Bartolo Colon Announces His Baseball Goodbye

At the age of 49, beloved pitcher Bartolo Colon has announced his impending retirement from baseball. 

In a Spanish language on-field interview during an Old-Timers Game at Citi Field, he announced that after  Winter League this season in the Dominican, he's hanging them up:

Bartolo Colón: "I plan to pitch with the @aguilascibaenas this year in the Dominican Winter League to say goodbye to baseball", per @JohnnyTrujillo1.pic.twitter.com/EHJk87NIn4

— Héctor Gómez (@hgomez27) August 29, 2022

"God willing, I would like to pitch a couple of games [with Águilas Cibaeñas of the Dominican Winter League] so I can say goodbye to the game of baseball and to all those Dominican fans, because they deserve it,” Colon said, according to Manny Randhawa of mlb.com.

Colon pitched 21 seasons in the majors, most recently for the Texas Rangers in 2018. He's been pitching so long he was actually a Montreal Expo at the age of 29!

But despite a Cy Young Award (in 2005 with the Los Angeles Angels) and four All-Star selections, he'll probably best be remembered for hitting his first and only major league home run at the age of 42:

"The impossible has happened!... This is one of the great moments in the history of baseball," went the super-hyperbolic comments on the New York Mets broadcast, back in 2016. Yes, Bartolo certainly brought down the house that day in May of 2016, and he even made his last All-Star game that year as well, at the age of 43.

We say goodbye with a Bartolo Colon "highlight reel" that just has to be seen: