BALTIMORE—Trey Mancini looks as if he could still play major league baseball. In fact, he did play again just over three months ago when the Los Angeles Angels brought him back to the major leagues after an absence of nearly three years.
After five games and a .308 average, the Angels no longer needed him, and Mancini decided his career was over.
Though he won a World Series ring with the Houston Astros in 2022, three months after he was traded by the Orioles and also played for the Chicago Cubs, Mancini retired as an Oriole on Saturday, and it seemed perfectly natural.
“This is one of the great honors of my life,” Mancini said. “When I retired a couple of months ago, I hadn’t reached out because I wasn’t necessarily expecting this treatment. There have been players that were better players than me overall that haven’t gotten this treatment.”
There were many better players than Mancini, but not many better people.
Mancini might not be remembered for his rookie season in 2017, when he finished third in the American League Rookie of the Year voting, or his Most Valuable Oriole season in 2019 when the rebuilding team lost 108 games.
He will be remembered for his courage in facing colon cancer in 2020, a year when he didn’t play because he had surgery and chemotherapy treatments.
A year later, Mancini was back with the Orioles and was the Comeback Player of the Year.
“It was some of the best and worst memories of my life,” Mancini said.
Mancini was joined by his wife, Sara, a former MASN sideline reporter whom he met during his time with the Orioles, their 11-month-old daughter, Sadie and other members of his family.
“I owe my life to this city and this franchise,” Mancini said.
Mancini played with Oriole teams that lost 115 games in 2018, 108 games in 2019 and 110 games in 2021. In 2022, the Orioles ran off a 10-game winning streak before the All-Star break and were a surprise contender, and then Mancini was traded to Houston.
In what he knew was going to be his last home game, July 28th, the anniversary of the death of his friend, Mo Gaba, a teenaged cancer victim, Mancini hit an inside-the-park home run. Four days later, he was an Astro.
“Even after I was traded, there was a piece of me that was left here,” Mancini said. “I always knew that I’d come back after my playing days and would always affiliate myself with this franchise. It felt like home to me from the day I was drafted in 2013 and that never stopped until I got traded in 2022. I couldn’t imagine starting my career anywhere else and being anywhere else.”
Mancini remembered that he was about to celebrate his 10th anniversary of his first game with the Orioles when he homered.
“Just so many great times, so many tough years, too, like in the middle as a team,” he said. “But there were still so many bright spots in those years, too, and were some of the best memories of my life, and then when you move into 2022, it was probably the most fun I’ve ever had playing baseball in that two or three-month stretch starting in May when we really turned things around here.”
President of baseball operations Mike Elias said Mancini is always welcome here, and he’s faced with the decision of what to do now. Perhaps broadcasting is in his future?
“I guess I have been kind of quasi-retired the last 2 ½ years anyway, so I have had time to think about it,” he said. “I played more tennis and pickleball than anybody could do for the rest of their life, so I’ve been there, done that. It’s probably time to think about what I want to do because I’m 34 and don’t think I can just sit around for the rest of my life.”
With that ceremonial one-day contract, Mancini can always be remembered as an Oriole.
“When I was coming up in the minors, it was during that five-year stretch where they were playing really good baseball,” he said. “They brought winning baseball back to Baltimore, and I really wanted to be a part of that.”
He still is.
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