Editor's note: The above video is from Sept. 30 following Barry Zito's final MLB start.
Barry Zito announced his retirement from baseball Monday not with a grand press conference, but a thoughtfully penned article that appeared in The Players’ Tribune.
It was a fitting way for the former Cy Young winner to deliver the news. An introspective sort who’s always marched to the beat of his own drum, Zito expanded on the emotional highs and lows of a 15-year major league career spent entirely with the A’s and Giants.
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“I’m retiring today from baseball, but I’ll never be too far away from the game that made me who I am,” Zito wrote. “I am beyond thankful to be at peace with walking away …”
The decision was widely expected after Zito, 37, concluded a comeback with the A’s this season after sitting out 2014 to contemplate whether he wanted to keep playing. He spent the majority of this season with Oakland’s Triple-A team before getting a September call-up and appearing in three games that provided a nostalgic cap to his career.
Zito will go down as one of the most storied pitchers in Bay Area history. He posted a 165-143 record, winning the 2002 Cy Young award and making all three of his All-Star appearances in an A’s uniform.
"A consummate professional," A's executive vice president of baseball operations Billy Beane said. "He was a great performer on the field, but a better teammate and person off the field. Barry never changed from his first day as a professional and it was an honor having him as a member of the organization."
Oakland Athletics
Before the 2007 season, he signed a seven-year $126 million contract with the Giants that at the time that was the largest ever for a pitcher. It ushered in the stormy second phase of Zito’s career. He went 63-80 with a 4.62 ERA over his years with San Francisco, which brought heavy criticism upon the lefty given the expectations that came with his lucrative deal. Zito was completely left off the Giants’ 2010 postseason roster as they marched to the World Series title.
But what a different scene it was two years later, when Zito beat St. Louis in the NL Championship Series and then notched the Game 1 victory over Justin Verlander and the Detroit Tigers in the World Series, helping the Giants to their second title in three years.
It’s those dramatic highs and lows that Zito referred to through much of his article announcing his retirement.
“The year 2008 was the toughest of my life so far,” he wrote. “I was being told by strangers in public places just how terrible I was -- my own fans in San Francisco yelling obscenities to my face while I was in the dugout. I even found myself ringing my mother at times because I was literally losing my mind and needed five minutes of solace with someone who understood me. But that year taught me something: If there was still a reason to smile at certain points throughout those painful days, and if everything I thought had defined me as a person was crumbling down and yet I was still standing, then maybe what I thought defined me truly did not. I came to realize that I was defining myself through my achievements on the field and through the opinions of other people. In reality, that was just the surface of who I really was.”
Zito described why he believes baseball is such a special game.
“If you saw a professional baseball player sitting in a coffee shop, you may not be able to single him out of the crowd … It’s what makes baseball the common man’s game: The common man stands a chance at succeeding at it.”
He shared how his embrace of Christianity in recent years brought stability to his life, and how he’s ready to tackle songwriting as his next career challenge. A season spent with the A’s Triple-A team in Nashville allowed him to make many contacts in the country music world.
“My return to Oakland last month was a ‘cherry on top’ moment in my life that my family and I will never forget,” Zito wrote. “I will no doubt be in the stands on both sides of the Bay in years to come.”