Todd Jones was a great teammate. He and I rode Vespa scooters to Fenway Park together for home games in Boston in 2003. That’s the shit you remember. Not the 319 career saves. He is a genuine human being and is a solid evaluator of character. Read below; you’ll see why I’m sharing this. 

So I’m flipping channels, ‘cause I’m old and that’s what I do now. I ran across my ex-teammate Mike Hessman. Minor leaguers aren’t often on TV, but he was on the cusp of setting a record. You might have heard by now, he hit a grand slam in the 7^th inning of a Toledo Mudhens game, becoming the all-time home run leader in minor league baseball. It was number 433!

Unfortunately, not everyone is Derek Jeter, playing 21 years in one city and going straight to Cooperstown. We hear about the guys who make it, the ones who get books written about them and their careers. Mike was not that guy. Talking to him, he belongs in the show and isn’t afraid to be there, but he’s proud of who he is and where he’s been. The book on Mike would be about what’s right about being a human being, not just a baseball player.

Mike was a teammate of mine in Detroit, a huge mammoth of a third baseman at 6’5”, 240. He’s a great defender and obviously plays hard and loves the game. But that’s just the public view. I know him personally, and he’s one of the most soft spoken, genuinely nice men I’ve ever played with. He had already made it to the big leagues as a 25 year old in 2003, so by the time I met him when he was 29, he was a full grown man. He knew the ropes and had been around.

You hear that he hits 433, and I know what you’re thinking. Stop!! He doesn’t need that backhanded compliment about how this guy made it long enough to hit that many homers, thinking “wow, that’s so sad, why wouldn’t he just move on and do something else?”

People try to put it into context, like how it’s so much easier to hit homers in the minors…Stop!! If you want to know this kind of brilliance didn’t translate into power in the show…Stop!!

Even if you’re thinking “well, that’s kind of cool, I’m happy for him. That’s a big number,” take a minute to stop and think about just how huge that number is and what he went through to get that.

The minors are called the bushes for a reason. They’re hard, and they’re supposed to be hard. You don’t want the phenom getting comfortable. Every organization is run on a shoestring budget, cutting corners where they can. Guess where you can cut the baseball to the bone? The minors.

The biggest tip of the cap should go to Mike’s wife, Sabrina. At 37, Mike was responsible for not just himself, but a family. Every time Mike was traded, released, called up – she packed it all up. The baseball life isn’t for everyone. The money is good in the big leagues, and at least there are private planes, chartered buses and great hotels.

In the bushes? It’s misery, even at AAA. No money, long days, and hard work. 4 AM wakeup calls, 2 connectors, flying in 4 hours before the game time. Bad hotels, not enough meal money to eat, and we all put up with it because we fight to get to where we want to be. Mike did that for 118 games in the big leagues over 18 years.

Mike deserves every bit of credit for getting every, and I mean EVERY inch out of his ability, for never quitting, never getting up, and fighting on. 433 homers is a big number, in any league, at any level.

I’ve been retired for 7 years now. I get asked all the time about what kind of guy is so and so? They never want to know about hard numbers, about batting averages and RBIs. They want to know what kind of guy he is. Whenever I hear about these feats, I stop to consider what kind of man it took to accomplish them.

Congrats to my buddy Mike, he’s a winner on the field and off. 433 is huge. But his humbleness and grace is what I remember about him.