Jenks' New Start
October 13, 2005
David Haugh
Chicago Tribune
When relief pitcher Bobby Jenks gets up to throw in the White Sox's bullpen, the temperature rises at U.S. Cellular Field.
When Jenks enters games in the ninth inning, the volume also tends to spike, with fans chanting his name and rock music blaring through the speakers.
When he speaks in front of his locker after a typical inning of work, reporters step on each other's toes trying to listen to his soft voice.
If any of the buzz affects Jenks, the Sox's 6-foot-4-inch, 270-pound closer who could pass for a bouncer, he conceals it as well as the pinch of tobacco between his cheek and gum.
Not even playing the American League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Angels, who waived him in December 2004, produced much more than a funny grin from Jenks.
The biggest hint Jenks has dropped about the satisfaction he feels in the Angels observing his rock-star treatment up close? That would be when he said, emotionless, about his buddies in the visiting clubhouse, "Once the game starts, they are my enemies."
Beyond that, Jenks' tale involves realization more than revenge, a story of how he realized that success often follows failure and from adversity often comes instruction.
"I knew in my heart that once I got the opportunity, I wasn't going to let it pass by," Jenks said the other day.
A player suddenly measured by how well he saves baseball games had his life defined by a save of a different sort—the day six years ago when Mark Potoshnik rescued Jenks, a high school dropout, from oblivion in Spirit Lake, Idaho.
Jenks could fish all day as a teenager if he wanted, so he usually did. He had stopped going to school and started heading to his favorite fishing hole near the log cabin in which his family lived. Major League Baseball was something on television but not remotely in Jenks' plans.
"His parents were not really in the picture, and while I would not call it abusive, it was, 'Do whatever you want to do, Bobby,"' said Potoshnik, who runs the Northwest Baseball Academy outside Seattle.
Potoshnik had called a buddy that summer looking for a live arm for the Seattle Bombers in the summer league he coached. The coach lived six hours away but offered Jenks a place to stay after seeing the way Jenks lived and the way he threw.
"I was looking for a hidden jewel," Potoshnik, 39, recalled Wednesday by phone. "And I found one."
A new start
Jenks moved into Potoshnik's home and became such a big part of the family that Potoshnik giggled when he recalled the man-child watching cartoons and coloring with his young daughter. Jenks enrolled at Inglemoor High School but never pitched because he was academically ineligible, so Potoshnik set up a session for major-league scouts at his academy.
Representatives from all 30 teams, having heard rumors of the summer-leaguer who threw in the mid-90s, showed up for a look.
"Bobby was out of shape but was hitting 92 or 93 m.p.h. like he was playing catch," said Potoshnik, a roommate of former major-leaguer and Lockport native Ron Coomer at Taft Junior College.
"There was never a question about his ability. Teams just had to decide with the issues about his maturity and upbringing if they really wanted to sink a lot of money into the kid."
The Angels were enamored of Jenks enough to pick him in the fifth round of the 2000 draft and give him a $175,000 bonus.
On the day the June 9, 2003, edition of ESPN the Magazine story hit the newsstands, Jenks was on the mound in Wichita for the Arkansas Travelers' Double-A team out of Little Rock. Between innings, he wiped away tears.
"It touched me that he still wanted to pitch that night," said Ty Boykin, the former Travelers manager who is now a Class A manager at Rancho Cucamonga (Calif.) in the Angels' minor-league system. "That story made Bobby very distraught."
It portrayed Jenks as an unrefined guy from Idaho's backwoods and a binge drinker who once got so drunk he used a lighter to burn his skin for fun. Using mostly information supplied by an agent, Matt Soshnick, with whom Jenks had parted company, the article also included an allegation that Jenks often referred to the agent by an anti-Semitic nickname. Jenks will deny that charge until his last pitch.
The truest part of the story recounted an incident in which Jenks, who acknowledges making poor decisions like many 21-year-olds, argued with former manager Doug Sisson when Sisson forbade him from bringing beer on the team bus.
That tiff earned Jenks a demotion to Class A, but Boykin believes it might have been the best bad news the pitcher ever received.
A lesson learned
Boykin, 37, was Jenks' manager at Class A Cedar Rapids and again later at Double-A Little Rock. At Cedar Rapids, aware of Jenks' reputation, Boykin would call his pitcher at night to make sure he was behaving. A friendship and trust developed eventually developed, and the two would talk for hours before and after games about much more than what to throw on 2-2.
"You have to understand the way Bobby was brought up, he was not used to having people tell him what to do," Boykin said by phone from his home in Hamden, Conn. "He always wanted advice. He was an immature kid who threw hard. But by the time I got him, he was starting to change."
Jenks married a young woman from Seattle named Adele. They had two young children, daughter Cuma, now 3, and Nolan, now 2. Stability had begun to seem as within reach as a spot on the Angels' roster.
"He definitely has matured," said Angels reliever Scot Shields, a friend of Jenks' in the minors. "I think having kids helped out with that maturation. It's good to see. You knew deep down he was a good kid and just needed to grow up a little bit."
A catcher never forgets the sound a 100 m.p.h. fastball makes popping into the glove, so naturally Angels catcher Bengie Molina remembers Jenks. During spring training in '04 with the Angels, Jenks delivered the heat that had brought him renown in the organization.
There was the night Jenks' fastball registered 100 during a minor-league game in Arkansas. Legend has it he hit 103 in Puerto Rico during a winter-league game.
Molina never doubted it.
"He was a little wild, but he could bring it," Molina said. "He's a different pitcher now."
Now Jenks has begun to fulfill the promise the Angels envisioned when they saw him that day in Seattle. If it bothers the Angels brass that Jenks is blossoming in the season after they released him to make room on the 40-man roster for Cuban infielder Kendry Morales, they have hid it well.
"I haven't focused on it," general manager Bill Stoneman said. "He has gotten the opportunity, and he is making the most of it. He had some maturity issues during his time with us, but so do a lot of guys."
Physical problems
The issue that ultimately led to the Angels letting Jenks go involved a physical reason as much as mental. In July 2004, he suffered a stress fracture in his upper right arm and split the tendon under his triceps. Surgeons inserted a screw that remains, making him damaged goods in the eyes of the Angels.
When a report surfaced about a blowup with a teammate during his rehab stint, the Angels ordered Jenks home and eventually sent him walking.
Their loss was the Sox's gain. For only $20,000, GM Ken Williams signed a guy who has been a model citizen all season and a South Side cult hero of late.
Asked if he felt like thanking the Angels for their gift of a closer, Ozzie Guillen smiled.
"Good thing they did," he said. "I think this kid—you know, he wasn't the Bobby Jenks [with the Angels] we have right now. I think when you put somebody on waivers, you're not protecting somebody. You don't sign somebody back, you have a reason. I don't know the reason why they did it."
These days, Jenks is enjoying himself too much to dwell on those reasons. Beneath the stoicism is a boy having a ball.
Before he saved the Sox's series-clinching game Friday in Boston, Jenks called Potoshnik in Seattle as the team bus rolled into Fenway Park.
"We're just getting to the yard, and this is pretty cool," Jenks told his old friend.
Potoshnik felt proud hearing such joy in Jenks' voice after listening to him spill so many other emotions over the years.
"We have talked a lot about how are you going to live your life and what do you want to stand for," Potoshnik said. "He's not stupid, but he's not real complex either. He's pretty much, this is what I am. Given where Bobby came from, he's going to have a lot more learning to do. But without a doubt, he has come a long way."
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