TIMEOUT CHICAGO

Kid K Returns 

In reclaiming a beloved icon, the Cubs regain leadership and clubhouse presence at a critical time.

Seated before his locker in the clubhouse of Mesa’s Hohokam Park on the eve of the Chicago Cubs’ first spring training game of 2011, reliever Kerry Wood stipulates he has no regrets about his career as a Chicago Cub. 

Wait — Well no, actually, there is one.

Now 33, the hard-throwing right-handed relief pitcher is returning this season to the team he first broke in with — and to the city where he is much beloved — reportedly having refused larger offers from the White Sox and the Yankees in favor of a $1.5 million, 1-year deal on the North Side, where he will serve as set-up man to Cubs closer Carlos Marmol.

Kerry Wood, “Kid K” — The fireballing phenom who transformed from wonder boy, to comeback kid, to reclamation project yet never completely lost his way, (though he confirms he was 30 minutes away from retirement more than once) — still kicks himself that he didn’t fully answer the one guy in Chicago sports whom you simply must answer:

MJ.

“The Bulls had a playoff game later [the] day I struck out 20,” Wood says. “Michael [Jordan] called and personally invited me to come down. I was so [demonstrative deleted] exhausted, I couldn’t do it. I never regretted doing the Jay Leno and the Letterman appearances, but I wish I’d been at that game at his invitation. I didn’t go, and I really wish I had.”

Coming off a strong second-half 2010 performance with the New York Yankees, “Woody” remains blessed with a “live arm” — the strength to deliver a fastball that’s still accelerating right into the catcher’s mitt. With an earned run average below 4 in each of the last four seasons, Wood’s return to the star-crossed franchise that hasn’t won a championship in 103 seasons brings a sense of closure, both for Cub fans and for the 6-foot-5 inch native Texan alike. 

“I didn’t think I’d ever be back as a player,” the pain-free Wood grins, taking a long pull from a post-workout energy drink. “But I always thought I’d be back as part of this organization someday.”

Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, commenting on modern sports’ mercenary environment, once famously observed. “You’re actually rooting for the clothes, when you get right down to it.” 

Friendly Confines

Where this team is headed in 2011 is anybody’s guess. 

Last season Carlos Zambrano imploded. Lou Piniella retired. There are some gaping offensive holes in the lineup this spring, along with questions at the lower end of the pitching rotation, sophomore-year ownership that has trimmed a 2010 fifth-place payroll by some $14 million, and a lesser-known entity at the managerial helm in the person of Mike Quade, The Cubs jettisoned fan favorites Ted Lilly, Derrek Lee and Ryan Theriot, but have since picked up Rays first baseman Carlos Pena and starter Matt Garza. 

And then there’s Woody. 

He’s among the most popular Cubs players of all time. The Cubs’ first-round choice in the 1995 amateur draft spurned cash money in order to be right where be belongs; to again be That Guy, whose mere presence — practicing rundowns or doing a little side tossing in the Arizona winter sunshine — signals to Cubs fans that is all is right in the world. 

“My goals are simple: Get ready for the season and stay healthy,” he says. “You do your job and hand it to the next guy. It’s nice to have [catchers Geovany] Soto and [Koyie] Hill again. It’s great to have the guys in the pen I’ve been down there with before, guys you know will point out little things in your delivery if you get a little funky. They’re throwing right in front of you every day.”

In the mercenary atmosphere of pro sports Kerry Wood is a rare specimen: the returning perennial. “There is a great connection with Kerry and Cubs fans,” says friend and former teammate Jason Bere, who played for both the Cubs and White Sox. “When you think of him as a player and person, you think of the Cubs.”

“I’m happy to have him back. He makes me smile every day,” says Cubs Opening Day starter Ryan Dempster. “It’s great to have your buddies on the team, but he also had as good a second half as anybody last year, and he’s going to help our bullpen tremendously. He’s going to help Marmol, and if Marmol needs a day off, we’ve got another closer sitting there.”

“You watch a guy your whole life and don’t really think of getting the chance to play with him someday,” says right-hander Andrew Cashner, the Cubs’ sophomore sensation who’ll likely get a starting shot because of Wood’s bullpen presence. “He’s been working with me on throwing different pitches and giving me tips. I listen to what he has to say.”

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Half his life ago, the gangly South Grand Prairie High School phenom left behind a suburban Dallas upbringing and a verbal commitment to TCU to sign with the Cubs. 

He spent two happy years in the minors before getting the call to start 1998 with the big club. 

Wood’s first memory of Wrigley?  “I was 17 and had just signed, and I saw the field from the Wrigley press box,” says Wood, who also got a $1.2 million signing bonus. “It was a little overwhelming. Scott Servais asked me for a loan when I went in the clubhouse.” 

Within a month, Woody would flirt with baseball immortality.

Many Chicagoans can cite precisely where they were May 6, 1998. That was the wet spring afternoon Wood delivered — in just his fifth major league start — one of history’s most dominant single pitching performances.

In a 2-0 win, he faced 29 Houston Astros hitters and struck out 20. Twenty strikeouts, no walks, one hit batsman, only two outfield outs all day, and the only base hit was a dubious Ricky Guiterrez single in the third. 

In the parlance of the sport, Wood’s stuff that day was filthy. 122 pitches, 84 strikes: the single greatest game pitched at the ultimate hitter’s park. 

He struck out the first five men he faced and later had stretches in which he sat down five in a row, and seven in a row. For Wood, who still can remember specific pitches and pitch counts from the incendiary outing, what stands out today? 

“How little I knew, and how easy I thought it was. I didn’t really know what I was doing out there and not a care in the world. That’s probably the simplest game I’ve had since I’ve been in the big leagues.”

Stats nerds will testify, it’s the highest “game score” ever recorded. You could start a Chicago tavern brawl debating which is the greater feat: Woody’s 20K game or Sox ace Mark Buerhle’s 2010 perfect game. 

[Trivia junkies, take note: On May 6 of ’98, the Charlotte Hornets held Jordan to just 22, prevailing 78-76 — their only victory in a 4-1 conference semifinal series loss to the eventual champs, who were en route to the MJ Era’s sixth and final title. Still, you can almost hear the deafening reception “Kid K” would have received at the United Center that night.]

Triumph and Turmoil

Woody appeared destined to inherit the mantle of iconic Texas fastballers Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens. But when it comes to the Chicago Cubs, the baseball gods can be downright vengeful. 

Yes, he would become a fixture at 1060 West Addison between 1998 to 2008. But he would also endure multiple surgeries and rehab stints to repair a torn labrum, torn rotator cuff, and torn ulnar collateral ligament (for which he underwent “Tommy John” elbow reconstruction), as well as endure assorted arm, hand, back and knee ailments that would send him to the disabled list a total of 14 times in his career.

For Cubs fans, 1998 stands out in memory. The offseason saw the passing of broadcaster Harry Caray. In a gripping home run race that won national attention and “saved” baseball from the 1994 labor unrest that nearly buried the sport, the Cardinals’ Mark McGwire outslugged by four Cubs right fielder Sammy Sosa’s 66 home runs.

The Cubs held off San Francisco in a one-game NL Wild Card tiebreaker at Wrigley to advance to the Division Series. 

And there was Wood, who went 13-6 in his first season with a 3.40 ERA, striking 233 hitters in 26 starts. Despite missing the final month of the regular season with an ulnar (elbow) ligament sprain, Woody was named ‘98 NL Rookie of the Year.

He made a playoff start, pitching well in the Game Three (and series) loss to the Atlanta Braves’ Greg Maddux.  “That was my personal first highlight. We ended up losing and got swept, but for me it was my first really big game,” Wood says.

The pain in his right elbow worsened. Wood had to “shut it down” for elbow reconstruction for the entire 1999 season. He returned the following May, posting solid power numbers for a 65-win team that finished 30 games back. 

With gaudy strikeout totals and innings pitched, in ‘01 and ’02, Wood hit his stride, staying healthy and building what seemed at the time to be a resume on a Hall of Fame pace. In May 2001, Wood had another one-hitter, against the Brewers. 

A debut All-Star (at US Cellular Field no less), he led the Majors in strikeouts and was commanding vs. Atlanta in the division series in 2003 — the year no Cubs fan will soon forget, for better or worse:  A powerful offense firing on all cylinders, a deep and formidable pitching staff, a glorious stretch run to clinch the division title… 

And then, despair. 

The team fell apart in the National League Championship Series, letting a 3-2 series lead over Florida slip away at Wrigley during the infamous eighth inning of Game Six, the Bartman Game, like it or not, and then squandering a dramatic, game-tying 2-run home run hit by Wood (“My most memorable moment in baseball,” Wood says) and the series, at Wrigley in Game Seven. The Cubs haven’t been quite the same since.

Then began an even crueler streak for Wood of steady injury. As the Cubs ace making his second career Opening Day start in 2004, he tossed only 140 innings (about 2/3 of a season), missing two months with a triceps problem in what would be his last real season of quasi-durability as a starting pitcher. 

With a bum pitching shoulder, Woody was on the shelf for three long months in 2005. It was at this point in his career that he began working out of the Cubs bullpen. His season ended August 30 and the next day he underwent surgery to repair a torn labrum. 

But if ’04 and ’05 were disappointments, early 2006 was perhaps the breaking point. He could no longer find a comfortable pitching position. Worse, velocity had abandoned his fastball. On and off the field, he was in pain. Somehow Wood made it to June before being diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff. And with that, his season – and his career as a starting pitcher – ended. 

Woody did not appear in uniform again until August of 2007, a layoff of 14 months. He says during this time that he was “30 minutes away” on numerous occasions from packing it in — retiring from baseball. 

“Being months and months into rehab and going nowhere, several times I came home and said to [Sarah], ‘I’m done.'”

What brought him back? “The birth of my son, Justin [in 2006]. Wanting him to come to the clubhouse and see and remember what I did. To know what I did.” [The Woods also have two daughters, Katie and Charlotte.]

Comeback Kid

In 2008, Kerry Wood was reborn as the Chicago Cubs closer. In his 14th pro season, he converted 34 of 40 save chances, was named an All Star and avoided major injury (he spent 14 days on the DL with a right index finger blister) for manager Lou Piniella. 

When the curtain came down on a Cubs’ 97-win NL Central title campaign, and a surprising 3-0 NLDS loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers, Wood’s long-running Chicago show concluded.

After signing a two-year, $20.5 million free agent deal with the Indians in December, 2008, Woody took out a full-page ad in the Chicago papers, professing his affection for the city and Cubs fans for their years of support. Headed to a new team and league but still capable of strikeout power, Wood posted 20 saves and avoided the DL. 

Then on the last day of July 2010, the New York Yankees came calling, in a trade deadline deal that shipped him out to the Bronx. As Mariano Rivera’s primary setup man, Wood was brilliant. Including two post-season appearances in New York’s division series loss to Texas, he posted a 1.06 earned run average, with 38 strikeouts in 34 innings worked for the Yankees.

“It was a great experience, a workmanlike experience — a playoff atmosphere the entire time,” he says. “Because of my role, and the many other distractions the Yankees always have around them, for me The Yankees weren’t as overwhelming as everyone always makes them out to be.” 

Homecoming

Flash forward to a hallway at D’Agostino’s restaurant in Wrigleyville last December 16, the day of revered former Cub Ron Santo’s funeral. It was there during a charity event for the Ryan and Jenny Dempster Foundation that Wood and Cubs general manager Jim Hendry engineered the opportunity for Woody to finish his career in a Cubs uniform.

“God bless #10 [Santo], who in his own way had something to do with this,” Cubs general manager Jim Hendry says, referring to the fact that this agreement was first talked about later that same day. “[Because of the Wood conversation] It was a great day for the Chicago Cubs.”

Wood rejoins a potentially formidable back end of a bullpen that also includes lefty setup man Sean Marshall: “He’s one of the guys I looked up to as a rookie — a guy that leads by example, puts in his hard work and at the same time a guy who helps keep you in line.” Marshall says. “He’s always a welcome face in Chicago. I know the people in Chicago love him to death and I know he had a great year last year.”

“Chicago’s home. It’s where I belong. It’s where my family wants to be.” He’s coy about retiring a Cub, but Wood’s contract is laden with performance incentives and if 2011 goes well, he’ll likely earn a multi-year deal for next season. 

Jason Bere asserts that Wood’s return will help solidify a Cubs bullpen that is arguably the team’s strongest unit coming into 2011. “He showed in the second half of last year in New York that he is fully capable of succeeding in the set-up role. Coming back when he could have gotten more money elsewhere, [that] shows you what kind of person he is, how much he values comfort for his family, and his loyalty.”

“When we take the field at 1:20 and the stadium’s filled, and the sun is shining, it’s just baseball,” says Wood. When he takes the hill for the first time at Wrigley again this year, Wood all but guarantees it’ll be all business. What will be going through his mind? 

“Strike one. Don’t go out there and walk the first guy. It’s going to be an exciting day. There will be adrenaline. My wife and family are going to love it.”

Woody never walked away, which has turned out to be great news for everybody. And now Kerry Wood is back on the North Side.

APRIL 2011

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