There are days in baseball when the number arrives before the game does, when you know walking into the park that something historic is about to happen — and then the game itself goes and complicates matters in the way that games tend to do, as if history were not quite sufficient entertainment on its own.
Alrond Hubbard, Jr. slugged career home run No. 500 on October 1st, doing so with characteristic excess: three home runs in a single game, the 500th arriving with the weight of a thing long anticipated and the timing of a thing entirely unhelpful to the Old Forest Merry Fellows, who lost to the Minas Tirith Titans 9-8 despite Hubbard, Jr.'s three-swing statement of purpose. Mind you, the man hit 500 career home runs and his team still lost by a run, which is the sort of cold mutton the Merry Fellows did not need entering the postseason — but here's the thing: the number itself is warm, and it will keep.
At 29 years old, Hubbard, Jr. is the kind of player who reaches 500 home runs and makes you feel slightly embarrassed that you weren't paying closer attention. He has been the Merry Fellows' designated hitter for several seasons now, setting into that lineup the way a good second breakfast sets into a long morning — quietly essential, never flashy, and you notice its absence long before you properly appreciated its presence. The Merry Fellows finished the regular season at 92-70 and enter October as Elf Division champions (as MESN covered when they clinched), and the Hubbard, Jr. question all along has been whether his bat would be warm when October came. Three home runs on the season's final day suggests the answer is: rather.
I'll say this much: 500 is a number that organizes a career, that divides everything into before and after. *Hubbard, Jr. is 29, which means the after could still be very long indeed, and the Merry Fellows — who are currently navigating the playoff bracket with the focused intensity of a Hobbit who has missed elevenses and intends to make someone pay — will need every yard of it.