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In 2009, the Padres, the team that drafted you, traded you to the White Sox. You’d turned down the trade the first time ownership proposed it. To what degree were you apprehensive about moving from a pitcher’s park to the offense-heavy National League?

That didn’t bother me at all. You can look at the numbers and just see you’re probably gonna have better numbers in the NL, but at that point in time I didn’t care where I went and what my numbers were. That’s the sole reason that I’m still playing baseball, is to have a chance to win the ultimate prize.

I didn’t want to leave San Diego, and I had said no to this trade before, but because ownership was changing and because of the contract I’d just signed and what the payroll was going to, I had to leave. I had a no-trade [clause], so I got to have some input on where I got traded. Chicago is a team that cares and they’re a team that’s about one thing, and that’s trying to find a way to be on top at the end. At that point in time I was all in, still am.

You were traded while you were still on the disabled list, which is unusual.

I got traded in the middle of an injury—my ankle injury—so in ’09 I came back and just kind of flukishly had some success. I was far, far from healthy. I came back in 2010 still nursing that ankle injury. Yeah, it was a rough, rough go. My first few years in Chicago were not much fun.

**That July you threw a fastball to Mike Napoli and suffered an injury that no one in Major League Baseball has ever suffered before. You didn’t just tear your tendon, you actually ripped it completely free of the humerus bone. **

I was doing things quite differently than I ever had done ’em before. That messed up my shoulder and stuff. It started hurting in spring training of 2010; it didn’t take about half a season; my lat just kept tearing and tearing. We didn’t know that, of course. We had some MRIs and things got by us. But I can’t imagine at any time in my 31 years on the planet hurting any more than I hurt at that particular moment. It was quite painful.