With everybody who has retired over the past few years it marks the end of the athletes who I grew up watching as a child. Today at 2 pm Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez will have a press conference with the Texas Rangers to announce his retirement. This shows my age, I remember having his rookie card as a child (I lost it, hangs head low I was young ).
Pudge was the best I’ve ever seen play with my own eyes, Mike Piazza is 2nd (only because of his offense he was marginal behind the plate) and don’t give me flack about Johnny Bench because I wasn’t around when he was the best behind the plate. Pudge was a complete player hitting above average, hitting for power and a cannon for an arm.
The man we call Pudge achieved many accolades: 14x All-Star, 13x Gold Glover, 7x Silver Slugger, 1x AL MVP and 1x World Champion.
During his 21 years he played with the Texas Rangers, Florida Marlins, Detroit Tigers, New York Yankees, Houston Astros and Washington Nationals.
Pudge finished with 2844 hits, 331 home runs, 1332 runs batted in and a career .296 batting average. Most of his damage was done with the Rangers and Tigers, he played for the Rangers a total of 13 years and Tigers a total of 5 years. Not many players putting up numbers like this and the fact that he played Catcher makes his final totals that much more impressive.
We will never see another player like Pudge, so we at The Front Office just want wish him the best for his future endeavors after baseball, you will surely be missed behind the plate.
I agree that Pudge is the GOAT of our era. It is crazy that he played 2400 games or more.
Pure beast that is crazy he has played so many games especially being a catcher..
http://thefrontofficenews.com Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone