Los Angeles Dodgers: Andre Ethier Announces Retirement after 12 Years in LA
After over a decade as a major league outfielder for the Dodgers, Andre Either is hanging up his blue baseball cap, and calling it a career.
Tuesday was a rough day for Dodger fans, and so was Wednesday. It was announced that Andre Ethier is retiring. This doesn’t come as a shock, as the Dodgers didn’t pick up his 2018 option, and the veteran player had yet to sign to a team.
It would have been weird to see him in a different uniform. This guy is a Dodger, through and through. Though you hate to see a great ballplayer call it a career, it’s always cool when they retire having played for only one team.
I feel honored to say that team is the Dodgers, and I feel lucky to have watched Ethier play during his 12 seasons in LA.
It wasn’t that long ago, only 8 years, when the Dodgers had an outfield made up of Matt Kemp, Ethier, and the great Manny Ramirez. Mannywood was alive; Kemp and Ethier t-shirts were flying off the shelves. The Dodgers didn’t have the best season that year, ending the season with an 80-82 record, but the outfield was one of the best. At the very least, they were fun to watch.
Two out of three of those outfielders are now retired, the other has made a surprise and All-Star-esque reemergence in LA. At 36, Ethier has dealt with injury, combining for only 38 games in his last two years combined.
The Dodgers announced today that Ethier would be honored prior to next Friday’s game against the Astros at Chavez Ravine.
The #Dodgers will celebrate the 12-year career of Andre Ethier and honor him with a pregame retirement ceremony on Friday, August 3 prior to their 7:10 p.m. game against the Houston Astros.
— AlaNNa Rizzo (@alannarizzo) July 25, 2018
Ethier’s career stats are pretty impressive. In 4800 major league at-bats, he boasts a .285 average, 162 home runs, and 687. You’ve got to appreciate the beauty in that. I mean, 162 career homers, 162 games in a season and 12 years as a Dodger, years which included 2-trips to the All-Star game (in 2010 and 2011.) He also earned a gold glove and a silver slugger.
The Dodgers are a wildly different team than they were when he debuted in May of 2006. They have a different owner, a different GM, and a different manager. They had a roster that included names like Jeff Kent and Nomar Garciaparra.
Ethier debuted on May 2nd of that year. It was a night game in Ethier’s hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. Odalis Perez started the game for the Dodgers. Orlando Hernandez started the game for the D-Backs.
Though LA held a 6-0 lead going into the 5th inning, the Diamondbacks put up a 7-spot in the home half of that inning, and would go on to win it 10-8. Either went 1-4 with a double in front of a new, and energized crowd.
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Ethier’s impact on this team has been slightly quieter over the past few years, due to his injury. But if you looked in the dugout during some of those games he spent on the DL, there he would be. Whether he was taking to Dave Roberts, or laughing with longtime teammate Clayton Kershaw, he was adding something, a piece, to the great and ever growing puzzle known as the Los Angeles Dodgers.
They say you should always go out on a high note. Well, Ethier sure did. His last major league home run was a solo shot off of Kyle Hendricks in Game 3 of last season’s National League Championship Series.
LA went on to win that game 6-1.
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Dodger fans will always remember Ethier and his great career. And in 10 or 15 years when the kids who watched him play have families of their own, they will go into their closets and find that old Ethier t-shirt they’ve had since they were seven. They’ll find that old shirt and tell stories about one of the best outfielders, and frequent walk-off hero, to ever put on a Dodgers uniform.