WHITE SOX SHOULD MAKE SURE BOBBY JENKS IS ALIVE BEFORE ANOTHER FUTILE SEASON
Fighting stomach cancer in Portugal after losing his house in the Pacific Palisades fires, Jenks needs help to pay his medical bills — far more important given his past than a gruesome home opener
Fat and fleshy — or, sumo wrestler and Stay Puft Marshmallow Man — Bobby Jenks entered a game at 275 pounds. Manager Ozzie Guillen stretch-maneuvered both arms, intending to be funny when he was not. On Oct. 26 of 2005, the closer retired the final Astros batter in Houston and celebrated the first White Sox championship in 88 years.
Jerry Reinsdorf cried. Since then, his team has crumbled and turned into a 121-loss debacle that might fail more often this year. There are concerns that few fans will show up at Rate Field for the opener Thursday, with fewer watching on a UHF station based in Hammond, Ind. The marketing boss, Brooks Boyer, hopelessly told a podcast last week: “We can’t control what happens in the Major League Baseball game when grown men have a round ball and a round bat between those lines. … Attendance is beaten up, and the season-ticket base is beaten up.”
So, rather than beg, Reinsdorf should look back to his only golden ownership memory in 45 years and take care of Jenks. He is battling Stage 4 stomach cancer after losing his Pacific Palisades home in the Los Angeles fires. The family needs help with medical bills, he says, and some of it should come straight from Reinsdorf’s pocket. Jenks currently is in Portugal with his wife and two of his six children. The story of his illness was broken last month by MLB.com, with the Tribune and Sun-Times each running immediate stories.
The owner should speak out to the media and address a famous figure in franchise history. Is Reinsdorf helping? Maybe he is, with a White Sox social-media post arriving in February: “We stand with you, Bobby Jenks. Thinking of Bobby as he is being treated for Stage 4 adenocarcinoma, a form of stomach cancer.” Or maybe he isn’t helping.
Who knows? Why must we ask?
Isn’t Jenks a bigger story than any more bungling on the field? On the official website, the Sox have said nothing except running the original story by Scott Merkin. Sox fans are pleading for a public response from Reinsdorf, who is 89 and continues to pursue public money for a new South Loop park that never should be built. How nice if he announced he’s jetting to Europe, where Jenks is involved in a private autograph signing through Tuesday. He wants $60 for cards, $75 for photos and balls and $100 for jerseys. A fan can send items and a proof of payment in the U.S.
“To help Bobby and his family with medical costs, we have arranged an in-person private signing with him. All profits will be given to the Jenks family,” the PastPros memorabilia site posted last Wednesday.
When his home was burning, Jenks was wearing his World Series title ring. In his only interview, he told Merkin from a hospital bed: “I’ve got one suitcase left to my name. It’s all gone. Everything else I’ve ever done. ... All those things are irreplaceable.” His wife’s family lives in Portugal. A move, apparently, was his only option.
“Now it’s time to do what I got to do to get myself better and get myself more time, however you want to look at it,” Jenks said. “I’ll tell you one thing: I’m not going to die here in Portugal. They are not going to put any numbers on it. I wouldn’t even want numbers. You hear stories all the time, ‘Oh, they gave me six months, 25 years ago.’ I don’t buy into that. Whatever happens is going to happen regardless.”
Jerry?
“For f—s sake can somebody pay Bobby Jenks’ medical bills so he doesn’t have to spend some of his final days worrying about signing autographs?” wrote a fan, Bryan Fyalkowski, whose comments were posted on Outkick.com.
Jenks is burying himself for the junk he craved at 275 pounds — referring to drugs and alcohol. “You know, the s–t I was doing in my 20s and early 30s, no normal person would have survived. So, in one way, I’m grateful to be alive. In another way, I’m not surprised this happened,” he said. “It goes to show you have to take care of yourself from top to bottom with nutrition and exercise and having a good daily plan.”
He managed to retire 41 consecutive batters in 2007, finishing his Sox career with 173 saves. En route to the Boston Red Sox, Jenks trashed Guillen. “Looking forward to playing for a manager who knows how to run a bullpen,” he said. “A lot of the stuff with Ozzie and the front office gets old. It has been a problem for a long time.”
The manager’s son, Oney, bombarded Jenks and called him a “yellow beard-dripping idiot” online. “Hahah memo to bobby jenks get a clue u drink to (sic) much and u have had marital problems hugeee (sic) ones and the sox stood behind u,” Oney wrote in one tweet, before calling Jenks “a punk” and writing, “And you say the manager didn't trust you? He kept putting your fat ass there and you kept blowing it, he never took you away from that role! Unreal!”
Responded Ozzie at the time: “If Oney said everything he knows about Bobby Jenks, it wouldn’t be a pretty thing. I respect his wife. I respect his kids. I’m not even mad. I wish I was mad about it because I will rip his throat (out). That’s sad because it’s coming from him. That surprises me. Everybody in this organization did a lot of great things for him. Did he pitch good for us? Yes, very, very good. But in the meanwhile, just worry about setting up some games over there. Just worry about Boston, don’t worry about the White Sox. He did a lot of bad things last year. We lied for him, we protected him. I’m the first manager in the history of baseball to give a guy a week off to take care of his kids when his father-in-law was sick. It wasn’t even his wife, it wasn’t a (family) member. But it was out of respect I have for his family. I sent him home because he had to babysit his kids because his father-in-law was sick.
“I don’t think any manager is doing that. But coming from him, I expect that. We don’t miss him. You ask 30 guys in there. By the way, I was asking for his phone number to talk him to about it, and nobody had his phone number. None of his (former) teammates had his phone number. That you can tell what happened. ... Just be careful of what you say about Oney because Oney will say stuff he’s not supposed to be saying. That’s just a warning for him just in case somebody don’t call him. Just stay away and don’t name Oney for this because it will be pretty ugly.”
Have we heard anything from Ozzie or Oney Guillen about Jenks’ illness?
But we have heard from Brooks Boyer. Games of the Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks are not appearing on Comcast, a company occupying more than one million TV subscribers in the Chicago area. Guess who has Comcast? Brooks! “Because I'm a Comcast subscriber, I have one antenna in my house,” he said. “You can't pause live TV and miss those types of things, but if people want the games, there's a way to get them.”
Thursday, the Sox will distribute plush blankets to the first 20,000 fans. It’s possible they’ll have many blankets remaining for future giveaways. More importantly, they should make sure Bobby Jenks survives.
If not for him, Reinsdorf would have zero World Series rings.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.