Bobby Jenks was throwing a simulated game Wednesday at U.S. Cellular Field when Juan Uribe stepped in for his swings.
The first pitch was fast, as in fast, and it sailed high, as in high, a pitch headed for the backstop had it not been stopped by the batting cage. Uribe stepped back and shook his head, knowing the dangers of facing a fastball pitcher in a cage. He dug back in.
The next pitch squirmed into the dirt at home plate and Uribe stepped back again, seemingly determined to make the next one count.
In came the next one, and Uribe shot it on a short hop back at Jenks’ foot. It caromed toward where the second baseman would be playing.
“Hit it right to the second baseman,” Jenks said later.
Wednesday was Bobby Jenks’ day to get in his “side” work–and, boy, was he pumped. For good reason. He hadn’t pitched since Game 3 of the AL Division Series on Oct. 7 in Boston, when his one perfect inning clinched a berth in the ALCS for the White Sox.
And now Jenks, 24, with a grand total of 32 regular-season major-league appearances and six saves to his credit, is being asked to pitch in the biggest games of his life–the biggest games for the White Sox in 46 years–in the World Series beginning Saturday night at U.S. Cellular Field.
If the Sox have one key player in this historic series, it is Jenks, who has been in the organization for just eight months and with the big-league club for three months.
Named the closer in mid-September, Jenks surely will have to be used in the best-of-seven World Series because historically these games are decided by the finest of margins and defined by which team has man-of-steel nerves at the end.
Jenks thought he would have the ultimate chance to prove himself against the Angels, the team that gave up on him last year.
But manager Ozzie Guillen never gave his hands-expanded-around-the-belly call to the bullpen, signifying the heavyweight Jenks. Jenks warmed up in the deciding Game 5 but never got in, and the starters went down in history for throwing all but two-thirds of an inning in a five-game series.
It seemed only natural that Guillen would help calm Jenks’ nerves by pitching him sometime in that series, just to get his feet wet before the World Series. Does that concern Guillen about what could happen in the late innings in late October?
“No,” he said. “When you’re concerned about somebody, you don’t have the guts to put him in. All of a sudden you’re going to second-guess him–why you put him in?”
Closers have been known to cement their Hall of Fame credentials in the World Series. Jenks is just hoping to establish himself as a major-league closer.
In the postseason, there is a fine line between success and failure. If you don’t believe it, ask Houston’s Brad Lidge, who gave up a two-out, three-run homer Monday night to St. Louis’ Albert Pujols in what appeared to be a certain Astros victory that would have claimed a World Series berth.
Asked if he had watched the Pujols at-bat, Jenks said he was “flipping back and forth between that game and football.”
But did he feel sorry for Lidge?
“No, it happens,” he replied. “You’ve got one of the best hitters in the game at the plate, and if you’re going to lose, let it be to a guy like that who gets paid to do those things. That’s why he gets paid all that money.”
That’s the right attitude for a closer, but sometimes it’s easier to talk a good game than to pitch one.
Closers, who get paid for such things, are often heroes or goats, as future Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera discovered in the 2001 Series when his Yankees lost to Arizona in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 on Luis Gonzalez’s broken-bat bloop hit.
For a virtually unproven rookie to hold the fate of a franchise on his shoulders, man, that’s a big load. Is Jenks nervous?
“My nervousness comes early in the game, but once I get going, I forget everything that’s out there,” he said.
But even in the World Series?
“We’ll see,” he said.
Of course, the key to this Series may be that the starters go all nine innings again, remote as it might seem. If not, Jenks will have to take center stage on baseball’s biggest stage. Either he does it or the Sox don’t do it.
“If the starters go out and do that again, it will be unbelievable,” Jenks said. “The chances of that happening again are real slim, but if it does, I’ll have the best seat in the house to watch the whole game.”
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dvandyck@tribune.com
