Kerry Wood explains why he retired, what he would say to Bartman
Former Chicago Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood joined the show to talk about why he retired and what’s next.
Wood said that he had been thinking about retiring the last couple of years. He said it was getting too hard to get his body ready every day.
“Once the shoulder injury happened in ’05, ’06, it was a grind,” Wood said.
Dan asked if the Cubs were in contention would he have stuck around. “I don’t think I could,” Wood said. “I really felt I was handcuffing Dale not being able to use me in back-to-back days. The body wasn’t responding. … I spent enough time on the DL. I didn’t want to end that way.
Dan asked Wood what he would say to Steve Bartman. “Sorry,” Wood said. “I respect the fact that he has never went out and talked about it or tried to make money off it.”
An image from Kerry Wood's new kids book "All You Can Be"
Wood also looked back at the 20K game against the Astros. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” Wood said. “I didn’t know any better.” Wood admitted he had a big strike zone that day, and said he was really scared they were going to call the game because of rain.