From his days playing baseball and football at the Phenix City Boys Club, through a 17-year Major League Baseball career that ended Sunday, Tim Hudson always had his doubters.
And he always proved them wrong.
“I’ve always been small compared to everyone else,” Hudson told the Ledger-Enquirer in 1997 on the eve of the Southeastern Conference tournament at Golden Park when he was playing for Auburn. “Baseball’s not a sport where you have to be a big guy to do well, but I’ve had to prove myself, no matter what level I was on. I’ve always had to show people.”
What a show he put on.
He helped Glenwood win back-to-back state championships. He set records at Chattahoochee Valley Community College. He had what is still one of the best seasons in Auburn and SEC history in 1997 — he was the first player to be named All-SEC at two positions (pitcher and outfielder) in the same season.
But he saved his best for The Show.
In 17 years with three major league teams — the Oakland A’s, the Atlanta Braves and the San Francisco Giants — Hudson, who is generously listed as 6-foot-1, 175 pounds on the Giants roster, won 222 games, the most among active pitchers when his career ended Sunday. Only 72 players in Major League history have won more games than Hudson did.
Gary Head Jr. was the Glenwood catcher during Hudson’s junior season. He said the doubters were out even back then.
“When we were in high school, it was, ‘He is just putting up those numbers because he is at Glenwood.’ ” Head said. “Then he signed with CV and he did really well and it was, ‘That’s just at the lower junior college level.’
“Then he signed with Auburn. His first week, he pitched really well against Virginia Commonwealth, and it was, ‘That’s not the SEC, though.’
“Then he hit a lot of home runs and broke Frank Thomas’ RBI record, and it was, ‘That’s because of the aluminum bats.’
“Then when he got drafted it was, ‘His little body won’t hold up in pro ball.’ ”
“No doubt, he heard them.”
Head said Hudson was motivated by his doubters. But it went beyond that.
“There is a difference in Tim and pretty much anyone I have ever known,” Head said. “I heard someone say the other day that when you get motivated, that lasts a day, a week, maybe a couple of months. They said, ‘Don’t get motivated, get disciplined.’ Disciplined is when you are not motivated and you do it anyway.
“And that is where he was different than anyone else. He had the discipline.”
Head said he saw Hudson’s discipline after Hudson’s first year in the minor leagues.
“When he had just gotten drafted out of Auburn and he was living in Birmingham,” Head said, “Kim (Hudson’s wife) was in law school and Tim was in the minors. He played that first year in the minors.
“When the minor league season ended, he got a job working with Two Men and a Truck. He got a job moving furniture all day. He had to be there at 6 in the morning. He talked about how his fingers would hurt. It was strenuous on him. It was not an easy job. He had to do that to pay bills. There were a lot of days he wanted to just go home after leaving work, but he still went and worked out. He didn’t miss workouts.”
CVCC coach Adam Thomas and Hudson have been friends for more than 30 years. They played football and baseball together and against one another at the Phenix City Boys Club.
“Looking back, you could see the drive and the work ethic Timmy had that was far and above what you see with most all guys,” Thomas said. “He was always working to be a very good baseball player. He had a desire. He wanted to play major college baseball, and I think after his freshman year, he figured out he had draft potential.”
the early years
Thomas said even then Hudson was tiny, very tiny.
“But he was athletic in a small body,” Thomas said. “He was always small and skinny. But there was lightning in that body.”
Hudson started at Smiths Station High before transferring to Glenwood after his freshman year. Already a good hitter, Hudson didn’t start pitching until his junior season.
“He was not a pitcher until he got to Glenwood,” Thomas said. “But he was such a good hitter and had speed. You looked at him and wondered how he could hit with such power. He had so much wrist snap to make the ball jump off the bat like it did.”
“A lot of people talk about that he wasn’t very good in high school and no one knew he was going to be as good as he is,” Head said. “And I agree with that, no one can tell someone is going to have the success as a major leaguer, much less a 17-year career that he had.
“But he was good, very, very good in those days. What jumped out to me was how much pop he had when he hit. He could hit for power, but that wasn’t necessarily his game, but he could hit it a lot further than I could, and I am a lot bigger.”
headed to college
Hudson was not highly recruited coming out of Glenwood, a small player coming out of a small school.
But B.R. Johnson, the coach at CVCC, took a chance on him.
“(Hudson’s) sophomore year was the year that I caught him,” Thomas said. “He threw so hard. My hand stayed swollen the first game of year through the postseason. It was hard to catch his ball in the pocket because it moved so much, so I caught a lot of pitches off the thumb and fingers.
“He started experimenting with that split finger that year. I had to become a blocking machine because his stuff was nasty.”
After two years at CVCC, Auburn coach Hal Baird signed him to play for the Tigers.
“There was a professional scout in the area that had seen Tim on a regular basis, and he was just effusive about him, his makeup, his competitive drive as well as his stuff,” Baird said. “We had tremendous confidence in the scout, so that’s what made us take a look. We went and evaluated him, and we could see the scout was right on. It was easy to see that Tim was off the charts.”
Hudson’s first season was an adjustment for the right-hander.
“We had a rebuilding team that year (1996), it might have been the youngest team we ever had,” Baird said. “He had to make a couple of adjustments early in the year. I think it was a spring break bullpen session, and from that point on he never got hit hard, except for maybe one time the rest of the two years he was here.
“It takes some guys six to eight months to process adjustments, he picked them up in one to two days. I’ve never seen anything quite like that mental drive.”
The following year Hudson was nearly unbeatable. He went 15-2 with a 2.97 ERA. He also hit .396 with 18 homers and 95 RBIs.
“It’s easy for hyperbole after the fact, but you look at that season historically, and I don’t think there’s a player that’s done that,” Baird said. “You have to remember this was a time when bats were unregulated. Teams were regularly hitting 150 home runs and .330 as a team, so from a pitching standpoint it was incredible. He led the nation in wins, was top five in strikeouts and ERA, then he hit nearly .400 and had 90-something RBIs. … I think it was the single best season a college player ever had.
“We had a good team, and I think we had five pitchers taken in the first six rounds of the draft, so there was a lot of talent, but there wasn’t much doubt who the bell cow was.”
on to the majors
Hudson was taken by the A’s in the sixth round of the 1997 draft.
He won 92 games in six seasons with Oakland before being traded to the Braves prior to the 2005 season. In nine seasons in Atlanta, he won 113 games. He signed with the Giants as a free agent, spending the last two seasons of his career with San Francisco. He won another 17 games to finish at 222-133 with a 3.49 ERA.
Injuries over the back half of his career likely robbed him of a chance to get to 250 wins and a much better chance of getting into the hall of fame.
same ol' timmy
Hudson has always had a big heart, Head and Thomas both said. Through the Hudson Family Foundation, Hudson and his wife have looked for ways to help those less fortunate. Hudson also bought the Phenix City Boys Club property when it came up for sale several years ago. He and Head founded the CV Baseball Academy to teach the game and have a positive impact on the youth in the area.
Hudson also gave a sizeable donation to Thomas and CVCC to renovate Howard Lake Field, the baseball complex on CVCC’s campus.
“The reason he is so popular with every team he has been on is the same reason we love him around here,” Head said. “What you see is what you get. At a certain point, everyone can turn on their serious face, can have a serious conversation.
“The worst thing that can happen for that foundation is to have a board meeting with Tim there because he is going to be clowning around, telling jokes, that kind of stuff. He is a fun guy. He doesn’t take things too serious. He has a good sense of humor. He has never had that big league personality like I think I am bigger than you. He probably helps the new guys more than anybody.”
Head said Hudson’s generosity to strangers didn’t start when he got to the majors.
“We were in Country’s one day in Auburn and there is a man in the back, and they are about to run him out because he is just sitting there not doing anything but drinking coffee,” Head said. “He didn’t have any money. Tim saw it and told them he wanted to buy him something to eat. Tim cut down his own order and drank water, so he could have something to eat. He was in college and he never had any money, but he wanted to buy that man something to eat.”
Thomas said Hudson’s 17-year major league career did nothing to change him.
“What is so great is that he is so humble,” Thomas said. “He is the same as he was 30 years ago, running around as that 50 pound kid in football pads. Nothing has gone to his head. He is just the same guy who always worked hard.
“It is amazing to think that one of your friends, one of your childhood friends, is a big leaguer with that kind of success and a potential hall of famer,” Thomas said. “I mean holy cow.”
— Michael Niziolek contributed to this report.