Jenkins: All He Did Was Win

Some of my friends enjoy reminiscing about how much they enjoyed watching Koufax. Sandy, they say, now there was a pitcher . Or Whitey Ford, what a dandy little southpaw . Or Bob Gibson, what a competitor .

Older friends tell me about Spahn and Sain and praying for rain . . . or how they once saw the one-of-a-kind Satchel Paige . . . or what a wacko Dizzy Dean was . . . or about Carl Hubbell striking out that cavalcade of All-Stars.

A couple of people in my office are so old, I tease them about having watched Ed Walsh pitch for the 1906 Hitless Wonders or ask them what sort of interviews Walter Johnson gave. These guys knew Doubleday before he was a book company.

Well, if I may, I would like to wax nostalgic for a few minutes about a baseball pitcher who meant something to me.

He’s not too old. He doesn’t date too far back.

He wasn’t too fast. Compared to Nolan Ryan or Roger Clemens, he threw like a shotputter.

He wasn’t a champion. He never made a name for himself in a World Series the way Don Larsen did.

He is very much alive and was recently in the news.

And I never got a chance the other day to mention just how thoroughly, deeply and genuinely pleased I was that Mr. Ferguson A. Jenkins was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Let me tell you a few things about Fergie Jenkins.

First, as any baseball encyclopedia can confirm, the man won 20 or more games, six seasons in a row. This is impressive enough, but the fact that the man did this for the 1967-72 Chicago Cubs still makes him, to me, about one miracle short of being a faith healer.

I used to watch Jenkins pitch and be amazed, just the way somebody else watched Koufax break off those boomerang curveballs, or Gibson buzz one beneath somebody’s jaw or Juan Marichal do that Radio City Music Hall leg-kick of his.

Did Jenkins amaze me because of his velocity? Hardly. His fastball couldn’t have torn a hole through a backstop of Kleenex.

No, the thing about Ferguson Jenkins was that as you sat there and watched him, you said: “Hell, even I could hit that .” I mean, all the man did was throw the baseball over the plate. Strike, strike, strike, strike, strike. . . .

He was the most monotonous pitcher I’ve ever seen, and I can think of no greater compliment. Outside corner, inside corner, outside corner, inside corner. Paint it, paint it, paint it, paint it black. That’s all he ever did.

I have never seen anyone with Ferguson Jenkins’ control. They say Dennis Eckersley rarely walks anybody, and I’m sure that accounts for much of his success. But Eck also has been known to throw steam heat. Fergie threw like an accountant at a company picnic.

And he threw that way at Wrigley Field, where Eddie Gaedel would have averaged a dozen homers a season. It looked like batting practice. Jenkins reared back--no, I’m not sure he even reared--aimed and fired. Well, threw.

And you waited for Willie Stargell or Willie McCovey or Willie somebody to send the baseball banging off the skull of some guy barbecuing burgers on a nearby apartment building’s roof.

But they wouldn’t. And Jenkins would endure. He went 20-13, 20-15, 21-15, 22-16, 24-13, 20-12, in sequence. He lasted 19 years. He won 18 games for the Texas Rangers, who weren’t much better than the Cubs. He won 14 games when he was 39 years old.

One year, Jenkins struck out 263 and walked 37. To get on base against Ferguson Jenkins, you had to swing. He must have been murder in one of those carnival booths with the milk bottles. Jenkins meant something to me. He wasn’t superhuman or extra-large or multitalented. He got by on intelligence and instinct and durability, qualities that players with greater physical gifts sometimes fail to develop.

When I first heard that Fergie Jenkins had been elected into the Hall of Fame, I rejoiced. On the first ballot ever sent me, I checked the names of three players--Joe Morgan, Jim Palmer and Jenkins. Two of them made it.

I wondered why Fergie was rejected. His numbers were strikingly similar to Palmer’s. In fact, in the same number of seasons, Jenkins won 16 more games than Palmer.

The drug bust had to be the reason. After his retirement, Jenkins was booked on a cocaine rap. The charges were later crossed off the books, but the damage was done. It delayed Fergie’s fame, the same way Gaylord Perry’s true confessions about spitballs delayed his.

I never knew how much making the Hall of Fame meant to Jenkins, but when I recently read about how, as his election was being announced earlier this year, Fergie’s 29-year-old wife lay dying in an Oklahoma hospital with car-crash injuries and further complications from pneumonia, it pleased me that at least this one thing would not be taken from him as well.

Nice going, Fergie. Now it’s been confirmed what I already knew. That as baseball pitchers go, you were one of the ones who was unforgettable.