Real-life Crash Davis retires as career Minor League home run champion

Crash Davis is a fictional baseball icon. Kevin Coster's character from the beloved baseball film "Bull Durham" coined three oft-used press conference cliches, helped Nuke LaLoosh get a handle on the baseball life and retired as the all-time career leader in Minor League home runs.

In real life, the all-time career Minor League home run champion is a guy named Mike Hessman, who broke the record this past season with his 433rd career MiLB dinger in a 10-8 loss for the Toledo Mud Hens.

On Saturday, Hessman cemented that record-breaking blast as his last when he officially announced his retirement after 2,095 career Minor League games.

Congratulations to @KingHess27 on a historic career. Read about his homer record here: https://t.co/Fh9MbUyhKk https://t.co/hU0oZoffTw …

- MiLB.com (@MiLB) November 28, 2015

The Braves selected Hessman in the 15th round of the 1996 MLB Draft. He played 109 MLB games for the Braves, Tigers and Mets and played for the Orix Buffaloes in Japan for the 2011 season, but obviously spent most of his career in the Minors. 

In those 109 big-league games, Hessman cranked an additional 14 homers. We wish him luck in his second act as the manager of a Minor League team in Visalia/Susan Sarandon's boyfriend.