As a Canadian youngster, Ferguson Jenkins dreamed of being a National Hockey League player, but, today, he is Canada’s only member of baseball’s Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York, having been elected to it in 1994 by more than 500 baseball writers. In a 19-year career with clubs that never clinched a pennant, Fergie won 284 games against 226 losses.

Some of the game’s top pitchers may have won more games, but Fergie shares the record of winning 20 or more games in six consecutive seasons and stands alone as the only major leaguer to strike out more than 3000 batters (3192) while giving up less than 1000 walks (997). Bill James in History of Baseball Abstract rates Fergie as the best control pitcher in baseball history and among the top 30 right-handers ever to play major league baseball.

Born in Chatham, Ontario, in December 1943, Fergie was an outstanding teenage athlete starring in basketball, hockey (he reached junior status), and baseball (the latter largely due to his father, Ferguson Sr., who had played semi-pro ball in Ontario and at Hershey, Pennsylvania). At 15, Fergie Jr. was playing first base when he replaced a pitcher suffering a sore arm. He threw a two-hitter. More wins created interest among major league scouts, and he attended a tryout school in nearby Detroit. But it was a Philadelphia Phillies scout who, after Fergie graduated from high school in 1962, encouraged him and offered him a contract with a $7,500 signing bonus that paid the mortgage on the family farm.

After a month with a minor league club in Florida, Fergie jumped to the Triple AAA teams in Boston and Little Rock before being called up by Philadelphia as a relief pitcher in September 1965. By the end of the season, he had a 2-1 record in six relief roles, but, in April 1966, the Phillies traded him to the Chicago Cubs where manager Leo (“The Lip”) Durocher made him a starter.

The next year Fergie had his first of six consecutive 20-game winning seasons despite the Cubs’ inability to finish higher than third place over that same time span. In 1968, for instance, while Fergie was registering a 20-15 record, five of his losses by scores of 1-0 prompted the authors of the book, Baseball Hall of Shame, to suggest Fergie “should have sued [his] baseball team for nonsupport.” In 1969, he started 43 games, completed 23, and struck out 273, leading the league in that department. In 1971, he started 39 games, completing all but nine of them to win the Cy Young award as the National League’s outstanding pitcher.
 

A native of Chatam, Ontario, Ferguson Jenkins, in his youth, was an all round athlete. Good enough to play junior hockey at age 15, he played basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters before signing to play baseball with the Philadlphia Phillies in 1962. They should not have traded him, for over his 19-year major league career, he beat them 29 times! [Photo courtesy Charles J. Humber Collection]

In 1973, however, because of his win/loss record of 14-16 in 38 starts, Chicago traded him to the Texas Rangers of the American League. There, in 1974, he chalked up a 25-12 win/loss record in 41 starts. When that dropped to 17-18 a year later, he was traded to Boston for two lacklustre seasons before returning to Texas for still another four years.

During the 1980 season, following his arrest in Toronto and his being charged with possessing drugs found in his luggage that had failed to arrive on the same flight he had taken, his career nearly crashed to an untimely ending. Immediately suspended, he was later allowed to finish the season, posting a 12-12 record. That December, a judge at Brampton, Ontario, gave him an absolute discharge. But 1981 proved a poor one with Texas (a 5-8 win loss record) and he was released. The Cubs resigned him and, in 1983, just short of his 40th birthday, he completed his career.

In those 19 years, Fergie started 664 games and completed 4498 innings. He was one of the game’s best fielding pitchers with a record 363 put-outs. As a pitcher, his batting average was respectable as he connected for 13 career home runs. As a pitcher his only blot was giving up home runs — 484 of them — second highest for a Hall of Fame pitcher.

In 1984, Fergie played ball in Southern Ontario while farming near Blenheim. He wanted to be a pitching coach with the Montreal Expos or the Toronto Blue Jays but was turned down by both clubs. Later, while living on a ranch near Guthrie, Oklahoma, in 1995 Fergie got his wish to coach with his old team, the Cubs. At the end of 1996, however, he was released, allegedly because the team pitching was subpar. Since the pitching roster ranked sixth in the National League that year, baseball writers tended to attribute his dismissal to a blowup between one of the pitchers and the club manager, with Fergie, ever the champion of the mound, siding with the pitcher.

On four different occasions, Fergie was Canada’s male athlete of the year.

Mel James