Serving as a member of the Detroit Tigers from 2008 to 2023, Miguel Cabrera was with them through thick and thin.
From the four consecutive American League Central pennants between 2011 and 2014, all the way down to the dreadful 47-114 season of 2019. From the World Series appearance in 2012, to the nine consecutive missed postseasons to end his career. Cabrera was with the Tigers through it all, and when he took his final curtain call at the end of the 2023 season, he left the franchise on the ascendency.
In that time, he played his way into Hall of Fame contention. Cabrera became the 33rd member of baseball’s hitter hinterland, the 3,000 hit club, back in April 2022, and retired with a total of 3,174 career Major League hits, the 16th-most of all time. It was concurrently announced that Cabrera would stay on with the Tigers as a special assistant in the front office, as the franchise wanted to keep around the player who had kept them afloat during the dark times.
Frm Tigres, To Tigers, To Tigres
It turns out, however, that that September 2023 swansong was just his first retirement as a player.
At the age of 42, Cabrera is reportedly going to make a playing comeback in his native Venezuela. The Detroit Free Press reports that Cabrera will play for the Tigres de Aragua, a team in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League during the 2025-26 season, which begins in October.
The Tigres will in fact be a perfect bookending to Cabrera’s career, as they are the same time with whom he began it back in 1999. At the tender age of 16, Cabrera joined up with Aragua not long after signing with the then-Florida Marlins organisation back in July 1999, for a hefty signing bonus of $1.8 million .
Perhaps more pertinently, Aragua is Cabrera’s home state, and the Tigres play in Maracay, Cabrera’s city of birth. And it seems the opportunity to go home was too good to pass up.
Cabrera’s Hall Of Fame-Worthy Career
As a player, his accolades were extensive.
In the 2012 season, Cabrera became just the 17th player in Major Leagues history – and the first in 45 years , since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967 – to hit for the Triple Crown, and he received 12 All-Star nominations and seven Silver Slugger awards in his 21 seasons. And although it was with the Marlins rather than the Tigers, Cabrera also has a World Series ring to his name, doing so in his rookie year back in 2003 – when he was still a svelte left fielder .
Cabrera’s was a Hall-of-Fame calibre career, even before the tremendous longevity that sees him now attempt a comeback at an age where most players are long since retired. It is rare for anyone to still be playing high-level pro baseball into their 40s, and those that do are usually pitchers .
In the 2025 MLB season, Justin Verlander of the San Francisco Giants is the only player aged 42 or over. The Baltimore Orioles’ Charlie Morton is close behind at 41, yet only two other players – Max Scherzer of the Toronto Blue Jays and Justin Turner of the Chicago Cubs – are still playing in their 40s. (Yuli Gurriel, who began the season with the Los Angeles Dodgers , was originally the fifth, although he currently finds himself out of baseball .)
Playing some winter baseball while at home is not a precursor to resuming a Major League career, and with two years out of the game, expectations for Cabrera should be tempered accordingly. Nevertheless, Cabrera has nothing to lose except for a missed opportunity to end his career back where it first began. It is an opportunity it appears he will take.
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