"I've wanted to do this for 16 years. It started out like when you say you want to be a fireman, a cowboy, a baseball player. I just got stuck there."
And at age 24, it still feels like he's stuck, sometimes. Like the buses: "Ask any player--the worst thing is thing is the buses." Even though the Red Sox are a "class organization" like the Phillies and the Dodgers, teams that take care of their own, life in the minor leagues can be lackluster. The big stadium is there--the hint of what could come in a wild dream--but the stands are usually near-empty; loudspeakers play "Knock Three Times" between innings and the "bullpen" is likely to be a bench near the left field line. The Eastern League has a grueling schedule, too: 40 games in 144 days, April 10 to September 1, no days off. Once in a great while a local reporter will approach Brayton, and produce a "Patrician Who Can Pitch!" story with the Harvard angle, but there's previous little attention, too. Brayton says he sends what seems like 1000 schedules to his friends, begging them to come watch him play, but sometimes there are long stretches in strangle middle-sized cities where it seems like the whole game, no matter how much you love it (and they all do, whether they bitch all Page 12/Dump Truck the time or not, Brayton says), is deferred gratification: you aren't playing minor league for its own sake, ever--it's always to get noticed, to make it big, to break through.
"The worst is a Canada trip. You're in Pennsylvania or southern Connecticut somewhere and you have a game at 7:30. You finish at 10 or 10:30 or whenever, and the bus leaves at midnight. It gets to Canada at 9 in the morning, and you have to sit around and drink coffee because you can't check into the motel until noon. Then a game that same day. There's nothing like being the starting pitcher for the first game or a Canada trip."
Other times "it's like high school, you know. You put on your uniform in your own locker room and get in the bus and go somewhere and play and drive back all sweaty." When you play, "sometimes you feel like a caged animal, people throwing peanuts at you." But who's complaining? Brayton's never one to let a few gripes grow to defiance.
"People say it's just a job, but I don't believe it. The money's no good, so if they don't like it, why aren't they out doing something else? Take me--I'm the lowest-paid guy in Bristol, and I know I could get more, but I'm too stupid even to ask for a raise. They mail you their offer, and even though most of the guys hold out for a while, I always send mine back right away. You don't want to hold on to it too long, because you don't want to be labelled a troublemaker, an 'attitude problem.' But on the other hand...you want them to know you have confidence in your ability."
"Them" again. The most rebellious thing Brayton ever did was to hint at threatening to quit when he was on Winston-Salem. Soon afterwards he was called up to Bristol. But always the paranoid, he worries that "They" only wanted to appease him.
In a year Brayton could be anywhere. He'll be married, to Hope Price, an education student at Lesley who's already met all the baseball wives and says she's looking forward to her marriage to baseball. He'll still have a dog named Slider. He'll still come up to Cambridge to check in at the Owl Club for news of friends. But this can't go on too much longer.
"I know they have everyone classified--can't miss prospect, good prospect, outside chance, highest-ever Triple A--right on down the line. I don't know where I stand, I mean, I'm 24 years old, and being 24 in Double A ball could be old. As soon as I see the hand writing on the wall, I'm not hanging around. But hell, I've been working at this since I was eight years old--there's no way I'm gonna throw it all away till I know for sure I'm not going to make it.