned by the Blue Jays while I was getting hitched. I thought life had changed enough in the last day."
The Padres called up the 27-year-old right-hander in August. He made his debut in San Francisco on Aug. 23, starting and allowing three runs in four innings. He made two other starts and seven relief appearances, finishing with an 0-2 record and a 9.72 ERA in 16 and two-thirds innings. A rough start to a big-league career, but a start.
"There really are no words to capture the realization of a dream come true," Hayhurst, 27, told the Padres blog Ducksnorts about his call-up in a season-ending interview before his release.
To that end, he announced on the night of his big-league debut that he would stop writing his blog at the Canton Repository, his hometown paper, though Baseball America promises that Hayhurst will "catch us up after the season on his major league experience" in his Non-Prospect Diary there.
"I'm sad to leave all my friends and acquaintances at the Padres," Hayhurst wrote in his e-mail Wednesday. "I was honored to be a part of the system. I harbor no hard feelings. I am excited to be a part of the Blue Jays and I will be working hard to make the faith they've placed in me bear fruit."
It is not often that someone comes along who is a good pitcher and a good writer. Hayhurst will head to Blue Jays camp next spring to try again to prove that he's both.
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