Family at forefront of Lee County grad Buster Posey’s MLB retirement decision

Family and relationships have always been at the center of everything for Buster Posey.

The relationships with his family growing up in Lee County, Georgia helped form his love for baseball. The relationships with teammates and executives during his 12-year career helped make him one of the most beloved players in San Francisco Giants history. And on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021 with his wife Kristen sitting to his right and his four children in the room, Posey officially announced his retirement from Major League Baseball.

“When I was a child one of my earliest baseball memories was of Sid Bream of the Atlanta Braves sliding into home to beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in Game 7 of the NLCS to send the Braves to the World Series,” Posey said. “To be able to share in the joy with my granddad that Christmas as he proudly displayed a picture of Sid Bream on his T-shirt sliding into home just underneath the tag is a memory I’ll never forget.”

For all of the memories Posey had watching the Braves while growing up in Georgia, he helped create a lifetime of them for San Francisco Giants fans. Posey was behind the plate in 2010 when the Giants won their first World Series title since the franchise moved to San Francisco, and was the starting catcher for two more World Series wins in 2012 and 2014.

Posey spent his entire 12-season career with the Giants, making his debut in September of 2009. He caught one perfect game and two no-hitters in addition to leading the Giants to three World Series championships, winning the NL Rookie of the Year in his first full season in 2010 and the NL MVP award in 2012.

But before he carved out his career as one of the greatest catchers in baseball history, he was playing for the Lee County Trojans.

“It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that I remember you sitting at Lee County High School games with your dad,” Posey said as he was thanking Kristen during his retirement press conference.

Posey led Lee County to the championship series of the Class AAAA playoffs in 2005, where the Trojans came up against Jason Heyward and Henry County. Lee County fell just short with a wild 16-14 loss in the decisive game of the series, but the experience in Leesburg stayed with Posey for the rest of his career.

“I can remember in high school being heartbroken about losing the state championship,” Posey said. “Our high school had never won a championship. Then moving on to Florida State we had [manager] Mike Martin there kind of getting to the end of his career. He had never won a College World Series, and wasn’t able to accomplish that. Truly what I wanted was to win; I wanted to win a championship.

“I can remember running to the mound in 2010 and the thoughts running through my head were ‘what just happened?’ It was an understatement to say [it was] a dream come true.”

In his last season with the Giants, Posey was as valuable as ever. He hit 18 home runs and drove in 56 runs with an .889 OPS on offense, all while catching the pitching staff with the second-lowest team ERA in the majors at 3.24. The Giants finished the season with a franchise-record 107 wins, holding off the Los Angeles Dodgers by one game to capture their first division title since 2012.

“I’ll miss the people No. 1,” Posey said about what he will miss most. “I’ll miss what I talked about, about not having a chance to share in that common objective and goal that started all the way back in February and carries until the end of October. The friendships — there will be people I don’t get to see as much who I’ve gotten to see for a long time — the competition, there will be a lot of things.”

The other side of the coin for Posey and the relationships he will be saying goodbye to in San Francisco will be the ones he will be reuniting with, including one very special one back in Georgia.

“We’ll probably move back to Georgia eventually,” Posey said. “That’s just where both of our families are. We’ve been on one coast, they’ve been on another coast really since 2008 when I was drafted. Because of COVID, there’s a niece we still haven’t met yet.”

From the relationship with his granddad watching the 1992 Braves to teammates in San Francisco and now meeting a new family member in the near future, Posey is leaving the Giants exactly the way he arrived.

He changed the Giants forever, all while not changing himself from the same player and person he was for Lee County High School. And towards the end of the press conference, he left everyone with exactly a reminder of who that person is when he was asked about what will be next for him.

“You can see the babies crawling on the window seal here,” Posey said while pointing past Kristen and over to the corner of the press room. “I’m pretty sure we’ll stay busy.”