Connect with us

Published

on

Sidney Crosby still remembers walking through the tunnel at Ralph Wilson Stadium over 15 years ago, experiencing what Buffalo Bills players experienced every home game.

He still remembers the snow floating down on the temporary rink constructed on the field, where the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Buffalo Sabres on New Year’s Day. Still remembers the shirtless fans packing the stands, braving below-freezing temperatures. Still remembers the nervous energy and pioneering spirit that permeated throughout the first Winter Classic of the NHL.

“It was like this perfect mix between hockey being pure outside, combined with your dream of playing in the NHL,” Crosby told ESPN. “It was just so incredible. We’ve played in other ones, but nothing matches that feel coming out of Buffalo.”

The visionaries that pulled off that 2008 event helped make outdoor games a commonplace part of the NHL. The next Winter Classic is scheduled for Jan. 1, 2024, as the Seattle Kraken host the Vegas Golden Knights at T-Mobile Park. It will be the 15th Winter Classic and 39th regular-season outdoor game. There have been Heritage Classics in Canada, the Stadium Series across the U.S. and even a couple of games next to Lake Tahoe.

“I think the success of the Winter Classic was why the Stadium Series was established,” said Steve Mayer, the NHL’s senior executive vice president and chief content officer. “Go back to that time: The Winter Classic was on fire. Everyone was talking about it. There was an interest to do more.”

But what would have happened if the 2008 Winter Classic wasn’t a success? What would have happened if the game never happened at all?

“There were a lot of moments where, on the inside, you were holding your breath,” said former NHL COO John Collins, who worked for the league from 2006-15.


THE FIRST REGULAR-SEASON NHL outdoor game was the Heritage Classic hosted by the Edmonton Oilers at Commonwealth Stadium on Nov. 22, 2003.

It wasn’t without its logistical and operational issues, like the minus-2 degrees Fahrenheit game-time temperature that helped make the ice choppy and brittle. But the nostalgic high of seeing Oilers and Montreal Canadiens legends co-mingling, and NHL players recreating childhood pond hockey, overshadowed all of it. The Edmonton Journal said the event belonged in the same Canadian sports pantheon as the 1972 Summit Series between Russia and Canada.

The Heritage Classic offered some proof of concept about NHL outdoor games, to the tune of 57,167 frozen fans who turned out for the event.

“Hockey started in Canada. Playing outdoors was commonplace,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told NHL.com. “We could see the Heritage Classic as a common, unifying, bonding experience. We figured the colder the conditions, the stronger the bond.”

About a year after the Heritage Classic, NBC Sports executive vice president Jon Miller was watching the American League Championship Series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees when inspiration hit him.

NBC had signed a multiyear deal with the NHL earlier that year. The Heritage Classic showed outdoor hockey in the regular season could work. Why not piggyback on baseball’s best rivalry and have the Boston Bruins face the New York Rangers outdoors at Yankee Stadium?

Better yet: Why not have that spectacle scheduled for New Year’s Day?

While college football filled the schedules of competing networks on Jan. 1, NBC was counterprogramming with things like figure skating. By 2006, the network wasn’t scheduled to have any bowl games on Jan. 1 at all.

Sports fans were already watching television en masse on New Year’s Day. An outdoor hockey game, with two Original Six teams inside an historic venue, was bound to capture the attention of channel flippers.

Miller started figuring out if this was a solid idea or a pile of speculative slush. He asked Sam Flood, executive producer for NBC Sports, if this was “a realistic thing to do.” Flood gave him a vote of confidence, telling him that outdoor hockey “was the ultimate way to play the game.”

Miller brought the idea to NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol, who encouraged him to pitch it to Bettman.

Collins said concerns about a viable economic model had put future outdoor games on the back burner for the NHL Board of Governors, who met Miller’s idea with a lukewarm response.

“We needed to put an economic model around it, which allowed us to make the investment and create the event that we were trying to create,” he said.

It was a tricky time to talk economic models for risky events: The NHL was in the midst of a work stoppage that lasted over 10 months and caused the cancellation of the 2004-05 season.

After the league and the players had agreed on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, Miller reengaged on the idea of a New Year’s Day outdoor game. By that time in 2006, Collins had joined the NHL from the NFL, and Miller found himself with an influential ally inside the league to change some minds. Collins and Miller reengaged with Bettman, who was an early supporter of the concept.

But to make the Winter Classic a reality, Collins also had to get his own house in order: The NHL didn’t have the kind of special events department needed to put on such an event.

“We had a lot of guys who know how to put on a hockey game. We needed guys who know how to put on a Super Bowl,” Collins said. “And that was kind of the group that we brought in.”

Once momentum started to build internally for the game, there were some important questions that needed answering.

Where was the game going to be held? Who would compete in it?

The Bruins were initially enthusiastic about playing a game at Yankee Stadium. The Rangers were less amped for it, thanks in part to Madison Square Garden’s complex lease agreement with New York. MSG has a property-tax exemption worth more than $40 million a year that would be violated if either the Rangers or the Knicks play any home games in New York City outside of their home arena. The Rangers would have been the road team against Boston in Yankee Stadium.

(The Rangers would eventually play as the road team in Yankee Stadium twice in 2014 and again at Citi Field in 2018.)

The venue proved to be the biggest obstacle. Yankee Stadium officials told NBC and the NHL they had no desire to reopen their building on Jan. 1 — and do the necessary prep work on a stadium that would be vacated in 2008.

Yankee Stadium was out, and soon after, so were the Bruins and Rangers … and almost every other team the organizers asked.

“NBC had a long wish list of teams that could host and then matchups and we just kept going down the list,” said Collins. “And it was ‘no, no, no, no, no, no.'”

Finally, the NHL got a “yes.” It was from Larry Quinn, the former managing partner of the Buffalo Sabres. “Larry was very forward thinking about a lot of things, as a business guy as well as a hockey guy. And so he raised his hand and said, ‘We’ll host,'” recalled Collins.

Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of the Buffalo Bills, seemed like the obvious site for the game. Collins used his NFL connections to secure it. But again, there were hurdles. Once Ralph Wilson Stadium was the venue, the NHL and NFL had to figure out logistics around the Bills potentially making the NFL playoffs.

“We had to come up with a plan where we could be ready with brand new field turf for the playoffs that would have started a week later,” Collins said. “The Bills weren’t expected to be in the playoffs, so it was a little easier.”

Luckily for the NHL — although not so much for Buffalo football fans — the Bills met those expectations and finished 7-9, outside of the AFC postseason. Still, the NHL was only able to start its build after Dec. 23, which was the final NFL game of the season at the stadium. That gave them half the time they had before the 2003 Heritage Classic to build the rink.

Now it was time to find an opponent for the Sabres, which proved even more difficult than finding a host for the game.

The NHL asked divisional and geographic rivals of the Sabres and received rejections each time. Finally, Collins heard back from David Morehouse, who had joined the Pittsburgh Penguins as CEO in 2007.

“He was also a pretty forward-thinking guy,” Collins said. “He said they could get their heads around that game. And obviously they had Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and were kind of an up-and-coming brand team. Suddenly, we had a matchup.”

Collins said there were other significant questions the organizers had to answer about putting on an outdoor game.

“Could we get a sponsor? Could we sell 80,000 tickets? And then there were operational concerns,” he said. “If the weather’s bad, what’s an official game? Is it like baseball? How many periods do we have to play? Two periods? We don’t have those rules. What if the wind is really bad? How do we adjust?”

Collins said that a working group that included himself, Bettman, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly, NHL senior vice president of hockey operations Colin Campbell and others began working though those various questions. The Buffalo Bills, meanwhile, were soothing concerns about the weather, ensuring the NHL that they had the staffing and the preparations to handle massive snowfall inside the stadium and its parking lots if necessary.

Through all the stops and starts, the obstacles and hurdles, the Winter Classic was about to become a reality.


THROUGH THE YEARS, the NHL has staged a New Year’s Eve celebration for Winter Classic staffers and VIPs that would feature the game’s intermission entertainers in concert — everyone from Billy Idol to the Goo Goo Dolls.

Collins remembers a much different scene on the eve of the inaugural game.

“I think Bill Daly and I shared New Year’s Eve together in the Adam’s Mark Hotel lobby, eating cold buffalo wings and drinking stale beer,” he said with a laugh.

The next morning, Collins was driving to Ralph Wilson Stadium when he saw the last thing that he wanted to see that day: rain drops.

Even the NHL’s best efforts can’t make ice playable through rainfall. In fact, one of the selling points for Seattle Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke in landing the Winter Classic was T-Mobile Park’s retractable roof, which can be partially closed to totally cover the rink in case of rain but keep that open-air feeling for the game.

Ralph Wilson Stadium offered no such protection.

“I remember driving in and I’m going, ‘Oh s—,'” said Collins. “But it didn’t rain. It snowed.”

The snow provided incredible aesthetics but considerable problems for players, both in visibility and in trying to pass the puck. The ice itself needed constant work. One area near the Sabres bench received attention a dozen times. Zambonis scraped the ice between periods and midway through the periods, creating delays in the game but making the conditions safer.

Collins credits Dan Craig, the NHL’s recently retired vice president of facilities operations, with doing what he could to make the game playable.

“Dan Craig kept the ice in … I don’t want to say ‘NHL quality shape,’ because it wasn’t. That first [game] was a little sketchy,” Collins said. “He ultimately made us invest in the technology to make sure that the ice is what it is today. He had to run out every period and patch the ice and stuff, which clearly kept the game going and no one got hurt.”

The ice wasn’t great. The fans were. Ralph Wilson Stadium wasn’t “The House That Ruth Built,” but any concerns about the atmosphere for the game were quickly eased when the organizers saw the crowd.

“That fan base treated it like it was any other big event. Like an AFC Championship Game,” he said. “It was like the same crowd. They were tailgating and had their shirts off and painted chests. It was amazing.”

The vibe was so compelling that it drew Bettman into the crowd, despite temperatures in the 20s and light snowfall. Collins recalls the commissioner saying that he didn’t want to be in the NHL suite for the first period, but wanted to sit with the fans to watch Winter Classic hockey.

“I give a lot of credit to Gary for having the guts to see the vision and support the vision, because I’m sure there was complaining from other parts of the [NHL],” Collins said. “There probably were some doubts that this was ultimately something that would turn out to be 37 sold out games. Not just a gimmick.”

There were those who thought it would be a gimmick, who were skeptical about the Winter Classic’s viability.

One of them was Sidney Crosby. “I mean, I didn’t see it playing out that way. I thought it might be just like a one-time deal,” he said.

But through the years, as a participant and a fan, Crosby knew the Winter Classic was here to stay.

“To see the way it went, and to see it continually get the attention that it gets and have the impact that it has? They’re fun,” he said. “But the first one was incredible.”

Continue Reading

Sports

Remembering Ruffian 50 years after her breakdown at Belmont

Published

on

By

Remembering Ruffian 50 years after her breakdown at Belmont

Thoroughbred racing suffered its most ignominious, industry-deflating moment 50 years ago today with the breakdown of Ruffian, an undefeated filly running against Foolish Pleasure in a highly promoted match race at Belmont Park. Her tragic end on July 6, 1975, was a catastrophe for the sport, and observers say racing has never truly recovered.

Two years earlier, during the rise of second-wave feminism, the nation had been mesmerized by a “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. King’s win became a rallying cry for women everywhere. The New York Racing Association, eager to boost daily racing crowds in the mid-1970s, proposed a competition similar to that of King and Riggs. They created a match race between Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure and Ruffian, the undefeated filly who had dominated all 10 of her starts, leading gate to wire.

“In any sport, human or equine, it’s really impossible to say who was the greatest,” said outgoing Jockey Club chairman Stuart Janney III, whose parents, Stuart and Barbara, owned Ruffian. “But I’m always comfortable thinking of Ruffian as being among the four to five greatest horses of all time.”

Ruffian, nearly jet black in color and massive, was the equine version of a Greek goddess. At the age of 2, her girth — the measurement of the strap that secures the saddle — was just over 75 inches. Comparatively, racing legend Secretariat, a male, had a 76-inch girth when he was fully developed at the age of 4.

Her name also added to the aura. “‘Ruffian’ was a little bit of a stretch because it tended to be what you’d name a colt, but it turned out to be an appropriate name,” Janney said.

On May 22, 1974, Ruffian equaled a Belmont Park track record, set by a male, in her debut at age 2, winning by 15 lengths. She set a stakes record later that summer at Saratoga in the Spinaway, the most prestigious race of the year for 2-year-old fillies. The next spring, she blew through races at longer distances, including the three races that made up the so-called Filly Triple Crown.

Some in the media speculated that she had run out of female competition.

Foolish Pleasure had meanwhile ripped through an undefeated 2-year-old season with championship year-end honors. However, after starting his sophomore campaign with a win, he finished third in the Florida Derby. He also had recovered from injuries to his front feet to win the Wood Memorial and then the Kentucky Derby.

Second-place finishes in the Preakness and Belmont Stakes left most observers with the idea that Foolish Pleasure was the best 3-year-old male in the business.

Following the Belmont Stakes, New York officials wanted to test the best filly against the best colt.

The original thought was to include the Preakness winner, Master Derby, in the Great Match Race, but the team of Foolish Pleasure’s owner, trainer and rider didn’t want a three-horse race. Since New York racing had guaranteed $50,000 to the last-place horse, they paid Master Derby’s connections $50,000 not to race. Thus, the stage was set for an equine morality play.

“[Ruffian’s] abilities gave her the advantage in the match race,” Janney said. “If she could do what she did in full fields [by getting the early lead], then it was probably going to be even more effective in a match.”

Several ballyhooed match races in sports history had captured the world’s attention without incident — Seabiscuit vs. Triple Crown winner War Admiral in 1938, Alsab vs. Triple Crown winner Whirlaway in 1942, and Nashua vs. Swaps in 1955. None of those races, though, had the gender divide “it” factor.

The Great Match Race attracted 50,000 live attendees and more than 18 million TV viewers on CBS, comparable to the Grammy Awards and a pair of NFL “Sunday Night Football” games in 2024.

Prominent New York sportswriter Dick Young wrote at the time that, for women, “Ruffian was a way of getting even.”

“I can remember driving up the New Jersey Turnpike, and the lady that took the toll in one of those booths was wearing a button that said, ‘I’m for her,’ meaning Ruffian,” Janney said.

As the day approached, Ruffian’s rider, Jacinto Vasquez, who also was the regular rider of Foolish Pleasure including at the Kentucky Derby, had to choose whom to ride for the match race.

“I had ridden Foolish Pleasure, and I knew what he could do,” Vasquez told ESPN. “But I didn’t think he could beat the filly. He didn’t have the speed or stamina.”

Braulio Baeza, who had ridden Foolish Pleasure to victory in the previous year’s premier 2-year-old race, Hopeful Stakes, was chosen to ride Foolish Pleasure.

“I had ridden Foolish Pleasure and ridden against Ruffian,” Baeza said, with language assistance from his wife, Janice Blake. “I thought Foolish Pleasure was better than Ruffian. She just needed [early race] pressure because no one had ever pressured her.”

The 1⅛ mile race began at the start of the Belmont Park backstretch in the chute. In an ESPN documentary from 2000, Jack Whitaker, who hosted the race telecast for CBS, noted that the atmosphere turned eerie with dark thunderclouds approaching before the race.

Ruffian hit the side of the gate when the doors opened but straightened herself out quickly and assumed the lead. “The whole world, including me, thought that Ruffian was going to run off the screen and add to her legacy,” said longtime New York trainer Gary Contessa, who was a teenager when Ruffian ruled the racing world.

However, about ⅛ of a mile into the race, the force of Ruffian’s mighty strides snapped two bones in her front right leg.

“When she broke her leg, it sounded like a broken stick,” Vasquez said. “She broke her leg between her foot and her ankle. When I pulled up, the bone was shattered above the ankle. She couldn’t use that leg at all.”

It took Ruffian a few moments to realize what had happened to her, so she continued to run. Vasquez eventually hopped off and kept his shoulder leaning against her for support.

“You see it, but you don’t want to believe it,” Janney said.

Baeza had no choice but to have Foolish Pleasure finish the race in what became a macabre paid workout. The TV cameras followed him, but the eyes of everyone at the track were on the filly, who looked frightened as she was taken back to the barn area.

“When Ruffian broke down, time stood still that day,” Contessa said. Yet time was of the essence in an attempt to save her life.

Janney said that Dr. Frank Stinchfield — who was the doctor for the New York Yankees then and was “ahead of his time in fixing people’s bones” — called racing officials to see whether there was anything he could do to help with Ruffian.

New York veterinarian Dr. Manny Gilman managed to sedate Ruffian, performed surgery on her leg and, with Stinchfield’s help, secured her leg in an inflatable cast. When Ruffian woke up in the middle of the night, though, she started fighting and shattered her bones irreparably. Her team had no choice but to euthanize her at approximately 2:20 a.m. on July 7.

“She was going full bore trying to get in front of [Foolish Pleasure] out of the gate,” Baeza said. “She gave everything there. She gave her life.”

Contessa described the time after as a “stilled hush over the world.”

“When we got the word that she had rebroken her leg, the whole world was crying,” Contessa said. “I can’t reproduce the feeling that I had the day after.”

The Janneys soon flew to Maine for the summer, and they received a round of applause when the pilot announced their presence. At the cottage, they were met by thousands of well-wishing letters.

“We all sat there, after dinner every night, and we wrote every one of them back,” Janney said. “It was pretty overwhelming, and that didn’t stop for a long time. I still get letters.”

Equine fatalities have been part of the business since its inception, like the Triple Crown races and Breeders’ Cup. Some have generated headlines by coming in clusters, such as Santa Anita in 2019 and Churchill Downs in 2023. However, breakdowns are not the only factor, and likely not the most influential one, in the gradual decline of horse racing’s popularity in this country.

But the impact from the day of Ruffian’s death, and that moment, has been ongoing for horse racing.

“There are people who witnessed the breakdown and never came back,” Contessa said.

Said Janney: “At about that time, racing started to disappear from the national consciousness. The average person knows about the Kentucky Derby, and that’s about it.”

Equine racing today is a safer sport now than it was 50 years ago. The Equine Injury Database, launched by the Jockey Club in 2008, says the fatality rate nationally in 2024 was just over half of what it was at its launch.

“We finally have protocols that probably should have been in effect far sooner than this,” Contessa said. “But the protocols have made this a safer game.”

Said Vasquez: “There are a lot of nice horses today, but to have a horse like Ruffian, it’s unbelievable. Nobody could compare to Ruffian.”

Continue Reading

Sports

Volpe toss hits Judge as sloppy Yanks fall again

Published

on

By

Volpe toss hits Judge as sloppy Yanks fall again

NEW YORK — A blunder that typifies the current state of the New York Yankees, who find themselves in the midst of their second six-game losing streak in three weeks, happened in front of 41,401 fans at Citi Field on Saturday, and almost nobody noticed.

The Yankees were jogging off the field after securing the third out of the fourth inning of their 12-6 loss to the Mets when shortstop Anthony Volpe, as is standard for teams across baseball at the end of innings, threw the ball to right fielder Aaron Judge as he crossed into the infield from right field.

Only Judge wasn’t looking, and the ball nailed him in the head, knocking his sunglasses off and leaving a small cut near his right eye. The wound required a bandage to stop the bleeding, but Judge stayed in the game.

“Confusion,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “I didn’t know what happened initially. [It just] felt like something happened. Of course I was a little concerned.”

Avoiding an injury to the best player in baseball was on the Yankees’ very short list of positives in another sloppy, draining defeat to their crosstown rivals. With the loss, the Yankees, who held a three-game lead over the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East standings entering June 30, find themselves tied with the Tampa Bay Rays for second place three games behind the Blue Jays heading into Sunday’s Subway Series finale.

The nosedive has been fueled by messy defense and a depleted pitching staff that has encountered a wall.

“It’s been a terrible week,” said Boone, who before the game announced starter Clarke Schmidt will likely undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery.

For the second straight day, the Mets capitalized on mistakes and cracked timely home runs. After slugging three homers in Friday’s series opener, the Mets hit three more Saturday — a grand slam in the first inning from Brandon Nimmo to take a 4-0 lead and two home runs from Pete Alonso to widen the gap.

Nimmo’s blast — his second grand slam in four days — came after Yankees left fielder Jasson Dominguez misplayed a ball hit by the Mets’ leadoff hitter in the first inning. On Friday, he misread Nimmo’s line drive and watched it sail over his head for a double. On Saturday, he was slow to react to Starling Marte’s flyball in the left-center field gap and braked without catching or stopping it, allowing Marte to advance to second for a double. Yankees starter Carlos Rodon then walked two batters to load the bases for Nimmo, who yanked a mistake, a 1-2 slider over the wall.

“That slider probably needs to be down,” said Rodon, who allowed seven runs (six earned) over five innings. “A lot of misses today and they punished them.”

Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s throwing woes at third base — a position the Yankees have asked him to play to accommodate DJ LeMahieu at second base — continued in the second inning when he fielded Tyrone Taylor’s groundball and sailed a toss over first baseman Cody Bellinger’s head. Taylor was given second base and scored moments later on Marte’s RBI single.

The Yankees were charged with their second error in the Mets’ four-run seventh inning when center fielder Trent Grisham charged Francisco Lindor’s single up the middle and had it bounce off the heel of his glove.

The mistake allowed a run to score from second base without a throw, extending the Mets lead back to three runs after the Yankees had chipped their deficit, and allowed a heads-up Lindor to advance to second base. Lindor later scored on Alonso’s second home run, a three-run blast off left-hander Jayvien Sandridge in the pitcher’s major league debut.

“Just got to play better,” Judge said. “That’s what it comes down to. It’s fundamentals. Making a routine play, routine. It’s just the little things. That’s what it kind of comes down to. But every good team goes through a couple bumps in the road.”

This six-game losing skid has looked very different from the Yankees’ first. That rough patch, consisting of losses to the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels, was propelled by offensive troubles. The Yankees scored six runs in the six games and gave up just 16. This time, run prevention is the issue; the Yankees have scored 34 runs and surrendered 54 in four games against the Blue Jays in Toronto and two in Queens.

“The offense is starting to swing the bat, put some runs on the board,” Boone said. “The pitching, which has kind of carried us a lot this season, has really, really struggled this week. We haven’t caught the ball as well as I think we should.

“So, look, when you live it and you’re going through it, it sucks, it hurts. But you got to be able to handle it. You got to be able to deal with it. You got to be able to weather it and come out of this and grow.”

Continue Reading

Sports

Former White Sox pitcher, world champ Jenks dies

Published

on

By

Former White Sox pitcher, world champ Jenks dies

Bobby Jenks, a two-time All-Star pitcher for the Chicago White Sox who was on the roster when the franchise won the 2005 World Series, died Friday in Sintra, Portugal, the team announced.

Jenks, 44, who had been diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, a form of stomach cancer, this year, spent six seasons with the White Sox from 2005 to 2010 and also played for the Boston Red Sox in 2011. The reliever finished his major league career with a 16-20 record, 3.53 ERA and 173 saves.

“We have lost an iconic member of the White Sox family today,” White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said in a statement. “None of us will ever forget that ninth inning of Game 4 in Houston, all that Bobby did for the 2005 World Series champions and for the entire Sox organization during his time in Chicago. He and his family knew cancer would be his toughest battle, and he will be missed as a husband, father, friend and teammate. He will forever hold a special place in all our hearts.”

After Jenks moved to Portugal last year, he was diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis in his right calf. That eventually spread into blood clots in his lungs, prompting further testing. He was later diagnosed with adenocarcinoma and began undergoing radiation.

In February, as Jenks was being treated for the illness, the White Sox posted “We stand with you, Bobby” on Instagram, adding in the post that the club was “thinking of Bobby as he is being treated.”

In 2005, as the White Sox ended an 88-year drought en route to the World Series title, Jenks appeared in six postseason games. Chicago went 11-1 in the playoffs, and he earned saves in series-clinching wins in Game 3 of the ALDS at Boston, and Game 4 of the World Series against the Houston Astros.

In 2006, Jenks saved 41 games, and the following year, he posted 40 saves. He also retired 41 consecutive batters in 2007, matching a record for a reliever.

“You play for the love of the game, the joy of it,” Jenks said in his last interview with SoxTV last year. “It’s what I love to do. I [was] playing to be a world champion, and that’s what I wanted to do from the time I picked up a baseball.”

A native of Mission Hills, California, Jenks appeared in 19 games for the Red Sox and was originally drafted by the then-Anaheim Angels in the fifth round of the 2000 draft.

Jenks is survived by his wife, Eleni Tzitzivacos, their two children, Zeno and Kate, and his four children from a prior marriage, Cuma, Nolan, Rylan and Jackson.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Trending