Derek Jeter to retire after the 2014 season - MLB

Simultaneously surprising and not surprising: Derek Jeter has announced that 2014 will be his last season.

Surprising because it’s going to be hard to imagine baseball without Derek Jeter’s presence. His injuries last season aside, the New York Yankees shortstop has been baseball’s constant for nearly 20 years. Not surprising because he turns 40 in June and that’s a couple of years beyond even the greatest, longest-lived and most durable shortstops in the game. He sounds like he’ll be ready for the upcoming season, but there cannot be too much more gas left in the tank.

As it stands entering his final year, Jeter has five World Series rings, five gold gloves and 3,316 hits and a career line of .312/.381/.446. He punched his first-ballot ticket to the Hall of Fame years ago. Now he’s playing for the right to go out healthy, on his own terms and, if things break right for the Yankees, a winner.

Prepare for six months of “Let’s win one more for the Captain.” And a lot of retirement gifts.

Here is Jeter’s announcement, as posted on his Facebook page:

Roger Clemens will be an analyst for ESPN when the defending World Series champion Houston Astros host the Chicago White Sox on opening day.

Clemens made four appearances on last year’s KayRod Cast with Michael Kay and Alex Rodriguez. He will be stepping in on March 30 for David Cone, who will be doing the New York Yankees opener against the San Francisco Giants on YES Network.

“Roger has been sort of a friend of ours for the last year, so to speak, he’s in. He’s been engaged, knowledgeable and really present,” said ESPN Vice President of Production Phil Orlins. “You know, whatever past may be, he’s still tremendously engaged and he really brought that every time he was with us.”

Clemens was a seven-time Cy Young winner but his career after baseball has been tainted by allegations of performance-enhancing drug use. He is a Houston native and pitched for the Astros for three seasons.

Orlins said that with the rules changes and pitch clock, it is important to have a pitcher in the booth with Karl Ravech and Eduardo Perez.

“We don’t feel like we have to have the dynamic of Eduardo with a pitcher, but we certainly think that works. Throw in the added factor of rule changes and it is better to have a batter-pitcher perspective,” Orlins said.

Orlins did not say if this would open the door for future opportunities for Clemens as an ESPN analyst.