The conversion began in 1991 at Cedar Rapids in the low Class A Midwest League. Trevor Hoffman, a shortstop at the University of Arizona, had played shortstop for two seasons in the Cincinnati Reds organization.

After a nondescript year at Class A Charleston in 1990 in the low Class A South Atlantic League, the decision was made that Hoffman, an 11th-round draft pick in 1989, would become a pitcher. And he would get a fresh start at this sizable change by not returning to Charleston but going instead to Cedar Rapids.

The manager there was Frank Funk, who had just come off being a pitching coach for three seasons with the Kansas City Royals and who had pitched in the major leagues.

Hoffman was 23. What Funk didn’t do was bombard him with information on pitching mechanics and overload Hoffman with information about balance point on the rubber, arm extension or pressure on the ball with a particular finger. The way Hoffman remembers it, Funk’s message pretty much boiled down to: Throw the ball over the plate and see what happens.

"Most of the things I talked to him about had to do with attitude," said Funk, a former Colorado Rockies pitching coach. "You have to change your attitude when you’re a pitcher, to being aggressive, to not like hitters.

"And that’s when we kind of started having him looking over his glove and kind of glaring in there at the hitter. I told him, ‘Don’t hem and haw around there on the mound. Get up there and be waiting for them, because when the hitter sees

the pitcher’s standing there for him, he says, ‘Dang, he’s in a hurry to get me out.’ "

Hoffman began the 1991 season in a setup role but became the closer when the pitcher filling that role was injured.

"I felt like, ‘OK, I found my niche,’ " said Hoffman, who spent the final month of that 1991 season at Class AA Chattanooga.

Hoffman was a power pitcher then, fastball and a hard slider that Funk recalled was "a slurve type of thing." The changeup that became Hoffman’s signature pitch would come later, following a shoulder injury. In Cedar Rapids, Hoffman’s repertoire and his mind-set were fairly basic.

"Most of it was, here it comes, see if you can hit it," Funk said. "But right from the get-go, he had pretty good command. He wasn’t somebody you had to get zeroed in. At first, he felt he wanted to get behind the mound and run up on there and let it go. He took to all the mechanics real well. He was just a darn good athlete."