There is a number in baseball that separates the merely excellent from the genuinely, stubbornly, unforgettably enduring, and that number is 200, and Hozpog Knifecrawler of the Numenor Kings is currently sitting at 199 wins with one start — perhaps one good afternoon's work — standing between him and it.
Mind you, 200 wins does not arrive by accident. You do not stumble into 200 wins the way you stumble into a second breakfast that someone else has already laid out. You earn each one, inning by inning, through the kind of accumulated durability that makes a career look, in retrospect, less like a career and more like a geological formation. Knifecrawler has been pitching professionally long enough that the Kings' current 46-30 record — good for second in the Goblin Division, six games back of the Lothlorien Lumberjacks and firmly in the thick of the Mordor Conference playoff picture — has been built, in no small part, on the understanding that he will take the ball and do something useful with it.
I'll say this much: there is something almost unsettling about watching a pitcher approach 200 the way Knifecrawler is approaching it, which is quietly, incrementally, without apparent fuss. The Kings are a team with genuine October ambitions — sitting four games clear of the Ravenhill Darkwings in the division standings — and their rotation does not have the luxury of ceremony. If win number 200 comes, it will come in the middle of a pennant chase, which is probably the only way Knifecrawler would want it.
The Goblin Division is not a forgiving neighborhood for sentiment. Lothlorien is running away with the thing — fifty wins, bless them — and the Kings need every start from their veteran arm to stay relevant. But here's the thing: Knifecrawler has been relevant for long enough to earn 199 of these. One more is not a miracle. It is, at this point, just Tuesday.
Watch for it to happen sometime this week, and watch for Numenor to treat it like what it is: history, and then back to work.