SAN DIEGO -- Friday marks seven years since Trevor Hoffman got the call to the Hall. In 2018, Hoffman, one of the best closers in baseball history, became the third player to don a Padres cap in Cooperstown, joining Tony Gwynn and Dave Winfield.

The inscription on his plaque begins thusly: "Master of a mystifying changeup ..."

Of course, the path he took to that changeup was a remarkably San Diego-style one: It famously came about because of a game of beach volleyball.

That's long been the legend, at least. Specifically: Hoffman suffered a shoulder injury while playing beach volleyball shortly after the 1994 strike began. When he began to throw again, his fastball wasn't what it was before the injury.

Hoffman needed a new pitch and fast -- so he developed one of the best changeups that any pitcher has ever thrown. And the rest is history.

On the surface, the story seems more legend than truth. So, seven years after his Hall induction, I went straight to the source. And yep, Hoffman says, that's more or less the way it went down.

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¡°August in San Diego is a pretty good time to be on the beach,¡± Hoffman said. ¡°I just was a young, dumb kid. I got overzealous in a volleyball game and really felt my arm kind of lose its pressure, we¡¯ll say, when I dove.

¡°Ended up being a labrum issue. For me, I lucked out. It wasn¡¯t a [full] tear. But I came back from it without the same velocity.¡±

That was the scary part. Hoffman¡¯s fastball had always been his best pitch. He threw it to all four quadrants of the strike zone, with life. Prior to the injury, he says, his plan of attack wasn¡¯t too dissimilar from current Padres closer Robert Suarez, who relies on a fastball-heavy diet.

¡°When everything happened, my velocity backed up,¡± Hoffman said. ¡°I hurt the shoulder, and I¡¯m like, ¡®What I have isn¡¯t really dominant,¡¯ where I can be Robert Suarez and just bring the heater every time. I needed [the changeup].¡±

The transition happened swiftly, Hoffman recalls. He learned his changeup from fellow reliever Donnie Elliott. Legendary Padres broadcaster Ted Leitner once quipped that Elliott should be in the Padres Hall of Fame merely for teaching the pitch to Hoffman.

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There¡¯s no specific moment or day when Hoffman recalls learning the pitch. The two were simply playing catch when Hoffman tried the new grip for the first time. The same types of conversations happen on baseball fields everywhere.

¡°I¡¯m like, ¡®You¡¯ve got a good changeup, how do you hold it?¡¯¡± Hoffman recalled. ¡°I needed to tweak mine. It was not something I¡¯d feel comfortable throwing in big situations. He showed me ¡­ and it really made sense.¡±

"We're sitting in the outfield one day, and he asks me, 'Hey, how do you throw your changeup?'" Elliott recalled in a 2020 interview. "It was the most normal conversation.¡±

Except this one gave birth to a Hall of Fame pitch. Around that time, Hoffman was emerging as the Padres¡¯ closer. He would go on to save 601 games, including 552 in San Diego. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in the class of 2018.

Would any of that have been possible without the changeup? And would that version of Hoffman¡¯s changeup have even existed -- or been used in the same way -- if not for a game of beach volleyball?

The specifics are a bit murky. Hoffman recalls it being at 20th St. in Del Mar. Before the volleyball game started, he initially felt something in his shoulder while throwing a nerf football. But it was later that his shoulder fully gave out.

¡°I can¡¯t really recall that far back, that many specifics,¡± Hoffman said. ¡°But it was a point that I was midcourt and I read, we¡¯ll say, a changeup-type tip over the net. I recognized it, laid out for a pancake-type stop and the ball popped up. But I also went ¡®Oh, that didn¡¯t feel good.¡¯ I don¡¯t know if my partner got there in time to make the point work. But I think we kind of stopped right after that.¡±

Hoffman would never throw in the upper 90s again, his velocity sitting closer to 90 mph for the rest of his career.

¡°I came back from it without the same velocity,¡± Hoffman said. ¡°I don¡¯t know, I think I would have still sought out things from my teammates around me. Regardless of what happened with my shoulder, with Donnie being a teammate, I would¡¯ve certainly had changeup conversations with him.

¡°But it changed the type of pitcher that I was going to probably become. My trajectory was a lot of fastball and maybe a mediocre slider. I turned into a guy that had to throw strikes and be effective in the strike zone -- and have my wipeout pitch be a changeup.¡±

Thirty years later, Hoffman is still having those conversations. An adviser in the organization, earlier in the week he spoke with some Padres Minor Leaguers about their philosophy behind the changeup.

He, uh, does not advise beach volleyball as a fix. And to this day, he remains thankful that the Padres were in rebuilding mode in 1995, allowing him to work through some kinks.

¡°Ultimately,¡± Hoffman said, ¡°how the changeup came about, it all kind of worked out.¡±