24 YEAR OLD BOBBY JENKS FINISHES A GAME FOR THE WHITE SOX THAT FEATURED HOUSTON STARTER 43 YEAR OLD ROGER CLEMENS

It’s pretty hard to refer to White Sox closer Bobby Jenks as a “kid.” After all, the man is 24 years old and been making a living throwing his 100 MPH fastball for more than 5 years. On the other hand, one look at the roundly cherubic face and the 270 pound body with what appears to be some adolescent “baby fat” on it and one could be excused the exaggeration.

But perhaps because the game of baseball contains more than its fair share of fabulists and myth makers, the appellation “The Kid” evokes a powerful subtext to any story. “Youth will be served” in both sport and life. And nowhere was this theme explored any better than in the short story by Jack London entitled A Piece of Steak.

Published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1909, the story is about an aging boxer who wakes up on the day of what he knows will be his last fight hankering for a piece of steak. But there is no money for meat. The promoter has advanced him the loser’s purse just so he could pay the rent and what was left over was barely enough to purchase some bread and flour to make a weak, unsatisfying gravy.

As he readies himself for the fight, the boxer reminisces about his youth and how he used to eat steak three times a day when he was a winning fighter. Back then, people gladly bought him steaks just so they could sit with him and bask in his celebrity. But no more. Now aging and tired, he realizes that in order to win and receive the balance of the money from the winners purse that will see him through until he can get a job, he must use all of his wiles, all of his wisdom and knowledge to defeat his opponent.

For his opponent is a young, up and coming fighter, a mirror image of who and what he was many years ago. In fact, his foe is youth itself for, as London brilliantly shows time and time again, “youth will be served.” And the aging fighter wonders if he can defeat not only his opponent, but life itself which has played such a horrible trick on him by making him grow old.

The youth has power and grace and an endurance that the old boxer realizes he doesn’t possess. Therefore, his strategy will be to conserve his strength, hoping that the young fighter will make a mistake and give him an opening. He will then unleash his remaining strength in a hail of blows that will knock out the youngster and give him the winner’s purse he so desperately needs.

The fight unfolds as a one sided affair with the youth predictably beating up on the older boxer. But the aging fighter knows how to deflect the young man’s blows just enough so that their power is reduced. He also has the guile and experience to slip away from blows that would have hammered him into the canvas. And then, with the young boxer way ahead on points, his overconfidence gets the better of him and he momentarily drops his guard.

This is what the aging fighter had been waiting for and he immediately tries to take advantage. He hurts the youth with several well aimed shots to the head and then begins to pound away at the body. He can feel victory in his grasp as the youth starts to sag. He can see that the young man is ready to drop. All he needs to do to knock the youngster out is deliver the final, coup de grace to the jaw.

As he rears back and readies himself to deliver the final blow, the aging boxer realizes to his horror that the strength just isn’t there. The blow lands but doesn’t have the power behind it to bring the young man down. Sadly, the old fighter believes that if only he had a piece of steak, the blow he delivered would have been powerful enough to bring him victory. As the young man holds on to the ancient boxer in the clinch, he can feel the strength returning to the younger man while his own diminishes.

And thus, is youth served in the end as the youngster knocks out the now tired and defeated older man.

London’s fable, one of the best short stories ever written, reveals the universal truth that the young lion will eventually defeat the old lion as the torch of life is passed to another generation. And while it is impossible to diminish the career of last night’s starter for Houston Roger Clemens, watching the 43 year old fireballer limp off the mound in the second inning last night immediately brought to mind London’s tale of bitterness and life’s betrayal of all of us as our physical abilities diminish just at the time that our experience and knowledge would allow us to dominate our world in a way that was impossible in our youth.

And stepping into the spotlight last night was that raw power of youth represented by Bobby Jenks. Now it is his fastball not Clemens’ that blows away hitters like the autumn leaves swirling around outside of US Cellular Field. It is the youngster that, with seeming ease, plowed through the last 4 batters for Houston by striking out three of them, hurling his Thor-like thunderbolts with terrifying speed and accuracy.

Jenks has what Clemens had twenty years ago; a fastball so overpowering and intimidating that hitters never were able to get comfortable in the batters box. The batter’s self-preservation instincts were on full when facing Clemens back then. Now, although still an outstanding pitcher who led the Major League starting pitchers in Earned Run Average (1.87 runs per nine innings), Clemens is much more apt to use his knowledge of hitters and his resourcefulness to get batters out.

No, there is no parallel between Roger Clemens and the aging boxer except in the fact that both are now old by athletic standards and that the skills and abilities they possessed as youths have been replaced by experience and guile. Clemens, like his fellow Texan Nolan Ryan, will always be remembered for both a stratospheric ability to throw a baseball and a longevity that defied the gods that allowed both to pitch well into their 40’s. Nothing Clemens does in this World Series will dim the luster off of a career full of record shattering accomplishment and marvelous athletic feats. But his fastball – once the scourge of the baseball world – is no longer the powerful weapon that allowed him to dominate batters in a way seen perhaps once in a generation.

And Bobby Jenks? Here’s how I described the “kid” from Spirit Lake, Idaho a couple of weeks ago:

He can throw a baseball more than 100 miles per hour. At that speed, the ball screams toward the hitter appearing to be a tiny, jet propelled pellet of white-hot molten plasma, a blur to the eye of even the best of Major League hitters and forcing them to begin their swing almost before the pitch leaves his hand. And his 12 to 6 curve ball thrown almost 20 miles per hour slower has made more than one Major League hitter look like a busher with cataracts.

But what Bobby Jenks has that makes him a potential star closer for the White Sox during the upcoming post season is the heart of a lion and the soul of a serial killer – two attributes that a successful baseball fireman must have in order to succeed when the game is on the line and the pressure so intense that equally gifted pitchers have buckled and broken.

Jenks showed last night that he indeed has “the heart of a lion.” And it is just possible to imagine that by the end of Game 1 of the World Series, the young lion established himself as leader of the pride while the old, tired male limped off into history realizing that yes, youth will always be served when it comes to athletic endeavors.

UPDATE

Although Crank picks the Chisox is 7 games, he has some rather interesting comments about the luck of the Sox in not having to face healthy #1 starters in both the Angels series (Colon) and now against the Astros (Clemens).

Nice try but doesn’t that statement ignore the White Sox starters? Is Crank saying that any of the games would have turned out differently? Is he saying that either a healthy Colon or Clemens would have shut out the White Sox?

This is the problem with playing “what if” games in baseball. It wouldn’t have mattered who pitched last night for the Astros unless they had scored more runs than the White Sox. In other words, unless you’re willing to say that the Sox would have scored 3 or fewer runs, the notion that a healthy Clemens would have beaten them is a fallacy. This is true especially because of the Astros bullpen which was horrid last night.

Ain’t baseball great?