Such Sweet Relief

MOST OF Samardzija's teammates—including second baseman Mark DeRosa, a former quarterback at Penn who lockers next to the rookie—first saw him in his former life, with the Fighting Irish. In the public sporting consciousness the Shark, as he was known in South Bend, may always be thought of as a football player first. Ironically, one of the seeds for his gridiron stardom was planted by his baseball coach at Notre Dame, Paul Mainieri, on a ride to Chicago in the summer of 2005. Mainieri and Charlie Weis, who had just been hired as football coach, were taking their sons to a Red Sox--Cubs game and began talking about Samardzija, who had already starred for two college seasons as a starting pitcher but had caught a total of 24 passes in his freshman and sophomore years while playing for Ty Willingham.

Mainieri told Weis, "If you give this kid a chance, I promise he'll make a very positive impact. I think he could catch 50 passes this fall." As it turned out, Mainieri was actually selling his ace short: As a junior Samardzija caught 77 passes for 15 touchdowns and was a finalist for the Biletnikoff Award, given to the college game's top receiver.

The following June, at a time when most outsiders believed Samardzija's eventual destination would be the NFL, the Cubs took a flier on him with a fifth-round pick and got him to play a summer divided between Rookie League and Class A ball. "The one thing no one knew about Jeff Samardzija then," says Cubs general manager Jim Hendry, "was that he liked baseball as much as football." Mainieri had told Hendry as much, and Hendry had a long-standing reason to trust the Fighting Irish skipper. In one of his earliest coaching gigs, at Miami's Christopher Columbus High in 1981, Mainieri was an assistant on the baseball staff with Samardzija's future agent, Mark Rodgers. The head coach at the time was Hendry.

In 2006 Samardzija caught 78 passes and 12 touchdowns for the Irish, who went to the Sugar Bowl, where they were trampled by LSU. One of the attendees at the Superdome was Hendry, who met with Samardzija a few days later at Gibson's Steakhouse in Rosemont, Ill., to talk about his baseball future. Samardzija still had options, as the Senior Bowl and the NFL combine were looming. Within days, however, he chose to take the Cubs' offer, which included a $2.5 million signing bonus that would be forfeited if he returned to football.

Samardzija's 27-year-old brother, Sammy, a former all-state high school baseball and football player who now runs Jeff's website (jeff-samardzija.com), had visited him in South Bend in December, toting a whiteboard on which he drew a line down the middle, with FOOTBALL on one side and BASEBALL on the other. Carrying the day for the diamond were the "pros" Jeff listed under baseball, which included the longevity factor, the lifestyle of playing every day rather than enduring daily meetings and practices, and, at the end, location, location, location. "If you're a kid who played ball in Northwest Indiana," says Sam, "Wrigley Field is like Mecca."

On the pilgrimage from Touchdown Jesus to Baseball Mecca, though, it has been impossible for Samardzija to shed his football past. Cubs organist Gary Pressy plays The Notre Dame Victory March when Samardzija takes the hill, although the pitcher says he'd prefer Hendrix. His number 83 football jersey showed up on the backs of fans at every stop in the minors, where he was both a celeb and a strange statistical phenomenon, actually getting better as he was promoted—from a 4.95 ERA in Class A Daytona, to 3.41 in Double A Tennessee, to 3.13 in Iowa. Some of the early struggles were due to experimentation with new pitches, but more may have been due to the stage, which shrank by roughly 99.75% between 80,795-seat Notre Dame Stadium and the low minors.

"I like to get fired up when I pitch," says Samardzija, "and I think a crowd makes me concentrate. If a situation means a lot, I'm not as laissez-faire as I was when I was in front of 200 retired people [in Daytona] who were playing baseball bingo. It's not that I didn't care then. I just knew there was a bigger goal than going 10--0 in the Florida State League."

The goal of helping the Cubs end the majors' longest title drought is in front of him now, and the brighter the lights, the stronger he's pitched. Rothschild had an inkling, back in March, that this call-up could work. "You could see in spring training that he could fit into a bullpen quickly," he says of Samardzija. "He had really good stuff. And he also had no fear."

There are no regrets now, either, about this career choice. Could two-a-days at NFL training camp ever match summer days in the sun at Wrigley? Samardzija's commute is one that will never get old, but it's all still so fresh here in August, as he rolls past the outdoor souvenir stands that don't yet stock his jersey, rolls past the clueless scalpers on Clark who ask if he needs tickets (No, sir, that will not be necessary), rolls up toward the players' gate and into the park, where Sweet Lou just might throw the kid into the fire again. If he does, the kid will feel right at home.