Ten years ago this week, then-Padres outfielder Will Venable was hitting everything that wasn’t nailed down.
Over seven games in early June, he had five multihit outings, a half-dozen extra-base hits — two of them home runs — and a flurry of clutch knocks and runs driven in as a team that would win only 74 times that season was carried through a 5-2 spurt by a 32-year-old left-handed swinger destined to become a first-time manager with the White Sox.
‘‘I’m sure I was enjoying that I was hitting the ball and not thinking about if it was my last year or second-to-last year,’’ Venable said before the second game of a series Tuesday against the ascendant Tigers at Rate Field. ‘‘I don’t know how long I was expecting to play. I wasn’t expecting that to be the end, though.’’
It wasn’t, technically speaking. But the Padres — who had drafted Venable in 2005 and punched his ticket to the majors in 2008 — would trade him weeks later to the Rangers, with whom the solid career of a respected big-leaguer quickly would fizzle out. He would play 49 more games, 12 of them with the Dodgers, after the trade. He homered only once more after that mighty week in June, which turned out to be his last hurrah as a player.
‘‘I guess it was,’’ he recalled to the Sun-Times. ‘‘That was that.’’
Ten years later, Venable is seeking the first of many hurrahs as the Sox’ manager. But the first 60 games of the season left him with a dreadful 18-42 record, a .300 pace that, extended over 162 games, would leave a second consecutive Sox squad shy of the 50-victory mark. Venable’s Sox entered the game Tuesday with a 2-15 record against teams in their division, picking right up where the 10-42 division debacle last season left off.
It can’t be easy for him, even if he had no part in that 2024 misery.
‘‘The losses are tough,’’ he said, ‘‘but losses are always tough.’’
One hopes there’s a real, all-out Sox hurrah awaiting Venable someday.
‘‘But right now?’’ he said. ‘“The hurrah is just winning a game today, winning a game any day. It’s all there is.’’
During a relaxed dugout conversation, Venable was invited to give himself a 60-game performance review. A totally reasonable request, right?
‘‘One, on the wins and losses, which is understandably a part of this, not good,’’ he said.
‘‘But then there’s the environment that I’m supporting and creating; I feel good about that. Some of our players are performing, yes, but some of them aren’t, and that’s another measure. There’s a lot of things we’re doing behind the scenes that I feel good about. There’s a bunch of different ways to measure how I’m doing. I think I’m doing OK in some and still working at some others, you know?’’
Sure. Asked and answered.
But how about expressing that in the form of a letter grade?
‘‘Not passing right now,’’ he said, shaking his head. ‘‘We’re going to need to win some more games.’’
Improved results might start to show up before long. If you believe in the self-professed psychic powers of ageless broadcaster Steve Stone, you’ll be happy to learn that he opined, while eating his pregame dinner, that a far better Sox stretch is coming soon. In fairness, this team would have to work extra hard to pull off a worse stretch. But there seem to be actual traces of positivity here and there around Soxdom nowadays, and reason No. 1 for their existence is likely the manager.
Where predecessor Pedro Grifol blustered, Venable is calm and steady with no seeming need to fool anybody.
Where Grifol was tense and too aware of the writing on the wall to enjoy the process, Venable appears not to be the least bit miserable.
‘‘Oh, yeah, 100%, very happy,’’ he said about taking the job last fall. ‘‘It’s been a lot of fun and it’s been tough, but it’s been tough because baseball’s tough. It hasn’t been tough because we have a bad record. . . . I’m happy about what we have. We just have to find ways to get better.’’
In a phone conversation days after he was hired, Venable described coming to Rate Field last August with the Rangers — he was the right-hand man to Hall of Fame-bound skipper Bruce Bochy — and not being repelled by what he observed, even though the Sox were in the midst of a signature long losing streak. There was something about the experience that led him to feel, ‘‘Yeah, I think I might be able to manage here if the chance arises.’’
Maybe it was just one of those things, a hunch or a premonition.
‘‘That spirit has carried over,’’ Venable said, ‘‘and it’s driven by guys who are responding positively to some poor results.’’
Isn’t it hard to stomach all the losing, though?
‘‘You just embrace the fight,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s it. That’s where we’re at.’’