Archives: Baseball Remembers Troy Percival

Just a reminder that I’m on vacation this week, so I’ll be re-running some editions from the archives.

One of the oldest in my Baseball Remembers series dates from March, 2023, when I wrote about Angels closer Troy Percival. The series has evolved over the last couple of years, as you’ll see. The pieces are longer now, and generally I focus on players from further back in baseball history. I think that’s generally more interesting and educational, but I’m still attracted to stories like Percival’s. He wasn’t a super-high draft pick or highly-touted prospect. It took him four years of minor league ball to get a big league shot, and even then it was sort of a desperation move by a team in need of a completely overhauled bullpen. The fact that he took advantage of that opportunity and seized the closer’s role from a future Hall of Famer makes his tale a pretty compelling one, to me anyway.