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CHICAGO — It had been well over 700 days since Patrick Sandoval found himself on a major league mound, and now that he was back, he didn’t relish the idea of leaving.
Sandoval, who battled back from Tommy John surgery and its resulting complications, had shut out the Chicago White Sox for the first four innings Thursday at Rate Field and was just getting comfortable again with the idea of competing against major league hitters.
But the fifth inning had begun to slowly unravel on him. There was a leadoff single, a wild pitch, a stolen base and a walk sandwiched around a botched bunt attempt for the first out. And when Sandoval saw Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy climbing the dugout steps and heading for the mound, Sandoval knew he wasn’t coming for a social visit.
No words were exchanged between the two; only the ball.
“I got a little too cute with those last two hitters. When I look back and was walking off, I kind of felt I took my foot off the gas a little bit,” lamented Sandoval. “I kind of can’t get over that last inning. I wanted to finish it.”
On a day of renewal and return, that was his lasting regret. Everything else, however, was a positive. He struck out five, issued just one walk and all four singles off him were relatively benign — groundball singles through the infield.
And, not incidentally, there was this: Red Sox 2, White Sox 1.
His fastball was sharp, mostly around 95 mph, and he worked at a quickened pace. All told, a pleasant return to action.
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“Felt good, body feels good,” said Sandoval. “I thought (the stuff) was pretty good. I’m still knocking off a little bit of rust, but under the circumstances, I thought it was pretty good.”
He had thrown 68 pitches in his last minor league tune-up and the Red Sox had said they weren’t going to permit him to go much longer than that. Still, at 65 pitches in the fifth, he had hoped to be given the opportunity to at least finish the inning.
“He wanted to stay,” confirmed Tracy. “It was very obvious. He’s a competitor, he wants to stay. And quite frankly, if it’s 5-1 and he’s not coming off a 68-pitch outing, there’s a lane where you could do that. But being right around the number he was at before and with Tyron (Guerrero) ready, we’re going to go there. But man, he was really, really good.”
Sandoval was unsure how Thursday would play out emotionally. Undoubtedly, he thought about all the time spent rehabilitating from the surgery, and the endless amount of time in the weight room and on bullpen mounds.
Right before he was about to take the mound, the moment struck him.
“It hit me pretty hard right before, in the top of the first,” he recounted. “I had to kind of lay down and take a few deep breaths in the tunnel. It was kind of hot, and the heart rate was up and the adrenaline (was up) and the circumstances so I laid down, put my legs up for a minute and just took some deep breaths. So I just I was fine after that.”
And this was not just any game. Right before Sandoval rejoined them, the Red Sox went on their longest heater of the season, having won five straight and 10 of the last 12. The last thing he wanted to do, as he was inserted into the middle of the team’s rotation, was to interrupt the momentum.
Instead, he helped propel them forward to a second straight series sweep, inching them to within 2.5 games of the third wild card spot in the American League.
“I’m a real boy now,” he joked. “It feels good to help the team.”
It was also the first time that Sandoval could feel part of the team. Until Thursday, he had worked in the shadows, mostly apart from his teammates. While they were on the road, he would stay behind at Fenway or Fort Myers, making incremental progress, pushing himself to be back for an assignment like this one.
They were players. He was, really, a bystander, waiting for his chance.
On Thursday, it came. Still, he wanted more.
The nice thing is, the next chance will come in a little more than a week, and not, as it had been, a little more than two years.
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