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Sports

Naperville Native Hairston's Veteran Savvy a Boost to Brewers' World Series Run

The senior active member of Naperville's all-time baseball first family is once again a handy man in the right place for a team dreaming big postseason dreams.

While two platoons of idled baseball superstars are on the golf course now, outwardly enjoying the off-season, native Jerry Hairston, Jr. – the man for all positions on seemingly all teams – is smack dab in the middle of the Milwaukee Brewers’ World Series push.

And don’t think the well-heeled big names wouldn’t trade places with Hairston.

Scion of the most prolific baseball family in big-league history, the 35-year-old Hairston’s jack-of-all-trades ability, having played all over the diamond except at catcher since he broke in with the Baltimore Orioles in 1998, has made him valuable to contenders down the stretch.

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The New York Yankees acquired him in mid-season 2009 from the Cincinnati Reds. Hairston logged 45 games’ service late in the regular season in the Bronx, and ended up with his first World Series ring. He hopes history repeats itself after another 45-game run for the Brewers, having migrated in August from the Washington Nationals.

Playing third base, he’s helping himself after a 2-for-4 day Sunday, his double sprouting into a crucial Milwaukee run, as the Brewers took a 2-games-to-0 edge over the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League Division Series. He's now 5-for-14 in his postseason career.

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Staying 'normal' in the clutch

“Whenever a (clutch) situation arises, I just try to be normal,” Hairston said via phone Monday from Phoenix, where the Brewers had an off-day workout at Chase Field before Game 3, scheduled for 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.

 “The bigger the situation, players may try to do too much. What I always try to do is always be myself, whether it’s in the bottom of the ninth inning, somebody’s on or I just need to try to get on base. I just try to be me. Hopefully that will be good enough.”

Stress at this time of year? The Boston Red Sox felt it multiplied in droves, enduring the greatest September collapse in history in coughing up a nine-game wild-card playoff lead. Everyone handles the frantic nature of pennant-stretch and playoff baseball differently.

“There’s nothing wrong with pressure,” Hairston said. “Pressure is a good thing. It makes you focus, it makes you bear down. But, obviously, when you have veterans like myself, Mark Kotsay and Craig Counsell, guys that have been there before, it definitely helps.

“We can help the younger guys. There are a couple of guys on the club that are new to the playoffs. It’s the same game, but it’s magnified just a little bit more. Go out and play the game, and play like you always have to this point.”

Family, Naperville youth baseball taught him well

Hairston, who played for the Cubs in 2005-06 after coming over in the Sammy Sosa trade, once was that kid lending his ears to elders’ instruction. He is summoning everything he’s ever learned in baseball, starting from lessons taught from grandfather Sam Hairston, a longtime White Sox minor-league coach; father Jerry Hairston, Sr., a savvy Sox pinch-hitter, and youth baseball coaches in Naperville, where the Hairston family lived from 1983-99.

“Jerry Jr. was always a player who stood out no matter what league he was in,” said his father, who completed his 13th year as a coach in the Sox farm system in 2011. 

“He started at 8, by the time he was 10 and in the (Naperville) league they called the Majors, advanced players played, he was hitting home runs, even though he was the smallest kid on the field. He would also pitch shutouts and strike out 10 guys. He was the kind of kid who would get instruction and go out and execute. I would get him in the backyard and mimic different stances, and he’d pitch to me.”

Younger brother Scott followed in Jerry, Jr.’s baseball footsteps. The latter became an all-state player at before playing college ball at Southern Illinois University, from where the Orioles drafted him. After the Orioles, he played for the Cubs, Rangers, Reds, Yankees and Padres before splitting this season between the Nationals and Brewers. He finally was re-united with his brother as a teammate in San Diego in 2010.

Sluggers Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder are the Brewers mainstays, but the franchise, which played in just one World Series (1982) in its 43-season existence, has finally come into its own. Packed houses of 44,000-plus at Miller Park, famed for its tailgating fun in the parking lots, have really charmed Hairston.

“Coming in as an opponent, it was really tough,” he said of Brewers fans.  “They’re loud, they’re rowdy, they’re in from the first pitch on. Now, as a Brewer, it’s definitely a whole lot easier on the home side. They have your back and they’re hungry for winning baseball. The ’82 team was the last division winner.”

Hairston got lucky to draw the Diamondbacks as an opponent. Both he and Scott live in the Phoenix area in the off-season. His parents live in a Tucson suburb, two hours south.  The entire family will have a reunion in Chase Field Tuesday.

“Definitely it’s a lot easier on travel,” Hairston said. “We have 20-some tickets out (for Tuesday’s game). It’s definitely a fun time for the Hairston family. My brother went ahead and bought nine tickets early, and I bought nine.  We anticipated we had a chance to play Arizona. They were very accommodating.”

Business as usual mixes with pleasure, as the Hairston family business is baseball.

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