Hoekstra, a likable and self-effacing man of palpable passions, seems eternally upbeat, even when talking about how his more than 30-year-long newspaper career came to a close in March 2014. As he wrote on his ever-intriguing and lively website at the time, "Working at the Sun-Times was a dream come true. If I had the skills of a good baseball player, filing stories from 401 N. Wabash (long home to the paper and now the site of Trump Tower) would have been the same thing as playing at Wrigley Field."