Joey Votto officially announces his retirement after 22 years in MLB

It’s not every day a player like Joey Votto steps away from the game. But on a quiet afternoon in Buffalo, that’s exactly what happened. Just moments before his beloved Reds took the field against the team he grew up cheering for, Votto made it official - he’s retiring from baseball. In a simple eight-second video, posted from a parking lot outside Buffalo’s Sahlen Field, the man who spent 17 seasons as the face of the Cincinnati Reds closed the book on a stellar career.

Votto had spent the last six months trying to claw his way back to the majors, hoping for one last ride with the Toronto Blue Jays. He’d signed a minor league deal with the Jays in the spring, saying he wanted to “try out” for his hometown team. But as fate would have it, an ankle injury kept him sidelined for half the season. The series between the Blue Jays and Reds- where Votto might have made a fitting curtain call - came and went without a call-up from Triple-A Buffalo.

“That’s it. I’m done. I am officially retired from baseball,” Votto announced. With that, he made the short drive from Buffalo to Toronto, arriving at Rogers Centre just after the Reds wrapped up an 11-7 victory over the Blue Jays. In a t-shirt and athletic shorts, he popped into the visitor’s clubhouse, sharing hugs and smiles with the teammates who had been his family for nearly two decades.

The decision to retire wasn’t easy, and it didn’t happen overnight. Votto had been struggling with his performance in Buffalo, hitting just .143 over 15 games. A couple of days before his announcement, he had lunch with his mother and brothers near Niagara Falls, a moment that seemed to solidify his choice. “I was like, ‘This feels good.’ I’ve been isolated,” Votto said. “I’ve been in a hotel room for four to five months with the ankle injury, with the Minor League stops. And I can exchange the time alone for good performance, but I wasn’t performing well enough to make that transaction.”

The grind of trying to come back became too much. When a coach asked him if he wanted to pinch-hit during a recent game, Votto’s response was telling: “I said, ‘I’m available, but not really.’” For Votto, the idea of giving anything less than his best didn’t sit right. “The fans come to watch hunger and aggression,” he said. “They come to watch people playing at their very, very best and not passing on professional at-bats. That’s enough.”

Watching the Blue Jays games from his hotel room became more painful than inspiring. He wanted so badly to contribute, to find a way to fit in with his new team, but the injury and rehab process dragged on too long. “I had to stop watching the Jays games, because it hurt so much,” Votto admitted. He’d spent his whole career being one of the best - his .920 OPS, 356 home runs, and six All-Star nods speak to that. But in the end, even Joey Votto had to confront the reality that his body wasn’t cooperating anymore.

Blue Jays manager John Schneider summed it up perfectly: “An unbelievable career... What a unique player and wonderful person. He’s been a great teammate his entire career... He was one of the best for the last 20 years.” It’s a sentiment echoed by many, from his Reds teammates like Tyler Stephenson, who said, “It was an honor to get to know him as a friend and as a player,” to the fans who watched Votto dominate for nearly two decades.

Votto’s final two seasons with the Reds weren’t easy. Injuries piled up, and his numbers dipped. But those struggles don’t erase what he accomplished. When he signed that 10-year, $225 million contract extension with Cincinnati in 2012, he became one of the highest-paid players in baseball - and he lived up to every penny of it. By the time the Reds declined his $20 million club option last November, Votto had already left an indelible mark on the franchise and the sport.

It would’ve been poetic to see Votto in a Blue Jays uniform, playing in front of the Toronto fans who had watched him grow from a local kid into a baseball legend. But as he said, “I wasn’t able to arrive and perform at Rogers Centre... To me, it’s disrespectful to the game. I also think it’s disrespectful to the paying fans that want to see a high-end performance.” So, Joey Votto bows out the way he played - with honesty, with integrity, and with the knowledge that he gave his all to the very last pitch. After 22 years of excellence, maybe it was time for one to slip by.