Manny Ramirez signed with a Japanese independent team.
The 44-year-old native of the Dominican Republic played for the EDA Rhinos of Chinese Professional Baseball in Taiwan in 2013, .hitting .352 with eight home runs and 43 RBIs.
The four-team independent league is based in Shikoku, the smallest and least populous of Japan’s four main islands.
In case you are wondering, this won’t keep him off the Hall of Fame ballot:
Player shall have ceased to be an active player in the Major Leagues at least five (5) calendar years preceding the election but may be otherwise connected with baseball.
While professional baseball, this really does seem to be about the lowest run of the world hierarchy.
Didn’t Rickey Henderson play indy ball after his MLB career was over?
rbj » Yes, I saw Ricky play in the Atlantic League. The first time he did it he was trying to show he could still play, and wound up back on an MLB roster. He played a couple of years after that as well, but there wasn’t a big gap.
Julio Franco was a player-manager in Japanese indy ball as of 16 months ago: http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/13630613/at-57-years-old-julio-franco-playing-baseball-japan
Manny’s got a way to go.