Al Leiter returned from the WBC, pitched to one batter for the Yankees, and then decided to hang 'em up. And when I say "'em", I mean "'em".

After 19 years of fairly decent pitching, Leiter retires after one batter and then retires himself. At least he got the guy out, and what pitcher doesn't want to go out pitching a shutout, or at least pitching in a shutout.

But it seems a rather circuitous route to retirement. His own version of "veni, vedi, vici". Eh, then again, he did retire in Florida: that's pretty typical.

Leiter will be remembered as a very good, fairly intelligent pitcher for a number of years but even in the steroid-diluted list of Hall eligibles, Leiter will have a hard time even getting the necessary five percent of the vote to remain on the ballot his first year.

It's a shame since his career is somewhat unique in its own way. Leiter, you may remember was a "can't miss" prospect—I think I have is "Topps Top Rookie" Rookie card from 1987—who missed, for a while. He broke in at age 21 and followed that up with 14 starts, a 4-4 record, and a slightly better than league average ERA of 3.92 in 1988. Then injuries limited him to 13 games and just 5 starts at the major-league level over the next four seasons.

He finally made the Blue Jay rotation in 1994, and then registered a double-digit win total for the first time the next year. He would then collect at least ten (and as many as 17) for every season through 2004.

I wondered if Leiter had the most wins for any pitcher who did not win ten in a season until the age of 29. He's not but he's close. Here are the most wins for pitchers who qualified with the age and stats for the season in which he first won ten:

And after the long wait, he went ahead and pitched 19 seasons, a sort of Minnie Minoso on the mound. Leiter is one of a handful of pitchers to pitch 19 years. They are an interesting group of second-tier Hall of Famers and memorable if not Hall-worthy pitchers. Here they are sorted by wins:

Leiter is pretty far down on the list. I tried projecting out his win total for the injury-plagued years to see if it helped his Hall credentials. I came up with a 199-181 record, still not really Hall-worthy.

The hard part in those projects were his three consecutive years with zero wins. I based those on the two adjacent years before and after the futility streak. Whatever. I did make me wonder how many pitchers went through three consecutive seasons without a win and then went on to win at least once more at the major-league level. Well, there were 72 occurrences, so it's not as rare as I thought. However, few very went on to have successful careers. Here are the pitchers in the group who won the most. Leiter makes a better showing here:

So good bye to Al Leiter the pitcher, and after his decent job as a color man in the playoffs a couple of years ago, I hope it's "Hello" to Al Leiter, the broadcaster. I mean, the guy's IQ is higher than the aggregate for the entire Fox crew. Then again, that's probably reason enough for him not to get the job.

By the way, my Toaster-mate Alex Belth's biography of Curt Flood was officially released today. I have my own signed copy in hand. Make sure to get one yourself. And congrats to Alex on publishing his first book. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.