Who is the greatest former Vol to play in the majors?

As a new Major League baseball season begins, Todd Helton observes from afar as Tennessee’s new director or player of development.

One of the phenomena he observes is former UT teammate R.A. Dickey, still out there on the mound, an ageless wonder who has landed in Atlanta to (maybe) cap a most interesting career.

Dickey was a 1995 teammate when Helton led the Vols to the College World Series and won national player of the year honors. It was prelude to a 17-year career in which Helton became the face of the Colorado Rockies, peppered 2,519 hits and retired in 2013 with a .316 career batting average.

Helton is a role model to all aspiring Major Leaguers for both production and longevity. Then there's Dickey.

At 42, Dickey is one of only three ex-Vols on opening-day rosters. Chase Headley of the Yankees, is in his 11th season, Cleveland's Yan Gomes, his sixth.

Dickey, a Nashvillian, set UT career records for wins (38) and innings pitched (434) from 1994-96. After five seasons in the minors, he debuted with Texas in 2001. A dozen former Vols have come and gone and Dickey is still here.

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Discovering a knuckleball was his epiphany and led to the Cy Young Award with the Mets in 2012 – after he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in the offseason. Atlanta might or might not be his last stop. His 110 Major League wins rank second among former Vols.

Dickey's career is among the most prolific achieved by players who passed through UT. Here are some others worth noting.

The best Vol you probably never heard of is Tommy Bridges. Bridges, from Gordonsville, Tenn., played at UT from 1927-29. His stats are lost to history if they were ever recorded.

But he is UT’s most distinguished Major League pitcher, with 194 wins in a 16-year career from 1930-46.  Bridges pitched 2,826 innings, struck out 1,674 batters, won 20-plus games three consecutive years from 1934-36 and was a six-time All Star. And he took off nearly two years for WWII. Bridges died in Nashville in 1968.

Dickey’s 110th career win last season nudged him ahead of Rick Honeycutt's 109.

Honeycutt strung out a career for 21 seasons from 1977-97. A lefty from Chattanooga, Honeycutt had a Heltonesque season for the Vols in 1976. He was 8-2, pitching eight complete games, and hit .404.

A year later, he was in The Show. Honeycutt won 16 games in 1983 and in 1995, at age 41, went 5-1 with a 2.42 ERA at Oakland. His 2,160 innings are second only to Bridges. He’s in his 12th season as pitching coach with the Dodgers.

Gomes, the first Brazilian-born player to make the Majors, would do well to extend his career for as long as two former Vol catchers, Ed Bailey and Mike DiFelice.

Bailey, from Strawberry Plains, played 14 years from 1953-66, mostly with the Reds and Giants. He retired after five All-Star appearances to become, among other things, a Knoxville city councilman before his 2007 death.

DeFelice, a Bearden High School alum, squatted behind the plate 13 years. He hit .236 in 550 games from 1996-2008.

Bearden’s best-known alum is, of course, Phil Garner. An All-SEC infielder at UT in 1969-70, Garner played in 1,860 Major League games. His 1,594 hits are second only to Helton, but are in reach of Headley (1,198) if he sticks around.

Garner retired in 1988 but was just getting started.  He managed another 2,060 games over 15 years with Milwaukee, Detroit and Houston.

Also deserving a mention are Rich Rodriguez, who pitched 13 years from 1990-2003, and infielder Joe Randa, who hit .284 in a 12-year career from 1995-2006. Randa ranks third among ex-Vols with 1,543 hits.\

They're all still watching Dickey.

Mike Strange may be reached at mike.strange@knoxnews.com. Follow him on Twitter at Strangemike44.