In theory, we were supposed to have no interference with enjoying Clayton Kershaw's milestone strikeout. Watching the future Hall of Famer wrestle his way to ending the sixth by striking the White Sox's Vinny Capra out last Wednesday night should have been the biggest breath of the week.
It would have been no less than Kershaw's due. No baseball eyes should have been trained anywhere else, when Kershaw threw his most corner-freezing slider in on Capra and became only the third man in Show history to punch 3,000 out while playing for one club. The difference between Kershaw and Hall of Famers Walter Johnson and Bob Gibson is that, unlike them, he could have left Los Angeles any old time he chose once he became free agency eligible and his subsequent contracts expired without extensions.
The irrepressible Sarah Langs unearthed not just that Kershaw's the 20th member of the 3,000 punchout club and the first entrant since Max Scherzer in 2001, not to mention the fourth left-hander to join up. (The other three; Hall of Famers Steve Carlton, Randy Johnson, and CC Sabathia.)
She also exhumed that all three of Kershaw's strikeout victims last Wednesday were first-timers on his K parade . . . and, that the Elias Sports Bureau noted he's the fourth to reach 3,000 punchouts against a team managed by someone (Will Venable) he struck out during the man's playing days. (The others: Hall of Famer Bob Gibson against Sparky Anderson's Reds, 1974; Hall of Famer Phil Niekro against Doug Rader's Rangers, 1984; and, future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander against Brad Ausmus's Angels, 2019.)
We should have been left to all that plus Kershaw's family leading the way in celebrating. Left to Ellen Kershaw's message for her triumphant husband, "I remember your very first strikeout, and we were freaking out, screaming in our same section like always." Left to Mrs. Kershaw reminding him the deeper impact of his strikeouts, since he kicks money in for every strikeout to the Kershaw's Challenge group the couple created to help at-risk children in Los Angeles, his native Texas, plus Zambia and the Dominican Republic. Left to daughter Cali Ann, the oldest of their four, reminding Pop and the world, "You've been throwing strikeouts since before I was born."
One possible gambling pitcher and one insidious disease killing another pitcher had other ideas.
Clayton Kershaw persevering through his own health issues to get to this milestone makes sense. Guardians pitcher Luis Ortiz going on administrative leave, while baseball's government probes into whether a pair of funky-looking pitches in games on June 15 and 27 were subject to unusually heavy betting action on the pitch result, doesn't.
One June 15 pitch dove way outside and to the dirt, causing a walk to the Mariners' Randy Arozarena and opening the way to a five-run Seattle inning. One June 27 pitch to the Cardinals' Pedro Pagés hit the dirt in the opposite batter's box, after which Pagés smashed a third inning-opening homer that led to a 3-run Cardinal inning — on a day Cardinals right-hander Sonny Gray pitched a one-hitter. Unless someone unearths that somebody got to Ortiz to talk him into throwing a pair of funky pitches for the sake of the betting action, this looks even funkier than the one that ran away from Pagés.
What makes even less sense than that, though, is the stage 4 adenocarcinoma that killed one-time White Sox World Series-winning reliever Bobby Jenks at age 44. Hadn't Jenks already been to hell and back? Hadn't he lost his career to a botched back surgery that ended up netting him a $5.1 million settlement? Hadn't that plus subsequent DUIs thanks to booze and painkillers, subsequent intervention, a divorce, and formal rehab been more than enough?
Seemingly not. The good news for Jenks was meeting his second wife, Eleni, while in rehab. Then came the worse news: while managing in the White Sox system, Jenks lost his home in the Palisades wildfire in January, making his offseason moves to Portugal to be near his wife's family permanent. Then the announcement that he'd been diagnosed with the stomach cancer, and — since all his baseball memorabilia was lost in the wildfire — signing and selling as many baseballs as he could to pay for his treatments.
"Those close to him," wrote The Athletic's Sam Blum in April, "waffle between the hope that this strong, tough man will make it through, and the reality of a terminal diagnosis. 'I guarantee you, everybody thinks about death on a daily basis,' Jenks said. "'It's just that people don't usually have an actual day on theirs'."
One of his baseball friends was ill-fated big contract pitcher Darren Dreifort, whose career was slaughtered by so many injuries he's said to have undergone 22 surgeries during and after his pitching career. Dreifort's wife, Krystal, set up a GoFundMe for Jenks. It raised $27,022 as of this writing, which we can guess will now go to help Jenks's widow and children.
Jenks actually told his doctors not to make any treatment plans for him for this month's first full week. He had every intention of being there when the White Sox celebrated the 20th anniversary of their World Series conquest, sweeping a very different collection of Houston Astros in the 2005 Series. Jenks's 2.21 fielding-independent pitching rate finishing all four White Sox wins had a lot to do with those wins.
"Whether you like it or not," Jenks was quoted as telling them, "I'm going."
When he turned 44 in March, Jenks asked for one gift — a tent, Blum said, representing his desire to take his family across Europe stopping only to camp. Perhaps when the World Series team anniversary celebration arrives, the White Sox could pitch that tent in the Guaranteed Rate Field bullpen in Jenks's memory.
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