Just one week into the 2016 season, a Bunyanesque hero has emerged on the baseball scene, in the form of Trevor Story, the rookie shortstop for the Colorado Rockies who has already hit seven home runs. The following is the true story* of Trevor Story.

*Little, if any, of the following story is true.

It was an unusually frigid day in mid-November, at least by Texas standards. The winds were high, sending the sagebrush skittering across the arid subdivision like a swinging bunt.

Mrs. Cover “Ma” Story, the wife of hulking oil rig contractor, Likely, and mother of five children – affectionately named First, Second, Third, Bible and, for the youngest, Short – was home tending to her brood. Already nine months pregnant with her sixth child, she harbored fanciful dreams of this next one becoming truly special. Knowing it was a boy, she planned to name him “Joe,” or possibly “Human Interest.”

Dark clouds gathered over the Story’s one-story ranch house that November day in 1992. The family’s shaggy dog barked at the approaching storm. But Ma felt the skies were portentous, an announcement from the heavens that her newborn would be a hero for the ages. Minutes later, Ma’s water broke.

After many hours of labor, a mighty child emerged from Ma’s womb. Likely, who had rushed over from his job at the oil field, told her that he intended to name the child Trevor, to honor a friend who had died in a tragic cured pork accident while attending a Rangers game.

Over the next 20-odd years, the Trevor Story story/myth/legend would continue to grow. In the first grade, he told his own autobiographical story during story time. When he was a 10-year-old Little Leaguer, he hit three home runs… in one at-bat. In the summer between seventh and eighth grade, he was Bar Mitzvahed, even though he isn’t Jewish. In high school, he smote a dragon.

As a student-athlete at LSU, Story may have accomplished his most audacious feat when he made Baton Rouge seem like an interesting place simply by being there.

Now, this past week, the Trevor Story story reached its climax. With Likely, Cover, First, Second, Third, Bible and Short all in attendance, Trevor kicked off the story of his Major League career by hitting two home runs in his first game.

With a pedigree such as his, it’s a virtual guarantee that Story’s story will end in Cooperstown. Now standing just 54 long balls short of tying the real single-season home run record, Story is sure to easily eclipse the mark by mid-August, before going on to set a new number that only he will be capable of topping.

Anyone who enjoys a great story – whether it be funny, long-made-short, melodramatic,  or other – will surely want to tune in to watch the next chapter of this story unfold. For, as we all know, the first week of the baseball season, and all the stories that come with it, are sure to carry on, never ending, never even waning, setting the stage for the rest of the story to come. Just ask Story’s team. They haven’t finished under .500 in April since 2010. And we’ve all seen how that April success carried over into outstanding,  yearlong, playoff-caliber performances.