Famed Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants pitcher Barry Zito announced his retirement Monday on The Player’s Tribune, a website where athletes, themselves, write stories.
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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. He won the Cy Young Award with the A’s in 2002, his third season, when he went 23-5.
After 14 years in the majors, Barry Zito has walked off the mound for the final time.
“I feel so honored to have spent my career in the Bay and to have been a part of the two incredible organizations that reside there”.
In 2015, Zito spent most of the season in Triple A before being called up to Oakland at the end of season. He signed with the A’s and made three appearances totaling seven innings this year. He said playing last season in “Music City” in Nashville, Tenn., allowed him to reconnect with those roots and start a new career.
“I feel so blessed to have been able to play with and also face a few of this game’s greatest players over the last 15 years”.
After seven illustrious seasons in Oakland from 2000-2006, he signed a seven-year, $126 million deal with the Giants but was never able to replicate his A’s success in San Francisco. From a phenom to a Cy Young Award victor to something of an albatross and then finally onto journeyman status.
Zito was omitted from the Giants’ postseason roster when they won the 2010 World Series but two years later he delivered two impressive starts in the playoffs for the Giants as they went on to beat the Detroit Tigers and win another World Series.
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“Beyond all of the achievements”, Zito wrote, “the single thing that fulfills me today is the acceptance of myself as a worthy and valuable person, regardless of what my stature or position in the world was on a given day of my career”.
