Tedy Bruschi, one of our fave players of all time, announced his retirement this morning.  Bruschi worked his way up from practicesquad member to special-teams-only type guy to a starting linebacker who even made a Pro Bowl and has more tackles on a season as a Patriot than any other guy in franchise history.

Bruschi is also well-known because he came back eight months after a stroke, which he suffered right after the Patriots’ 2005 Super Bowl win.  He thought it would be impossible to come back, and many wrote him off as a guy who would coach or work in the front office, but he continued to play.

The most important thing we can say about Tedy Bruschi may actually come from a couple of personal anecdotes from The Sports Chick.  (We try not to over share, but these make sense.)

One of the first groups we ever joined on Facebook was one called “I Wish Tedy Bruschi Was My Dad,” featuring an adorable homepage image of Bruschi and his twin boys, quite young at the time.  Now, there are a lot of good players out there, but probably very few one would like to be related to.  Bruschi was the kind of guy we could tell was a good dad.

Also? One of the very first things that made us decide we wanted a certain friend with benefits to become more than?  His Bruschi jersey.  Not Brady.  Not Moss.

Any player who can command that kind of immediate, visceral positive reaction to his name has got to be doing something right, so here’s to Tedy B: a hell of a player and a real class act.

Happy trails, Tedy.