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 No need to worry now.
On Tuesday, Rockies manager Clint Hurdle and pitching coach Bob Apodaca called over the right-hander and told him he would start Game 4 in Denver on Sunday night.
After 12 years in the organization and a comeback from life-threatening blood clots three years ago, he wanted nothing more than pitch in the franchise's first Series. Yet he didn't want to spoil the chemistry of a club that had done just fine without him, winning 21 of 22 game to go from wild-card wannabes to NL champs.
"Even if they would have decided to leave me off, I would have been OK with the decision because of the way the team's been playing," Cook said. "I mean, you can't take away from what's been going on.
"I see both sides of it."
Cook, who was the Rockies' opening-day starter, hasn't pitched in a major league game since Aug. 10 because of a strained muscle in his side. He aggravated the injury in a Sept. 1 rehab start at Triple-A Colorado Springs and then watched Colorado's spectacular September from afar.
"I just kept getting myself prepared to be in this situation," Cook said. "But sitting on pins and needles? That would just be something else to worry about that I had no control over."
Cook, deemed too rusty before the NLCS, pitched in a simulated game Saturday at Coors Field while the Rockies waited through a record eight-day layoff for the World Series. After walking his first two batters, he proved he was healthy and ready to return to the rotation by retiring 12 of 16 hitters.
"I feel great," Cook said. "The first two batters were kind of rough, but after that I felt good about everything. I was able to settle down and make my pitches."
With Cook, who was 8-7 with a 4.12 ERA, rookie Franklin Morales goes to the bullpen, giving Hurdle a third left-handed reliever to go with Jeremy Affeldt and Brian Fuentes. The odd man out is reliever Taylor Buchholz, who hasn't pitched in the playoffs.
Factoring into the decision was Cook's performance against the Red Sox in June, when he lost a 2-1 decision at Boston despite allowing just two runs on seven hits in 7 1-3 innings.
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This weekend, he'll face another major league lineup for the first time in 89 days.
"It'll be like coming into the season at the beginning of the year where you have a couple of spring training games under your belt," Cook said. "My spring training games just happened to be rehab starts in the instructional league and a simulated game. I've got to be able to put those things aside and just go out and perform."
Hurdle had said the Rockies needed to guard against an emotional decision. Cook has been in the organization longer than anybody on the roster except Todd Helton, and made a comeback after developing life-threatening blood clots in his lungs during a game against the Cincinnati Reds three years ago.
The Rockies, who successfully reinserted Willy Taveras into the lineup for the NL championship series, contemplating adding Cook into the roster, too, but deemed him too rusty and such a move too risky.
Hurdle said leaving Cook off the roster for that last round was the toughest decision he's made in his six-year managerial career.
"If they are like me, they've been doing this since they were 6 in the backyard saying,
'You know what? I'm going to be in the World Series.' And you had it all planned out and you make believe as a kid," Hurdle said.
"Well, we're not make believe as kids anymore. We're going to be there and we can only take 25."
And this time, Cook is among them.
"The opportunity to tell him, 'You're going to get the ball in Game 4' was very special," Hurdle said. "And it was meaningful. But again, for all the right reasons. If it was about sentimentality, he would have pitched in the National League Championship Series."
[Associated Press;
by Arnie Stapleton]
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
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