My advice to all you people out there in internetland is to pick something weird to follow over time.  My entry in this field was working to answer the question of who would be the last active MLB player who appeared in the Nintendo 64 game Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr.

The game was released in 1998, and I began tracking its dwindling roster of real-life players back in 2013.  That involved going team-by-team to record the roughly 800 players, then turning to my friend baseball-reference.com to tediously figure out their fate.

In 2013 there were 14 guys left.  As we embark on the 2017 season, there is but one glorious player still out there with what I can only assume is the Griffey menu music pulsing through his heart.

His name is Bartolo Colon, pitcher for the Atlanta Braves.

Today Colon seems like a no-brainer since he appears to be immortal when it comes to throwing a baseball, but I admit that I vastly underestimated him in the past.  My first prediction came in 2014 when there were 10 players left and I guessed that David Ortiz would be the last guy standing.  I figured his ability to just DH and nothing more would make for the easiest path.

I was wrong (assuming Papi stays retired, of course).  Last year, with only Colon, Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez left, I wrote that I would be “shocked” if ARod wasn’t the winner.  After all, he was the only one who had a 2017 contract.

But then ARod retired, and the Atlanta Braves for some reason decided the glorious man who will turn 44 years old in May should be in their 2017 rotation.  I hope he sees the $12.5 million salary as his award for achieving what none of his other 1998 peers could not.

And Griffey should send him something nice.