I didn't realize it at the time but apparently Kevin Brown has decided to call it a career. Some would say that he waited one year too long to do so but that's neither here nor there.

Brown was placed on the disabled list three times last year and hasn't pitched since a July 23 loss to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

"Kevin didn't have me pursue any teams because he wanted to see how his health was," Scott Boras, Brown's agent, told the newspaper. "He decided after the painful process last year he was not going to play. His arm is still remarkably good, but it's about his back."

Looking back over his career, he definitely had his share of high-spots and though most seem to have forgot about it, from 1995 to 2003, he was easily one of the best pitchers in baseball (though he did pitch in a friendly ballpark). In that time period, David Pinto's DbD database puts him at 119 wins with 67 losses while compiling a 2.70 ERA (second only to Pedro among starters), striking out 7.73 and walking only 2.13 per 9 innings. (As an aside, Mariano leads that table with an ERA of 2.49 for the time period.) There's no doubt about it - he had a heck of a run...and then the Yankees traded Jeff Weaver, Yhency Brazoban, Brandon Weeden and cash for him and well, we all know what happened from that point.

Dollars-wise, he made more money than he and his grandkids could probably ever spend (estimated at a little under $131 million). He was the first player to sign a $100 million dollar contract and led the league in salary (and probably surliness - though he and Barry could have had a nice little Celebrity Deathmatch going) from 1999-2002. All in all, not a shabby career though I'm sure every Yankee fan who remembers the wall-punching incident and the Game 7 start to the 2004 ALCS is glad to see him go.