Mark Teixeira to announce retirement from baseball

To many, Mark Teixeira has always been the Yankees first baseman with the unpronounceable last name. Well, that, and the guy from this .gif.

However, there’s a whole career that happened prior to both his eyes bulging out of his head and his joining of the Yankees in 2009. But according to Buster Olney, with Teixeira’s contract expiring, the end of that career has arrived.

Teixeira started his career in Texas, drafted out of the Georgia Institute of Technology as the fifth overall pick in the 2001 amateur draft. He cracked the Rangers’ lineup two years later at 23 and finished fifth in AL Rookie of the Year voting before slashing .283/.368/.533 as a mainstay in the Texas starting nine for the next five years.

In Atlanta, he hit .295 with a .943 OPS over two seasons, receiving MVP votes in 2008 before spending part of the year in Anaheim with the Angels. Finally, he landed where he would spend the bulk of his baseball years, New York, where his Yankees career has so far spanned eight years, 201 home runs, and eight playoff series. It’s easy to see that his numbers have taken a dive from the spellbinding performances he used to give as a younger player, and injuries have haunted him in his mid to late thirties—2013 was a particularly brutal year, as he never quite recovered fully from a strained wrist tendon he received while playing in the World Baseball Classic.

Always good for a tantrum or a replay, Teixeira remained one of the least detestable members of the Evil Empire, just out there doing his job as well as a three-time All-Star, Silver Slugger, and five-time Gold Glover would; he just happened to be doing it with Yankees pinstripes on his uniform.