Bigger Than the Game: Restitching a Major League Life

Dirk Hayhurst

Mar 2013 · Kensington Publishing Corp.

About this ebook

The Toronto Blue Jays pitcher recounts his fateful season of injury, rehab, and reinvention in a memoir by “the best writer in a baseball uniform” (Tyler Kepner, The New York Times).

After nearly a decade in the minors, Dirk Hayhurst defied the odds to climb onto the pitcher's mound for the Toronto Blue Jays. Newly married, with a big league paycheck and a brand new house, Hayhurst was ready for a great season in the Bigs.

Then fate delivered a crushing hit. Hayhurst blew out his pitching shoulder in an insane off-season workout program. After surgery, rehab, and more rehab, his major-league dreams seemed more distant than ever. And from there things only got worse, weirder, and funnier.

In a crazy world of injured athletes, autograph-seeking nuns, angry wrestlers, and trainers with a taste for torture, Hayhurst learned lessons about the game—and himself—that were not in any rulebook. Honest, soul-searching, insightful, hilarious, and moving, Bigger Than the Game is an indisputable baseball classic.

About the author

Dirk Hayhurst is the New York Times bestselling author of The Bullpen Gospels, Out of My League, Bigger Than the Game, and the e-book Wild Pitches. Drafted from Kent State University in 2003 as a senior sign, Hayhurst pitched professionally for nine years on more than eight minor league teams and three major league teams: the San Diego Padres, the Toronto Blue Jays, and the Tampa Bay Rays. He has been a professional broadcaster and baseball analyst for the Toronto Blue Jays and Sportsnet Toronto, a contributor for ESPN on the Olbermann show on ESPN 2, and a panelist on TBS's coverage of the MLB postseason. Visit him at dirkhayhurst.com.