Miguel Cabrera, during his last game on October 1st. Rick Osentoski (USA TODAY Sports via Portal Con)
After 20 years of an amazing professional career, Venezuelan baseball player Miguel Cabrera retires from Major League Baseball (the NBA of American baseball) to universal applause at Comérica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers. In his final weeks as an active player, Cabrera was also honored in the stadiums of American cities by each of the teams that belong to the best baseball league in the world. At 40, he had declared that this would be his last stint as a professional player. One of the highest-paid players in the MLB is retiring, leaving behind an unusual and astonishing harvest of offensive laurels that makes him one of the best hitters in league history for more than a century and a living legend of the sport.
His numbers are astonishing in a discipline where statistics are fundamental to interpreting a player’s performance: a triple batting crown (achieved by only ten players in more than a century, the first in 55 years and the first, achieved by a Latin American). American); 3,000 hits and 500 lifetime home runs (third baseball player to achieve this in 150 years); four batting championships and 11 championship series finals; two Most Valuable or MVP awards; 12-time MLB All-Star Game selection; four-time American League home run champion.
Cabrera is the second-highest-singled Latin American in American baseball history, behind Dominican Albert Pujol. His personal numbers in other hitting variables (doubles, triples, runs scored and RBIs) rank first all-time in the history of MLB, a flagship league in the world of baseball with many imported Latin American, Canadian and Japanese players. and Koreans, which is also very popular in countries such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, Taiwan and, to a lesser extent, Colombia, Australia and the Netherlands Antilles.
Many consider it a given that Cabrera will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, for which he will be eligible five years after his retirement, given his solid numbers and his fine accomplishments outside of the game. Some informative notes already introduce Cabrera as “the next member of the MBL Hall of Fame.” He would be the second Venezuelan to achieve this, after Luis Aparicio in 1984.
Cabrera’s only critic was Juan Vené, also Venezuelan, a veteran journalist very well known in the world of baseball in the United States, a member of the specialized elite that casts the votes to rank the greatest retired baseball players of all time Cooperstown, who raised some objections to the player on the defensive and stated that he still “doesn’t know” whether he will give him the vote on the ballot, which caused a storm. Vené’s stance has sparked outrage on social media and among local supporters.
Born in 1983 in the city of Maracay in the central north of the country, Cabrera – a 1.90 meter tall player with enormous corpulence – made his professional debut in 2003 with the Tigres de Aragua – the city’s club for which he also played and is revered, and he helped him to several local championships – and almost immediately experienced a meteoric and very unusual rise to the MLB, of which he would become the global symbol, earning a contract to make his debut with the Florida Marlins that same year.
After playing four years at Florida, Cabrera was a first and third baseman on defense, sometimes in right field or left field in the outfield. He was acquired in 2008 by the Detroit Tigers, one of the oldest members of the league, where he reaped most of his success and from then on became the city’s idol and heir.
“It was incredible to see Cabrera surpass so many names and records on all-time player lists. But even more impressive was how he handled the attention behind the scenes,” Detroit director of operations Scott Harris noted Friday when commenting on his off-field behavior. “I am honored to have him as part of our management team and know he will continue to improve the Tigers in his new role.”
Cabrera’s retirement made headlines in every media outlet in the United States and was unanimously celebrated and greeted with enormous pride by virtually all of Venezuelan society, a country where baseball remains the most popular and practiced sport of all. social classes. Cabrera will travel to his country later this year to be honored by the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League.
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