“The Dream is Over, Baby!”
With the colorful style he brought to the field in a 12-year big league career that included stops with the Athletics, White Sox, Yankees, Indians and Braves, Nick Swisher officially announced his retirement as a player in an essay on The Players’ Tribune Friday.
Swisher, who spent the 2016 season in the Yankees’ minor league system, kicked off the first-person story with a tale of going all out in a recreational softball game last summer on the way back from a wedding.
“And the reason I say that anybody who’s ever met me or seen me play won’t be surprised by that story is because that’s the kind of energy and passion I bring to the game of baseball every time I step on the field. I guarantee you’re gonna have a hard time ever finding somebody who had as much fun playing the game as I did.
And now I’m gonna bring that same energy to everything else I do … now that I’m officially retiring from Major League Baseball.”
Swisher, who won a World Series with the Yankees in 2009 and made the All-Star team in 2010, details how he wasn’t the same player after double knee surgeries in August 2014 before going into a long list of memories from his playing career, especially riding down the Canyon of Heroes after getting a ring.
“You wanna talk about feeling like a full-fledged rock star? How about being on one of those World Series floats rolling through New York City.
Bro … I’m talking hundreds of thousands of people. Me and Johnny Damon were on our float together, and I remember a fan had a sign that said, I’LL NAME MY FIRSTBORN AFTER SWISH IF I CAN PARTY WITH HIM!
And I was like, “DEAL! My middle name is Thompson! Come party!”
It was just always nothing but love from those fans. Real love.
Everything about that ’09 season professionally and personally was just magical.”
The game won’t be without Swisher’s energetic personality for long. He plans to join FOX Sports as a studio analyst for the 2017 season.
