SAN FRANCISCO – When Ryan Vogelsong approached San Francisco Giants General Manager Bobby Evans about signing a one-day contract with the team to retire in San Francisco, Evans knew the event would come with a certain amount of fanfare.
“He just said to me, ‘I’m not going to be able to keep this a secret, they’re going to want to do something for you,’” Vogelsong told media ahead of Sunday’s game against the Diamondbacks.
The team ended up inviting Vogelsong to the park for one final time as a player, where he ran out to the mound with the starters and accepted the ball from his son, Ryder. He then threw three warm-up pitches to catcher Nick Hundley, before being ‘pulled’ from the game by manager Bruce Bochy.
“When I left the Twins camp in March, it wasn’t the first thing that I thought of, but as I got home and knew that I was done playing, my thoughts were reflecting a little bit,” Vogelsong said of retiring a Giant.
“Then it came back to, when I came back here in 2011, I came back here one, because I thought I still had some baseball left in me. But two, it’s where I wanted to be, I wanted to end as a Giant. I just didn’t feel like those thoughts should change. So once I knew I was not going to play anymore this year, I wanted to do it.”
You can read more about Vogelsong’s return to the Giants here.