Ferguson Jenkins
Canadian pitcher, Cy Young winner, Hall of Famer.
Ferguson Arthur "Fergie" Jenkins (born December 13, 1942) is a Canadian former professional baseball pitcher and coach who played in Major League Baseball from 1965 to 1983. He spent most of his career with the Chicago Cubs and in 1971 became the first Canadian and first Cubs pitcher to win the Cy Young Award. Jenkins was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991 as the first Canadian to receive that honor.
Quick Facts
- Position
- Pitcher
- Bats
- Right
- Born
- 13 December 1942
- Birthplace
- Chatham, Ontario, Canada
- Debut league
- MLB
- Debut date
- September 10
- Debut year
- 1965
- Debut team
- Philadelphia Phillies
Facts from the source article.
Early life
Jenkins was born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, the only child of Delores Jackson and Ferguson Jenkins Sr. His father, a chef and chauffeur, was the son of immigrants from Barbados; his mother descended from captive Africans who escaped slavery in America via the Underground Railroad and settled in Southwestern Ontario. Both parents were athletes: his father boxed and played semi-professional baseball for the Chatham Coloured All-Stars. Jenkins lettered five times in track and field, ice hockey, and basketball. He began bantam baseball as a first baseman and developed his pitching by throwing coal at targets in a local coal yard. Former minor-league shortstop Gene Dziadura, a Phillies scout, encouraged him to continue pitching.
Professional baseball
Phillies scout Tony Lucadello signed Jenkins in 1962. He debuted in 1965 as a relief pitcher at age 22 and was traded the next year to the Chicago Cubs with Adolfo Phillips and John Herrnstein for Larry Jackson and Bob Buhl. In 1967, his first full season as a starter, he recorded 20 wins, a 2.80 ERA, and 236 strikeouts, finishing tied for second in Cy Young voting and earning his first All-Star selection. The following year he again won 20 games with a 2.63 ERA and 260 strikeouts, despite losing five starts by 1–0 scores. Jenkins achieved his best season in 1971: he started the Cubs' opening-day game, pitching a complete-game 2–1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals. On September 1 he threw another complete game against the Montreal Expos, hitting two home runs in a 5–2 victory. He was named NL Player of the Month in July with a 6–1 record, 2.14 ERA, and 49 strikeouts. That season he completed 30 of 39 starts, received a decision in 37, and finished 24–13 with 37 walks and 263 strikeouts over 325 innings. He hit six home runs and drove in 20 runs in 115 at-bats, posting a .478 slugging percentage. Jenkins won the 1971 NL Cy Young Award with 17 of 24 first-place votes, becoming the first Cubs pitcher and first Canadian to do so.
Legacy
Ferguson Jenkins twice led his league in wins, in 1971 and 1974. He topped the majors in fewest walks per nine innings five times, complete games nine times, and home runs allowed seven times. His single strikeout title came in 1969 with 273. From 1967 through 1972, he won at least 20 games each season, the longest such run in the big leagues since Warren Spahn’s streak from 1956 to 1961. Jenkins is one of only four pitchers—alongside Greg Maddux, Curt Schilling, and Pedro Martínez—to surpass 3,000 strikeouts while issuing fewer than 1,000 walks. Only Robin Roberts and Jamie Moyer surrendered more career home runs. He fanned his 3,000th batter, Garry Templeton, on May 25, 1982. At the plate, he hit .165 with 13 homers and 85 RBIs, and he posted a .954 fielding percentage. Jenkins is a member of the Black Aces, the group of Black pitchers with at least one 20-win season. In 1974, while with the Texas Rangers, he became the first baseball player to receive the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada’s top athlete. He was also named Canadian Press male athlete of the year four times: 1967, 1968, 1971, and 1974. He earned the Order of Sport in 1987, entering Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame that same year. In 1991, he became the first Canadian elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. That year’s All-Star Game in Toronto was dedicated to him, and he threw the ceremonial first pitch. He was enshrined in the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 1995, on Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2001, and in the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2003, he served as commissioner of the now-defunct Canadian Baseball League; the league’s Jenkins Cup vanished when it folded. The Ontario Sports Hall of Fame created the Ferguson Jenkins Heritage Award in 2011.
Personal life
Jenkins and his first wife, Kathy, had three daughters before divorcing in 1987. With his second wife, Maryanne, he had a daughter, Samantha. Maryanne was injured in a December 1990 car crash near their Oklahoma ranch, breaking her neck, and died of pneumonia the following month. In December 1992, Jenkins’s girlfriend, Cynthia Takieddine, and his three-year-old daughter, Samantha, died from carbon monoxide poisoning in a car near Perry, Oklahoma. Authorities ruled it a murder-suicide. Jenkins was married to Lydia Farrington from 1993 until her death in 2018.
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