May 19, 2001, will be a day former Cottonwood High baseball standout Ryan Jensen will never forget.
It was the day of his major league pitching debut with the San Francisco Giants at Turner Field against the Atlanta Braves — a team he'd seen a million times on television growing up.
It was the day he recorded a base hit and an RBI in his first at-bat.
It was also the day he witnessed slugger Barry Bonds belt homer Nos. 18, 19 and 20 of what would be his record-breaking year when he knocked 73.
It was also the day he endured a 90-minute rain delay before taking the mound.
"It was a little nerve-wracking because I had an hour-and-a-half rain delay," Jensen recalls. "I was pacing in the clubhouse wondering if I was going to pitch."
After an initial delay, Jensen threw 5 2/3 innings and allowed just two runs on five hits, but another rain delay forced him out with the game tied a 2-2.
The Giants went on to win the game, 6-3, but Jensen didn't figure into the decision.
"I challenged everybody. I didn't panic like a normal rookie," he said.
He said he felt he could have continued after the second delay.
"My pitch count was down and I was in a pretty good groove," he said.
Fifty-one of his 80 pitches were strikes, and he struck out two and walked two.
It was that same type of tenacity that caught the attention of then-Southern Utah University baseball coach Jeff Scholzen back in 1995 when Jensen was a sophomore at Snow College in Ephraim, Utah.
Scholzen heard from some of his players that Jensen had a live arm, but he had only thrown a handful of innings at Snow. He mainly played right field.
The day Scholzen went to see Jensen play, he hit two homers and threw 94 mph in his relief inning in the seventh.
"I couldn't believe that no one knew about him," Scholzen said. Later that night Scholzen called Jensen and offered him a scholarship to play for the T-Birds. Jensen accepted.
"We had a hard time trying to figure out where to play him because we had so much depth," Scholzen said. He ended up playing right field and made appearances from the bullpen for the first half of the year because he hadn't pitched much since high school. Injuries to SUU starters in the middle of the year landed him in the starting rotation.
However, it was during a relief appearance early in the year that put Jensen on the national radar.
Thirty to 40 scouts were in St. George watching BYU play SUU. They had their eyes on several BYU players, but it was Jensen that ended up turning their heads.
With the T-Birds trailing 9-1 in the seventh inning of a nine-inning game, Scholzen decided to showcase his star.
"(Jeff) told me to throw as hard as I possibly could and don't worry about what happened," Jensen said. "After the game I was mobbed by scouts."
They liked his 90-plus fastball.
"I had a dozen calls that night and the whole circus began," said Scholzen, who is now a full-time scout for the Anaheim Angels.
Scholzen said the Giants, who eventually selected Jensen in the eighth round of the June 1996 draft, didn't know about him until seeing him in his last two starts. He fired a shutout and hit two homers against San Bernardino and then fanned 13 against Utah in his college finale.
He finished the year 3-7 with an 8.66 ERA for Southern Utah, but in the last seven weeks of the year he went 3-3 with a 5.45 ERA with 42 strikeouts in 44 1/3 innings pitched.
"He didn't know how good he was. He knew he threw hard but didn't know his stuff was major-league caliber," Scholzen said. "He came back the next fall (after playing a year in the minors) and worked out with us and was a completely different kid because he knew he had major-league stuff."
Currently, Jensen, who is SUU's first player to reach the majors, is 2-2 with a 3.54 ERA in five starts with the Giants. Last Saturday, in a relief appearance, he carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning against the Cincinnati Reds — a team that had tagged him for eight earned runs in 2 1/3 innings three weeks earlier.
He started off the year on fire. In his first start, he limited the Los Angeles to just three hits and no runs in seven innings. Six days later, he held the Dodgers to just five hits in 6 2/3 innings and didn't allow a run but didn't figure in the decision. In this third start against the San Diego Padres he went just two-thirds of an inning before leaving due to injury.
After his first three starts this year he was 1-0 with a 0.00 ERA. He allowed just nine hits and zero runs.
In his next start against Houston on April 21, he allowed only three earned runs but suffered the loss and his ERA rose to 1.40 before ballooning after his bad outing against the Reds.
E-MAIL: jhinton@desnews.com