Seven years before trading their best player to the Boston Red Sox in a franchise-altering blockbuster, the Chicago White Sox discovered him on the mound at Fenway Park.
How's that for a juicy slice of irony?
Chris Sale threw only six pitches on July 24, 2009, in the bottom of the third inning of the Cape Cod League All-Star Game, retiring three batters in less time than it would have taken to get through the line at one of Fenway's concession stands. But the fleeting sight of a 6-foot-6 lefty with a power fastball and a three-quarters arm angle that accentuated an 82-inch wingspan so ridiculous it's almost mythical was branded on White Sox scout Nick Hostetler's brain like the logo on a pair of Levi's.
"He was lights-out," Hostetler recalled. "He was awesome."
What followed over the next 13 months formed the foundation of a career that has seen Sale become the best left-handed pitcher in the American League -- aka The Non-Clayton Kershaw Division. Sale's journey also helps in understanding what might compel someone to lash out at his bosses over the amount of time a teammate's son is allowed to spend in the clubhouse or to cut up throwback jerseys before a start because he found them constricting.
In the 378 days after he walked off the mound at Fenway, Sale turned 21, became a father, went 11-0 with a 2.01 ERA for Florida Gulf Coast University and was runner-up for the Golden Spikes Award as the nation's top collegiate baseball player. He also slid out of the top 10 in the draft (and lost out on about $1 million) and made his major league debut in the eighth inning of a game in Baltimore with the White Sox in the throes of a playoff push.
At no time did Sale pause to be ordinary.
Of the six pitchers drafted ahead of Sale in 2010, three have reached the big leagues. Jameson Taillon, Drew Pomeranz and Matt Harvey faced an average of 1,373 batters in the minors. Sale faced 43.
To call Sale's rise to the majors "meteoric" would be giving too much credit to meteors.
"We're trying to figure out who to take and [then-White Sox general manager] Kenny [Williams] says, 'You know, this guy could potentially help us in the bullpen here in Chicago before the year is out,'" said Buddy Bell, the longtime former big league third baseman and White Sox assistant GM who was the club's farm director at the time. "Frankly, I thought he was crazy. That's way out of the box. But we never really thought Chris was going to get to us."
Sale led the Cape Cod League in strikeouts in 2009 and was the nation's best college pitcher as a junior. The White Sox believed Sale could go as high as second overall to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Other teams weren't as sold. Mostly, talent evaluators were concerned about his pitching motion -- "an inverted W," in scout-speak -- in which his elbows at one point are higher than his wrists and shoulders.
"Scouts would ask me, 'Do you think he's going to break down?' I was like, 'If you watch him play catch, that's his arm slot,'" FGCU coach Dave Tollett said. "They asked for every medical they could have on him. They would call our trainers and go, 'Does he come in for treatment every day?' Our trainers were like, 'We don't ever see the dude.'"
Tollett tried to insulate Sale from most of the chatter, but that was impossible. It was OK. Sale had other things on his mind anyway.
In the fall of 2009, Sale and his girlfriend, Brianne Aron, found out they were going to have a son. Rylan Sale was born in early May, a few weeks before the Atlantic Sun Tournament and a month before the draft.
Suddenly, Sale's perspective changed. He remained as competitive as ever on the mound, but his priorities were at home.
"To do what he did as a junior -- win national player of the year [selected by "Collegiate Baseball"], go undefeated, get drafted in the first round and get the news halfway through the season that there's a baby on the way, it was a lot for a 20-year-old to handle," Tollett said. "I don't know if anyone else that I've ever coached could've handled that the way he did."
In March of 2011, Sale told the Chicago Tribune that after Rylan was born, "I had no choice but to do well. Two other people were depending on me. Sometimes people talk about girlfriends and things like that as distractions and say, 'Don't bring what's happening off the field to the field.' For me, it was good to bring it to the field."
Brianne and Rylan have been with Sale through everything. Sale declined to attend the draft in order to watch from home with his family, including 1-month-old Rylan. Brianne, who married Sale in 2011, got him involved in a nonprofit that provides shoes to needy children. And during a conference call the morning after being traded to the Red Sox, Sale shared a message from White Sox reliever Nate Jones, who said his young daughter would miss Rylan.
It's easy to see why Sale had such a strong reaction last spring, when the White Sox imposed limits on how much time first baseman Adam LaRoche's son, Drake, could spend in the clubhouse. LaRoche chose to retire, prompting Sale, the team's longest-tenured player, to blast then-GM Kenny Williams and hang the jerseys of Adam and Drake in his locker.
"I know he's had some incidents where he's said some things he probably shouldn't have," Bell said. "But he has never really cared about anything other than his teammates and just getting people out."
Said Tollett: "Chris is going to stick up for family. I think if the LaRoche thing happened again somewhere else, he would do the same thing because he believes in his heart it's right."
Hostetler knows how this must sound now, hindsight being 20/20 and all, but he insists he never shared the concerns of his scouting brethren. On reports he filed for the White Sox, he said he noted that Sale's arm action was "loose and free." Sale also got the stamp of approval from longtime White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper.
If anything, Hostetler questioned whether Sale's body would withstand the rigors of a pro season. Even now, Sale is skinny as a pipe cleaner. But as his outgoing father, Allen, told any scout who would listen, long and lanky runs in the family. Sale's grandfather, Harold, was nicknamed "Streamline" because of his tall, thin build, but he nevertheless excelled at diving and skiing.
"It's Chris' genetic build," Hostetler said. "Every now and then, some guys are just physical freaks, and Chris is one of those guys. I can look at a cheeseburger and put on five pounds, and he eats 20 of them and he won't. I always hated him for that."
A cheeseburger actually helped heighten Hostetler's opinion of Sale.
"One of the main reasons we drafted him sometimes gets in his way, and that's his passion and his emotion and his fire. That's who Chris is. If he feels strongly about something, he will speak his mind about it, he will take action. I think he's realized that lashing out in certain situations like he did might not be the best way to handle it professionally, even though personally that's kind of the way he handles things." White Sox scout Nick Hostetler
Hostetler was at FGCU on May 8, 2010, when Sale struck out 11 batters in a four-hit shutout against East Tennessee State. You almost wouldn't have noticed him ducking behind the dugout between innings to expel a burger that had left him stricken with food poisoning.
"It was kind of another trump card for me," Hostetler said. "In my reporting, I could say, 'I told you how tough he is, but the kid had food poisoning and still pitched like that.'"
Sale wowed Hostetler with other feats, including three consecutive strikeouts on nine fastballs in a row during a Cape Cod League game. Alas, the White Sox would have bet their ballpark on Sale being long gone by the time they made the 13th overall pick, at least until his representatives called on draft night to gauge Chicago's interest.
The White Sox drafted Sale, signed him to a $1.656 million bonus and made no promises when they sent him to Class A Winston-Salem to pitch in relief. But at Williams' direction, they had clear intentions: Find out if he was a viable candidate to help their bullpen down the stretch.
It took all of three outings to get an answer.
"Buddy Bell called and he said, 'Chris made our decision,'" Hostetler said. "I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said, 'He's coming to the big leagues. This is ridiculous.'"
Said Bell: "You dream of a guy in the bullpen with that kind of angle, that kind of velocity. With that kind of look, you go, 'Wow, this guy could really help us in the big leagues.' Before and after, that has never come up [with a draftee]. Chris Sale is the only guy we've ever talked about that with."
It went beyond the quality of Sale's stuff or the uniqueness of his delivery, too. After everything he had been through over the past year, the White Sox thought he would be able to handle being rushed to the big leagues.
"His will and his drive, really what was between his ears, was even better than what his stuff was," Hostetler said.
Save for 11 appearances in the minors before getting called up, Sale, now 27, has never pitched in a game in which winning wasn't the highest priority. His rapid ascent to the big leagues spared him the years of development in which players are judged as much on the process of trying to get better as the actual results, which perfectly suited someone whom Hostetler described as "one of the most competitive human beings I've ever been around."
But get in Sale's way of being at his best and, well, hide the scissors.
The White Sox suspended Sale for one start last season after he shredded 1976 throwback jerseys that featured a collar. Sale had told Williams, general manager Rick Hahn and manager Robin Ventura that he found the jerseys to be restrictive, but the team went ahead with its plan to wear them anyway.
"One of the main reasons we drafted him sometimes gets in his way, and that's his passion and his emotion and his fire," Hostetler said. "That's who Chris is. If he feels strongly about something, he will speak his mind about it, he will take action. I think he's realized that lashing out in certain situations like he did might not be the best way to handle it professionally, even though personally that's kind of the way he handles things."
"I've seen that kid smile like that four or five times, like the day Rylan was born. He was elated. He wants to play for a championship." Dave Tollett, Sale's coach at FGCU, on the pitcher's reaction to being traded to Boston during the winter meetings
The Red Sox looked into Sale's behavior but weren't scared off, according to president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski. On the contrary, Dombrowski believes Sale benefits from pitching with what he calls "a good edge."
Sale posted a 1.93 ERA and 32 strikeouts in 23⅓ innings after getting called up in 2010, but the White Sox missed the playoffs. They didn't get there in 2011 either, when Sale remained in the bullpen and recorded a 2.79 ERA with 79 strikeouts in 71 innings.
The White Sox moved Sale to the rotation in 2012. He ranks first in ERA (3.04) and third in strikeouts per nine innings (10.04) among 51 American League pitchers with at least 500 innings over the past five seasons. Sale has four top-five Cy Young Award finishes, and for all the handwringing about those crazy mechanics, he has had only one arm-related visit to the disabled list.
But still, he hasn't been to the playoffs.
No wonder Tollett said Sale was "smiling from ear to ear" when he showed up at FGCU on Dec. 6 shortly after finding out he had been traded to the reigning AL East champs.
"I've seen that kid smile like that four or five times, like the day Rylan was born," Tollett said. "He was elated. He wants to play for a championship."
It's all Sale ever wanted to do since before that summer league all-star game at Fenway. He just thought it would be with the White Sox.
"In 2010, how many teams would've done what they did? It's hard to say now, but probably not very many," Sale said. "They drafted me in the first round when people had questions. They brought me up to the big leagues really fast when people had questions. They had my back a lot and gave me opportunities that not a lot of people would've given me."
And in 13 months, it helped make Sale into what he is.