Former American League MVP Josh Donaldson announced his retirement from baseball on Monday.

A former All-State selection in baseball and football at Faith Academy in Mobile, Donaldson launched his pro career after being selected from Auburn with the 48th choice in the 2007 draft.

“There was a time at the end of the (2023) season I felt really good about where I was at, and I wanted to try to give it one more go,” Donaldson said during an appearance on “The Mayor’s Office with Sean Casey.” “But being home with the family, getting married – today is a sad but also happy day for me, where I am going to announce my retirement from the game that I’ve dedicated my entire life around. And my family has.

“It’s sad because I won’t be able to go out there and play the game that I love anymore, but it’s also a very happy time that I get to be around the family and try to take that next chapter in life.”

Donaldson played in 1,383 regular-season games and compiled a .261 batting average, .358 on-base average and .489 slugging percentage in 13 Major League campaigns. He hit 279 home runs, which ranks 193rd in baseball history.

Donaldson won the American League Most Valuable Player Award for the 2015 season as the third baseman for the Toronto Blue Jays. Donaldson led the American League with 122 runs and 123 RBIs while hitting 41 home runs.

That season was the second of Donaldson’s three straight appearances on the American League all-star team. Donaldson also won the Hank Aaron Award as the American League’s best hitter and the Silver Slugger Award as the American League’s best hitting third baseman in 2015. He repeated as the Silver Slugger winner in 2016.

“I feel very blessed to have played as long as I got to play,” Donaldson said. “For a guy who got sent down five times to the minor leagues and made my big-league debut as a catcher, piddled around with that a little bit longer, then was finally able to learn how to play third base in the big leagues and then re-do my swing in the middle of a season and have success, if you have asked me in 2010 or 2011 if I would have had the career I was able to accomplish, there would have probably been five percent of me that would have said ‘Yes’ and the other 95 percent would have been, like, ‘Frick yourself.’ I feel very blessed and fortunate and had a lot of great people in my life to help me get to where I was.”

In addition to Toronto, Donaldson played with the Oakland Athletics, Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves, Minnesota Twins, New York Yankees and Milwaukee Brewers. He had seven seasons in which he hit at least 24 homes runs, four with at least 93 runs and five with at least 93 RBIs.

After 2016, injuries had an adverse effect on every season for Donaldson except 2019, when he had 96 runs, 37 home runs and 94 RBIs for the Braves in 155 games and won the National League Comeback Player of the Year Award. In three of the seasons, Donaldson played no more than 52 games.

“I just felt like it would have had to be a perfect situation for me to go back and play,” Donaldson said. “There were a couple of opportunities out there, but at the end of the day, things really weren’t meshing and clicking for myself to be ready and go into a season mentally and physically ready to play.”

In the 2023 regular season, Donaldson played 33 games with the Yankees and 17 with the Brewers. He hit 13 home runs in 165 at-bats and batted .152. Eighteen of his 25 hits went for extra bases.

“The last two years were tough for me,” Donaldson said, “for the fact that I didn’t go out there and play well, like up to my standard. It wasn’t for the lack of trying. I was in there working.”

Donaldson is 38 years old.

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.