Trumpets & Grunts (One Sixty-Two: Day 49)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Forty-Nine: Jonathan Broxton, Los Angeles Dodgers

Lights flickering. Water falling. Elephants lifting their trunks and trumpeting. Gorillas beating their chests and grunting. Giant butterflies hanging on the walls. A crocodile catching pennies.

It’s just another night at Rainforest Café, and we stopped in tonight to celebrate Chelsea’s preschool graduation. What better way to relish her preschool diploma than with burgers and make-believe jungle animals? Chelsea and Katie love the place and ask to go whenever a special occasion arises; as for their parents, I think it’s safe to say we prefer a dining atmosphere minus the sound of stampedes. But it was not our night, and Chelsea enjoyed every flicker and sprinkle and grunt.

Eating your dinner in a fake rainforest is, to say the least, disorienting. It’s kind of like stepping up to the plate in the ninth inning against Jonathan Broxton of the Los Angeles Dodgers. You’ve been working hard and concentrating on the field for nearly three hours, you’re behind by a run or two, and now you’ve got to figure out a way to handle nearly 100 miles per hour of hard, country fastball, exploding from the right hand of a 6-foot-4, 295-pound man who’s been sitting in the bullpen all night – just waiting to eat you alive.

Most batters, trained to hit at the highest level baseball knows, cannot touch the man. Throughout his career, Broxton has struck out 12 batters per nine innings. He saved 36 games last year and has already notched 16 saves this season. As he turns 26 next week, Broxton finds himself officially among the elite relief pitchers in the game.

Batters don’t necessarily seek to thrive against Broxton; merely surviving is in some ways a victory. Popping up, for instance, or grounding out. At least you saw something up there.

I’m not sure exactly what I saw at Rainforest Café tonight – I think there was a fake snake involved somewhere, and a lot of live fish. But I did walk out in the end, and I can see straight and hear once again.

Chelsea loved it, as always. Maybe she’s immune to the grunts. And the fastballs. Send her up against Broxton. She can bring the elephant’s trunk with her. Try to throw it past this, Jon. We’ll see who gets to beat their chest in the end.