(USA TODAY) Jason Giambi, who slugged 440 home runs and won an MVP award in a 20-year major league career that included his involvement in the game's preeminent performance-enhancing drug scandal, announced Monday that he is retiring.
Giambi, 44, described his career as "an incredible journey" in a statement to the New York Daily News announcing his retirement.
Indeed, he was one of the game's elite sluggers from 1998-2003, a six-year span in which he was a five-time All-Star, won the 2000 American League MVP award and missed a second consecutive MVP honor by just eight points to Ichiro Suzuki. He averaged 37 home runs and 120 RBI a year in that stretch, with a .434 on-base percentage and 1.011 OPS.
He followed his runner-up MVP finish by signing a seven-year, $120 million contract with the New York Yankees before the 2002 season. A year later, his name emerged in records seized by federal authorities from BALCO, a laboratory that, it was later determined, distributed performance-enhancing drugs to elite athletes.
Giambi's 2003 grand jury testimony, which was eventually leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle and published in December 2004, detailed his use of PEDs in great detail. In February 2005, he issued a non-specific apology in which he said he "let down the fans, I feel I let down the media, I feel I let down the Yankees, and not only the Yankees, but my teammates."
In 2007, he told USA TODAY Sports: "I was wrong for doing that stuff. What we should have done a long time ago was stand up — players, ownership, everybody — and said: 'We made a mistake.'
"We should have apologized back then and made sure we had a rule in place and gone forward. … Steroids and all of that was a part of history. But it was a topic that everybody wanted to avoid. Nobody wanted to talk about it."
Giambi hit 32 and 37 home runs in 2005 and 2006, the first two seasons Major League Baseball implemented drug testing with publicly administered penalties. After that, he played in more than 102 games just once in a season - 2008, when he hit 32 home runs in his final season as a Yankee.
After that, his role evolved more into respected clubhouse sage and part-time player. In fact, Giambi, after spending 2009-2012 with the Colorado Rockies, interviewed for their manager's job that eventually went to Walt Weiss.
He spent his final two seasons with the Cleveland Indians, and it seems likely he will stay in the game in some capacity.
Monday, though, he was merely closing the door on a two-decade run in the major leagues. He finished with a lifetime .399 on-base percentage and .916 OPS, which rank 61st and 50th all-time, respectively.
""I want to thank the fans for being a part of this incredible journey," he said. "I especially want to thank the fans that gave me a second chance to let me show you the human being you see today.
"Lastly, to the game of baseball: I started playing you when I was a kid and I'm leaving you a man. Thank you."
