It’s official. Buster Posey is no longer a member of the San Francisco Giants.
The club legend announced his retirement during a press conference on Thursday at Oracle Park, making a lengthy statement thanking his family, coaches, teammates and fans to open the proceedings. However, it wasn’t until the Q and A portion of the afternoon that Posey revealed why exactly he’s decided to step away from the game of baseball.
“The reason I’m retiring is I want to be able to do more stuff from February to November with my family. Physically it’s much harder now. To be honest it’s harder to enjoy it as much when there’s physical pain that you’re dealing with on a daily basis.
“Again, I halfway joke with our training staff about being done five years ago, but I don’t know how far of a stretch that’s really off. Without the work we were doing daily, with the history of an ankle injury and then a hip, it was just getting to the point where things that I was enjoying were not as joyful anymore.”
Posey infamously sustained a devastating ankle injury in 2012 during a collision with Scott Cousins at the plate. In 2018 he dealt with a nagging hip injury, one that ultimately required him to have season ending hip surgery in September of that year.
Posey said that he started toying with the decision to retire at the beginning of the season, and that his mindset that 2021 might be his last year catching for the Giants had an effect on his approach.
“I kind of went into this last season feeling like it might be the last. Just giving myself some space in my mind to be okay with deciding otherwise if I wanted to keep playing. I just really never wavered. I think it really allowed me to, not that you don’t give it your all, but you really, really emptied the tank this year like I never had before.”
Posey admitted he’ll miss his teammates and competing, but that isn’t enough to outweigh the other things he wants for his life moving forward.
“No doubt the camaraderie with the teammates and the clubhouse, even the thrill of winning a great game I’ll miss. I just think weighing all those things it was ultimately why I didn’t waiver during the year.”