BOSTON — Liam Hendriks had his pants down as he spoke. His undershorts were on, but his uniform was down to his knees. He’d just thrown his first bullpen of the year last Wednesday, a momentous step forward for any pitcher returning from Tommy John surgery. Yet he stood in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse refusing to treat the occasion as serious, or even notable.
How did his arm feel?
“Attached,” he said.
Was there some added adrenaline getting on a mound?
“Not really,” he answered.
What stood out about the rehab process?
“How boring it is,” Hendriks deadpanned.
None of this came across as dismissive. It was played for laughs, a break from the monotony for Hendriks, his teammates, and even the gathered reporters. He was speaking to a full scrum with TV cameras and microphones, all because of a 15-pitch bullpen three hours before game time. Give Hendriks credit for not rolling his eyes. He didn’t travel from Australia, through years of baseball obscurity and rounds of cancer treatment to celebrate a few pregame fastballs in the bullpen.
“I don’t know whether the trainers love me or want to kill me,” Hendriks said. “Every day is a struggle telling them to let me do more and having them try to hold me back into a normal stratosphere.
“Which sucks.”
He’s longing for moments of greater consequence and is confident they’re coming.
Liam Hendriks has faced intense physical and mental challenges over the past 20 months but has managed to maintain a sense of humor about it all. (Barry Chin / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
There are numbers to help tell every baseball story and Hendriks’ career is told through his three All-Star Games, two Reliever of the Year awards, and 116 career saves. His backstory is chronicled through the 14 teams and six major-league organizations that saw him come and go before anyone trusted him with the ninth inning. He’s the one and only graduate of Australia’s Sacred Heart College to ever play in the majors, and he was designated for assignment four times and traded three more before most people had ever heard of him. Yet, here he is, a survivor in more ways than one.
Hendriks’ past 20 months have been all about four rounds of chemotherapy, a six-game rehab assignment in the minors weeks later, and his emotional big-league return last May. He…
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“It’s not that (rehab) is long. I can handle long. I can’t handle slow. And it’s the slowness that’s really pissing me off.”
(Top photo of Hendriks in May 2024: Maddie Malhotra / Boston Red Sox/Getty Images)