I do always chuckle to myself when someone 'announces' he's retiring when no one offers him a contract for a couple of years. But Big Hurt is a special case. 521 home runs leaves him 18th on the career list. 1704 RBI is 22nd. 1667 walks, 9th. A career line of .301/.419/.555 is pretty amazing. 2 MVP awards,11 times he got MVP votes (the last 2007 as a Jay), 5 All-Star games, 4 Silver Slugger awards.
A clear Hall of Famer, though he'll be left off some ballots because he played 1311 games as DH compared to 971 as a first baseman. I'm not sure the Writers will vote him in the first time but he'll get there.
He had one really good year in Toronto; 277/.377/480, 26 home runs, 95 RBI. Then in 2008 at 40 years old, he started slowly, as usual, and was released after 60 at bats. Yeah, I know there was more to the story. The team wanted to bench him for a bit, he wanted to play. The team didn't have to pay him the last year of his contract by releasing him before he got to the number of at bats he needed to guarantee his 2009 contract. It was the right move but we really didn't have anyone else to DH. It forced Matt Stairs into the DH role (and he didn't have a good year either) and left room for Brad Wilkerson and Kevin Mench to play way too much. We finished 86-76 that year. How much better would we have been if Frank hit like he had in 2007.
He was always a favorite of mine. A big man (6'5", over 250lb), tonnes of power (9 times 30+ home runs), great eye at the plate (took over 100 walks 8 times) and drove in over 100 runs 11 times. You can see his career numbers here.