With Trevor Hoffman finally closing in (pun intended) on career save No. 600, I wanted to definitely to highlight the forthcoming achievement in some way.
I thought about a career retrospective but decided that would be best left for once his career is actually complete.
I considered a chronicle of his year-plus spent in a Brewers uniform, but that too isn’t a chapter that is finished being written.
A listing of accolades for Hoffman could write itself and easily eclipse 1,000 words without even trying, and a thoughtful piece about what it must mean for Hoffman to have fallen so hard and fast off what appeared to be the edge of the Chasm of Old Age only to right his ship, so to speak, and once again be considered as a reliable option just seems like it might be a bit premature.
In other words, that seems like it ought to wait until 600 has actually been reached as opposed to only being somewhere off on the seemingly distant horizon.
So instead, I offer this tried and true format of placing Hoffman in a list of his game-ending brethren because quite frankly, whether he never records another save or notches his 600th on Saturday (two games from now since he’s still only at 598), it won’t affect my feelings as to where he places in said list.
Read it, debate it in the comments, call me names, dispute my opinions, offer me new-school statistics to support your points and refute mine…or simply agree with me.
Either way, let’s have some fun with this, okay?