In a great NYTimes story about loyalty and unending curiosity.

Wooed by the Orioles after the 2005 season,

Konerko stayed [with the Sox], of course, for five years and $60 million, or $5 million less than the Orioles’ best offer. [His agent’s] final counteroffer was for $90 million . . . a figure so high that it signaled Konerko’s desire to stay.

It was an offer to scare recruiters away.

One reason Konerko stayed, he said, was his strong relationship with the hitting coaches Greg Walker and Mike Gellinger, who indulged Konerko’s wish to learn everything he possibly could about his swing. Walker, who now coaches for Atlanta, once said he spent more time breaking down mechanics with Konerko than he did with all his other hitters combined.

He was a student of the game he was playing, never tiring of working out the secrets of batting.

“We were having a conversation by the cage, oh, I guess this was a couple of months ago, and he was talking me through what he was working on at the time,” [executive vice president Kenny] Williams said. “I said: ‘You know what’s going to happen to you? About two years after you retire, you’re going to call me. You’re going be walking in your house and feel something and you’re going to call me and say, “I got it! I got it! Now I got it figured out!” ’ ”

Williams laughed. What, he was asked, did Konerko say?

“He said, ‘You’re probably right.’ ”

Let’s hear it for dedication to the work at hand.