Is Todd Helton coming back to the Rockies?
Written by Adrian Gregory Glover // August 7, 2012 // Feature, MLB // No comments
If you’re a baseball person you admire Todd Helton. As he faces hip surgery on Friday, you’re hoping that he’ll return to the Rockies next year.
Even if you’re rooting against him, you don’t want a guy who has done almost everything right to leave the game in an injury-enforced fizzle.
Todd Helton at the very least should come back for at least another run to try and walk off the field with an ending that is worthy of whatever DVD that MLB will eventually put together to commemorate his career.
But he leaves this year in pain and not a little bit of it, a heaping amount.
“Even if we were in a pennant race, we would have done this. He was in too much pain,” Rockies trainer Keith Dugger told the Denver Post. ”He was having good days and bad days. But we weren’t going to give him anti-inflammatories or shots to get through this. This gives him a chance to get it right.”
The goal for now is to have him ready for spring training next year but there are whispers that he might not return.
Teammate Matt Belisle doesn’t have a doubt. “You watch. This is going to give him a chance to focus on one thing: rehabbing and getting this right for spring,” Belisle said. “I have no doubt that he will come back.”
“I don’t even want to think about the Rockies without Todd,” Belisle said. “It just seems so weird.”
“He was so good for so long,” shortstop Troy Tulowitzki said. “You see what he’s accomplished and you realize why people talk about him as a Hall of Famer.”
Ding! Helton has built a lot of goodwill up over the course of his career and he has a legit shot at making the Hall-of Fame.
He’s been the centerpiece to more than a couple of amazing moments and it is not hard to predict the reasoning as to why he could as some are saying that he’s ready to turn the Rockies over to a new face that will lead the team.
He’s been a classic slugger that might not want to be seen in the light of someone that moving forward would be a role-player.
Maybe that would be Helton’s idea of fizzling out.
