AA Lakers have a southpaw leader in Kostya Hoffman

Kostya Hoffman readily tells you that baseball is his sport, and his three years pitching with the Kalispell Lakers AA squad bears that out.

There was once another love.

“I used to ski,” the 18-year-old says, “But I got injured too much. I was in the hospital every year, and I didn’t like it.”

Adds his mom Trista, “I was like, ‘You know, you keep landing yourself here in the ER…”

She pauses.

“The first time he played baseball,” she adds, “he had a broken arm.”

In the end a bruised sternum, suffered when he wrecked on a double-black run at Whitefish Mountain, was the final clue that he should stick to a different diamond. From that inauspicious baseball beginning — a coach rigged his glove (right) hand with a paddle to knock down the ball, so he could pick it up and throw — the Glacier High product is now a left-handed leader on the Lakers’ pitching staff, and a solid hitter near the top of the order.

“A 4.0 student, an AP student, works 30-40 hours a week (at Famous Dave’s) on top of school and on top of baseball,” said Lakers head coach Ryan Malmin. “That’s a special kind of kid that can do that, right? It takes an extraordinary young man to balance all that stuff and stay humble and focused and invested.”

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Kostya is pronounced, “COE-sha,” and the name is a derivative of Constantine in his native Kazakhstan. He is adopted, and has known this since he was 6; he was brought to Kalispell by Trista, who had at the age of 39 decided to be a mother.

“I’d dated all these guys who didn’t want to start a family,” she said. “I was getting older, and thought, ‘The world needs moms.’”

She ordered and read a book about adoption, learning how complicated the process could be — and that’s for two parents. She was single, but had a long term job at the US Forest Service, the support of the adoption agency and her mom and stepdad, and an idea that Vietnam was the place to go.

Then Vietnam ended its program, and the agency suggested a place halfway around the world.

“You know how they say if you dig straight through the Earth you come out at China?” Trista Hoffman asks. “From Montana you’d actually dig to Kazakhstan.”

She and her parents went over and stayed three and a half weeks. It was a trial: Apparently authorities needed convincing that she was a good match for a toddler left on a landing on one of those USSR-built massive apartment houses.

“There are 80 different ethnicities in Kazakhstan,” Trista notes. “I didn’t know gender, age, disability, ethnicity. Then they brought him out, and he was perfect.”

Trista had to leave without him once because of travel rules — this was 2005 — then return again, for two weeks this time. He’d spent months in a hospital, and learned to walk there, dealing with HIB, pneumonia and then chickenpox before reaching his orphanage.

Now he was in Kalispell, and his mom found him a little yellow forester’s helmet. To her surprise Kostya almost never wore it. Instead he placed it upside down on the couch and tossed a ball at it, for hours.

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There is a Kazakh proverb that reads, “Who a boy will become is evident from an early age.”

By age 3 Hoffman was outside heaving the ball on and over the roof. By 8 he was playing organized baseball. Not long after that he was attending one of Malmin’s pitching camps.

“Four years ago I was on the (Lakers) B; about a quarter way through the season I was moved and played in the A Districts,” Hoffman said. “The next year I was PO — pitcher-only — on the AA team.

“Last year was my first year actually hitting. I didn’t hit often. I had about 80 at-bats and didn’t do that well.”

This year is different: Hoffman hits second in the lineup, and starts in left field. If the team has a three- or four-game set, he usually plays left once, then starts on the hill the next game. Then it’s back to the outfield.

He likes hitting, and always has. “I used to hit bombs,” he says of his younger days. “Lefty pop.”

Malmin appreciates Hoffman’s work in the batter’s box, but more so his results on the mound, where he puts a two-seam fastball, a four-seamer and a curve to use.

“He’s had some tough losses,” said Malmin, who notes the lefty is the Lakers’ hardest thrower with the possible exception of Nic Gustafson. “But the important thing is he fills the zone with strikes and puts pressure on guys.

“Kostya’s key to success is mostly using his two-seam and not throwing it as hard as he can, but just let it work and help create that sink and tail.”

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The Lakers are 28-21, a fall off from a 23-11 start. They were swept four games by defending state champion Helena, then dropped two to the first-place Billings Royals before prevailing Saturday 16-8, with Hoffman getting four hits and scoring four times.

Early in the season the Lakers swept a pair of games from the Senators, but they’ve since had a pair of players return from college.

“Helena’s just a good team,” Hoffman said. “They battled really well against us and just plain beat us. I don’t think there’s anything we did.

“They were more confident — and I think that’s something our team could work on a little bit.”

Malmin tends to agree.

“One through six in their lineup are veteran, three-year starters,” he said. “Whereas we have 2.5 returning starters.

“We got punched and were on our heels a little bit, which is fine. Last year we were on our heels going into the state tournament, and we ended up a play away from the state championship and earning a spot at regionals.”

Two games against one of the teams below the Lakers in the Montana Legion standings, the Medicine Hat Moose Monarchs, are set for today. The Billings Scarlets, one of the teams ahead of the Lakers — the Scarlets ended Helena’s 20-game win streak Monday, 10-6 — hit town Friday for a four-game set.

The State AA tournament starts July 27 in Billings.

“I feel like we can definitely improve on some stuff, but as a team we’re close, tight-knit, and I feel like the coaches are doing a great job of making the practices and games fun,” Hoffman said. “But practices are difficult enough that the games are not that difficult, if that makes sense.”

By mid-August Hoffman plans to be at Sonoma State in Rohnert Park, Calif. He’ll try for a spot on its Division II baseball program. In Malmin’s eyes the Lakers’ loss is the Seawolves’ gain.

“He’s been awesome to work with,” Malmin said. “For honestly, 10 years.”

Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 758-4463 or fneighbor@dailyinterlake.com.