Jesse Rogers
CHICAGO — Former White Sox lefty Mark Buehrle was forever immortalized inside Rate Field as the team unveiled a statue in his honor on Friday.
Buehrle, 46, played 16 years in the majors, including the first 12 with the White Sox where he helped the team win a World Series in 2005. He won 214 games and pitched 200 innings or more in 14 consecutive seasons, from 2001-2014.
“I can’t put it into words,” Buehrle said after the unveiling. “You don’t play the game for any of this. You never think of number retirements or statues. I can’t even wrap my head around it. It doesn’t make sense.”
The statue is an action shot of him throwing a pitch.
His wife and kids were in attendance and helped pull off the cover to unveil the statue while his 2005 teammates looked on. The event kicked off a weekend reunion for the World Series team which went 11-1 in the postseason, beating the Houston Astros in four games to take home the title.
Buehrle was a five time all-star and four time gold glove winner, finishing fifth in Cy Young voting in 2005.
“Well deserved,” former right fielder Jermaine Dye said of the statue. “Great teammate. Great leader. Definitely someone you want on a ballclub to lead a pitching staff.”
The White Sox rotation – led by Buehrle – threw four complete games in the ALCS against the Boston Red Sox in 2005, missing a fifth complete game by 0.2 of an inning. It’s an unheard of accomplishment in today’s game as starters simply don’t go the distance like they used to.
Besides being a workhorse, Buehrle was a fast worker – a favorite trait of his catcher, A.J Pierzynski. And he wasn’t a someone who threw a lot of different pitches. He caught it and threw it without much input from behind the plate.
“He was fast,” Pierzynski said. “We had Jermaine Dye calling pitches from right field some games. We did come crazy things you wouldn’t recommend to people to do nowadays.”
Buehrle is a notoriously low key guy who hates the spotlight but even he was moved by the team’s decision to honor him with a sattue which joins former slugger Harold Baines in the right field concourse.
“I joked with him when I saw him,” Dye said. “I told him ‘man it takes you getting a statue to get you out of the house.”
Buehrle added: “I was literally nervous as can be today. This is not my comfort zone but by no means am I taking it lightly. This is incredible.”
