Garfoose Serves Up Baseball Wisdom

DUNEDIN, Fla. -- You may not have heard until just now of a "Garfoose," but the chances are good the word will enter the common baseball vocabulary in the next month or so.

It's half giraffe, half moose and wholly a product of the mind of Toronto Blue Jays reliever Dirk Hayhurst. It's his friend, his alter-ego, his nom de plume and a conduit for his special way of looking at baseball and the world. Spoiler alert: The Garfoose breathes fire.

The Garfoose (right) makes daily appearances around the work on Hayhurst's corner of the social networking site Twitter (@TheGarfoose). And it will make a more extended appearance starting March 30, when Hayhurst's first book, "The Bullpen Gospels," is released in the U.S. and Canada.

(I have to say up front that I have not read the book. I hadn't heard about it before Friday, while venturing into the Blue Jays' clubhouse before their Grapefruit League game with the Phillies. But from the two people I've communicated with who have read it and from some of the buzz I've seen on the internet, the book has the potential to be required reading in the coming months.)

And how did Hayhurst become a writer?

"I was sleeping on my grandma's floor after my fifth year in pro ball (following the 2006 season)," Hayhurst told FanHouse Friday. "I woke up one morning and realized this was not what I'd signed up for. I had no money. I had no love life. I had no possessions.

"I'd thought baseball was going to make me happy, but at the time I was miserable. It seemed to me that the only chance I had might be to write. Baseball books usually sold well. I thought I could maybe salvage some money from a sinking career."

At that point, long after being drafted by San Diego in 2003, Hayhurst had finally made it to Triple-A for four games only to be hit hard (a 6.75 ERA). He considered retiring, then thought better of it, rationalizing that a chronicle of his generally frustrating experiences pitching in the minors might wean him away from the game.

He was 26 and clearly going nowhere in baseball. The book was to be his farewell to the sport. But he'd never written anything longer than a paper in college, so it was a strange new world. But at least he knew that.

What he didn't know was that 2007 would revive his career. He started out once more in Class-A, but he would make it back to Triple-A Portland, this time cutting his ERA almost in half to 3.75 and setting up his big league debut a year later. In addition to taking the notes that would form the basis of his book, he wrote a blog for Baseball America "just to see if I could do it and to see if anybody would respond."

The response was strongly positive.

"I think the writing helped the baseball," said Hayhurst, who is on the Blue Jays' 60-day disabled list after shoulder surgery. "People started liking what I wrote for Baseball America, Once that happened, I knew I was OK. I came to think of myself as a real person and not just a baseball player."

The blog came into being as a way for Hayhurst to get the word out about the book. Blogging quickly assumed its own reality for Hayhurst, if reality is a consideration when talking about the life of a fire-breathing half giraffe, half moose who lives in, as Hayhurst puts it, in "a sacred baseball grove where only the purest, most perfect baseballs are found."

It's The Garfoose's job to protect the grove from would-be baseball thieves.

Along the way, he spins some nice baseball yarns about his teammates, and, well, about anything that strikes his fancy.

A classic of the genre is The Garfoose's tale of how Blue Jays left-hander Brad Mills made it to Toronto. Without revealing too much, the story is told about how Mills won an architecture contest by building a "perfect working replica" of the Rogers Centre from Popsicle sticks, complete with retractable roof, adjacent hotel and turf.

"Some days you just don't have anything to say, but most of the time it's fun to make up sugar-high nonsense," Hayhurst said. "You want to have the right light feeling, which isn't always easy to do, especially in 140 characters (the Twitter limit).

"I treat it as a fun thing."

What's more, he succeeds.

As it happens, you have a better chance of seeing Hayhurst at a book signing this year than on the mound. He had shoulder surgery the first week of February and could miss the entire season after posting a 2.78 ERA last year

If you want to know about the surgical experience, well, The Garfoose is the source of all knowledge.