When athletes retire from professional sports, they are finally free to do whatever they want with their bodies. Sometimes they lose weight, sometimes they gain weight, sometimes they lose muscle.
Former New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs second baseman and left fielder Alfonso Soriano chose none of these options. Since his retirement in 2014, he has gone from a normal-looking baseball player to a totally jacked-up man. Here’s some photo evidence from Sunday, when Soriano joined former MLB players Eric Sim and Ryan Klesko at Chase Field to drop bombs on the field.
Soriano is on the far right and his muscles are so big they look like they’re about to pop out of that athletic shirt he’s wearing. He certainly didn’t look like that in his playing days.
There’s a reason Soriano probably waited until retirement to get a yoke: Bulging muscles aren’t good for baseball. It is a sport that relies on speed, quickness and the fluidity and efficiency of movement. For baseball swings and pitching movements, massive shoulders and arms don’t necessarily help with fluidity and efficiency.
But Soriano is no longer a professional baseball player. He’s a 47-year-old retired husband and father of six, and he can look the way he wants. And his decision to build that muscle means he’ll always turn heads, whether he’s on the field at Yankee Stadium or on the pick-up line at school.
