C.J. Wilson Retires from Baseball so He Can Be a Race Car Driver

Thanks everyone. This explains it better than 140 Characters. https://t.co/wJL7DSWeBK
— C.J. Wilson (@str8edgeracer) February 9, 2017

C.J. Wilson, who was until recently a well-paid Major League pitcher, has retired from baseball so he can sell, and race, expensive cars.

Wilson pitched 11 years in the majors for the Texas Rangers and Los Angeles Angels. He just finished a five-year, $77.5 million deal with the Angels and posted a 3.89 ERA in 21 starts, though his last two seasons were cut short by injuries. He appeared in 21 games in 2015 and did not play at all last season. Still, it was an odd development considering just last month, Ken Rosenthal reported that Wilson was starting a throwing program, ostensibly in preparation to pitch this year. Nope.

Wilson bought a car dealership in Fresno so he could sell Porsches, BMWs, and Audis, according to this interview with him on ABC30 in Fresno. Apparently this is a coup. Wilson said he's been trying to buy a Porsche dealership for seven years.

"I'm a rookie car dealer now," he says.

Wilson is also going to be racing cars. He's had CJ Wilson Racing for a while and has raced since he was a kid; his Twitter handle, as you might have noticed above, is @str8edgeracer. Now he can do all that without worrying about pesky issues like breaking some clause in his contract or getting seriously hurt or something else that might get in the way of his day job. Porsches are his day job, now, and he can race them without issue.

"Now it's going to be a big deal," he said. "I don't have to hide it anymore. There's no contract violations to worry about or anything like that."

If you think about it, Wilson says, there's really not much difference between pitching and racing.

"As a pitcher, generally, faster is better," he said. "It's kind of like driving."

Get it?