Nationals, baseball remember Roy Halladay

A ton of remembrances today for the passing of two-time Cy Young Award winner Roy Halladay, who died tragically in a plane crash in the Gulf of Mexico near St. Petersburg, Fla., on Tuesday.

Nationals right-hander Max Scherzer remembered being motivated by watching how hard Halladay worked in spring training.

My deepest condolences to the Halladay family during this difficult time. The world lost a great one too early today #RIP34 pic.twitter.com/njBOuXZ9FW

-- Max Scherzer (@Max_Scherzer) November 7, 2017

Another nice remembrance from former major leaguer Michael Young:

I'll never forget Aug '13. Doc and I were two months away from retirement. He was hurt, clearly. He was still pitching tho. One day in Wrigley he was throwing 83, and all over the place. I go to the mound and he just said "everything hurts."
He wouldnt come out. Always fighting.

-- Michael Young (@MikeyY626) November 7, 2017

A few MLB Network analysts had very thoughtful memories of Halladay:

Dan Plesac, Halladay's Toronto Blue Jays teammate from 1998-1999 and 2000-2002:

"I have been fortunate over my career, and I've played with some greats. I played with Randy Johnson in Arizona, Roger Clemens, Pat Hentgen, a Cy Young Award winner. (Halladay) worked as hard as any baseball player, position player and/or pitcher. He loved his craft, and when he started to relearn his craft with that lower arm angle, when he came back up, to see this different kind of guy, I remember watching his first few starts thinking, 'I'll believe it when I see it,' because you see a lot of guys try a lot of different things to create movement and create arm angles. It doesn't work all that often. ... This is the only guy that I can recall - and I've been since 1986 involved around big league baseball - where a guy completely re-changed his throwing motion. You don't see that very often, and usually when guys do that, they revert back to the old guy because as soon as they stop having success, they starting going back to being what they were. He stuck with it. He and Mel Queen spent countless hours remaking his game, and he was a perfectionist, too. To watch him throw a bullpen and to watch him go about doing his work, there was no messing around. ... When Roy Halladay pulled in to the Rogers Centre - then the SkyDome - or in Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, he came for one reason: He came there to work and he came there to win. He's a throwback to guys from the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's. Roy Halladay was the real deal."

Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez:

"Roy was a special man and a special player, someone that even though I faced a lot, I still wanted to see succeed. It's hard when you're on the opposite side and at the same time be rooting for a guy, but when you know his career, his adversities that he went through and to yet come up to the big leagues and still have success and to overcome the struggles and still be so successful, you have no choice but to root for him. I'm extremely sad for him, I know how much he loved his family and what kind of person he was. This is a hard one to swallow for all of us in baseball. My deepest condolences to his family, his beautiful wife, his two kids. I don't have words to actually say how sad I feel about him."

Former major league pitcher Ryan Dempster:

"He had a great sense of humor. ... I sent over a jersey. Sometimes you do that, you have admiration, like I did. I said, 'Roy, I'd love it if you could sign a jersey.' He said, 'No problem, send it over.' We were friendly, we had respect for each other, we were on different teams. He sends it back over, and he obviously had found out through somebody that I was a big Chris Farley fan, and he writes 'Demper: I always enjoyed watching you pitch from my van down by the river." First of all, to know that about me and to have the sense of humor to write that down - it hangs in my house. I have six baseball jerseys hanging in my house and he's one of them. I can't speak enough how much admiration I had. This is an incredibly sad day."