SAN DIEGO – Torey Lovullo stood on the mound in Denver earlier this month, waiting for his reliever to jog in from the bullpen, when the strangeness of the situation occurred to him.
“I thought to myself, ‘I’m getting ready to put Jimmie Sherfy, a little kid I watched grow up, into one of the most important games of the year,’” Lovullo said. “How amazing and ironic is that at the same time? He took the ball and I said, ‘Let’s do this.’”
Sherfy, a diminutive rookie reliever for the Diamondbacks, has known Lovullo, the team’s first-year manager, for about a decade.