Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Finally, No. 600 for one of the classiest players in the game!


Finally! Trevor Hoffman, you, your uncle, your brother, your father and me both figured we'd be talking about this so much sooner in the season than Sept. 7, but that's how it works sometimes. And to be honest, that made the story leading up to this - the 600th save for the man that is already the all-time saves leader - that much sweeter.
Who would have thought after the year he had last year that Trevor Hoffman would falter like he did at the beginning of the season and lose the closer role. The wrinkle in the whole story is something I heard in listening to the post game show on 620 WTMJ that Hoffman, while taking a backseat to the man who became the closer, John Axford, became one of the mustached man's biggest fans and friends. If that's not the class that makes the celebration on the field and the photo above that much sweeter, I don't know what is.
There is a line in sports between cocky and confident and in baseball confidence is something that is more evident and comes and goes more than any other sport. Hoffman lost his at the beginning of the year when he could not save a game for the life of him and he was big enough to give up the role, but not give up on the team and himself to get back to where he was. Let's be real here and say Trevor's pitches are not the best, not the fastest and everyone knows what they are going to see from him. That doesn't make it any easier to hit off him, though, because he is that smart and is at the ballpark at 2 in the afternoon on the day of a 7 p.m. gamenight. Yes, at 41 Hoffman is the epitome of hard work and every player on that team respects the hell out him. To be honest it's hard being as big of a fan as I am of that team to not get goosebumps and not get a little misty eyed watching the final out and the celebration that follows with the team and Hoffman's family. You could see how much he wanted to get there and how much the guys were pulling for him to get back into the ninth inning and to 600.


That video is one I watched a bit when word came down from a certain friend of mine (We'll call him The Rog for this episode of The Way). Save 478 tied the record back in 2007 and just three seasons later he's up to 600 and at 41 has shown in recent weeks he's able to be smart enough to step back and figure things out.



Alright, time to finish off this blog because it's late. The other big sports news of the day was that Reggie Bush is likely to have his Heisman Trophy taken away. For some reason, the first thing I thought of was "I wonder how Kim Kardashian is doing." Yeah, strange I know. So I hit up a couple dude blogs and I'd say she's doing quite fine. What do you think?

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