C.J. Wilson Retires from Major League Baseball to Pursue Racing Career
Formerly the biggest car guy in professional sports, C.J. Wilson is now the best pitcher in professional racing.
CJ Wilson Retires from Professional Baseball
Well, someone got to C.J. Wilson's Wikipedia page pretty quickly. It now reads: "Christopher John 'C. J.' Wilson (born November 18, 1980) is an American racing driver and former professional baseball pitcher."
As of February 8th, that is accurate: following the two-time All-Star lefty's retirement from the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, he now has more time to devote to his racing pursuits (already in full swing with CJ Wilson Racing), in addition to his growing auto dealership network, CJ Wilson Automotive Group.
Wilson leaves professional baseball with a stat line of 94 wins, 52 saves and a 3.74 lifetime ERA.
"I just tell everybody that I signed with C.J. Wilson Racing instead of signing with a baseball team," Wilson told sports radio host Doug Gottlieb. "I’m here at the dealership and working on racing and focused on that. The most attractive offer I had was to race this year.”
And Wilson got deep during an interview with an ABC affiliate in Fresno, California. "In a car when you’re driving on a race track, you have to be mindful and very zen in terms of how you try to do stuff with the car," he said. "If you’re going 100 mph and you do the wrong thing, it goes really bad really fast. It’s the same thing if you try to reach back and throw the ball by somebody. If you don’t have it in the tank that day, the dude’s gonna hit it over the fence and you’re gonna lose."
"I’ve made all my mistakes as a baseball player that I’ll ever make, so that’s good. No more home runs to give up. As a race car driver, I’m sure I’m gonna have crashes and stuff like that ahead of me.”
