Biggio Announces Retirement, Hits Grand Slam
Jul 25th, 2007 by Scott Hebert
What an incredible day for Craig Biggio and Houston Astros fans.
In an emotional press conference, Biggio announced that this would be his last season as a ball player. He also wrote a long post on MLBlogs saying thank you to the fans.
As if that wasn’t enough, Biggio went out that night and helped the Astros beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 7-4. By going 2-for-4 with a grand slam. How amazing! Naturally the fans went wild and Biggio was called out for a curtain call.
Speaking personally, I had every suspicion that this would be Biggio’s year to hang up the spikes. Even with that knowledge tucked in the back of my mind, the finality of today’s announcement hit our household pretty hard.
It’s hard to describe the effect that Biggio has had on us. My wife framed the scoresheets that she and my son kept during the game when he got his 3000th hit. He was the first person that our sons were able to recognize outside of the family. He, along with Jeff Bagwell, decorates every well of my sons’ bedroom and my office. Despite the presence of younger players like Lance Berkman, and now Hunter Pence, my oldest son still chooses Craig Biggio when playing any baseball game.
As a father, I can’t complain. From all the role models my sons could have chosen, they couldn’t have made a better choice.
Both images in this post are from David J. Phillip of the Associated Press. I’ve put them here without permission. Hopefully, I won’t end up in jail.