Ryan Freel, the craziest damn sumbitch you ever loved to watch hurl himself into the stands or steal home, officially retired this month.

The 34-year old was dealing with hip flexor issues, but that was only the latest in a long line of self-imposed injuries and certainly not the reason. Legends are not cut down by hip flexor issues.

It was just his time to walk off into the sunset. Well, dash blindly backward into a wall en route to the sunset, anyway.

Baseball will miss his antics on the field (remember four stolen bases in one game?) and off (remember the disorderly conduct outside the pool hall/sushi bar?) but I’m confident he’ll continue to live it up in his non baseball life. Someday I just expect to see a story in my local paper, picked up off the wire for the sheer weirdness of it, about a Florida man and the wacky way he and his little friend Farney mow the lawn.