Take an uneventful eight-year minor league career. Mix in three reattached fingers.  Add a spring training battle with a veteran catcher and you pretty much have a mini-version of Koyie Hill’s baseball career.

You also have one member of Chicago Cub baseball’s  25-man roster.

In trimming their roster to 28 players on Monday, the Cubs pulled somewhat of a surprise move by naming the 30-year-old Hill as backup catcher over veteran and one-time Cub Paul Bako.

It would be hard to imagine that surprises are anything new to Hill.  After all, this is the same Koyie Hill,  who just over a year ago, had to be wondering whether his baseball career was over.

In October 2007, following another fairly productive but average year of Triple A baseball,  all of Hill’s time in minor league limbo was nearly wasted in all of a horrifying split second.

While cutting wood for a window frame, Hill’s hand got caught in a losing battle with a table saw, losing three fingers in the incident.  Fortunately, Hill was able to save the fingers long enough that they were eventually re-attached.

And with them, his baseball career.  Extensive therapy returned Hill to the game where he enjoyed one of his better seasons with Iowa.  The switch-hitter set a career high in home runs (17) and matched his second-best total of 64 RBIs.

It was enough to earn Hill a late-season call up with the parent Cubs and an invite to spring training as part of the 40-man roster.  Hill making the parent club still seemed like a long shot with the Cubs signing the vet Bako to a one-year, $750,000 contract in January.

Besides having experience on Hill, Bako also had the advantage of having played with the Cubs in 2003-04.  Evidently, neither of those qualities, along with a so-so spring at the plate were enough to persuade the Chicago Cubs brass to keep Bako over Hill.

Don’t feel too sorry for Paul, though.  Not only will he likely land with another club, but the Cubs will pay the vet 20 percent of his non-guaranteed $750,000 contract.

For Hill, waking up Monday morning and finding out he’s finally made “the Show” may have left him scratching his head.   But at least he could did with all his digits intact.

And that’s no April’s Fool.