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It’s probably over.
The undisputed best pitcher in team history is now a thing of the past; a memory resigned to whichever part of our brain we’d like to place him. I will remember the perfect game and the grand slam and the King’s Court, of course, but more than that, I’ll remember the feeling of watching Félix Hernández pitch every fifth day.
Amid some truly awful teams, who were so bad that belaboring that point any more sort of takes its meaning away, Fifi was a true ace. He took the mound with gusto when only 5,000 people could be bothered to attend his starts. He won a Cy Young and made All-Star teams but also applied his on-field superstardom to other walks of life. Félix Hernández is a man who chose to stay in Seattle from the first time he threw a pitch in 2005, with Mariner icon Wiki Gonzalez behind the plate, to his final outing in front of his loyal subjects on September 26, 2019. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts, Félix.
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Oh yeah, um, you’re here to guess all of the pitching coaches Félix worked for. There’s eight of them in 14 years. Dave Duncan was once the Cardinals pitching coach for 16 years straight. Rick Honeycutt, the current Dodgers’ pitching coach, has held that job since 2006. Again, thank you so much for sticking around, King.