Eric Thames’ baseball odyssey, which started at San Jose’s Bellarmine College Prep and took him all over the globe — even landing him a spot on South Korea’s version of “The Masked Singer” — has reached its end.

“The day has finally come,” the 36-year-old Santa Clara native announced this week on Instagram. “In the year of our lord, twenty, twenty-three…HE GONE! I’ve been so blessed over these last 14 years to call baseball my job. The friendships that will last a lifetime, the memories that I’ll never shut up about (and those that I’m sworn to secrecy to take to my grave ).”

Thames played professionally (and homered) in five countries -- South Korea, Japan, Canada and Venezuela as well as the U.S. -- and played for seven MLB organizations.

Thames was in spring training with the A’s a year ago as a potential replacement at first base for the recently traded Matt Olson, but never made it to Oakland to play for the team he rooted for as a kid. He opened the season in Triple-A but was released after 22 games.

The powerfully-built left-handed slugger — 5-foot-11, 235 pounds with tattoos all over his massive biceps and typically sporting a billowy beard — blasted 286 home runs at all his pro levels. It was a colorful career that included winning MVP honors in the Korea Baseball Organization and a run with the Milwaukee Brewers that saw him hit 72 home runs from 2017-19.

In his post, Thames thanked the fans from all of his various stops for, “supporting me all these years through the ups and downs. I’ll also add, thank you for supporting my plethora of facial hair styles (lol) from my Afro and sideburns to my Viking beard with beads. I did my best to honor my family name and entertain you all.”

Thames’ ability to entertain — and do special things swinging a bat — were on display in the early 2000s at Bellarmine, where he was named all-WCAL twice as a shortstop.

One spring during Spirit Week, Thames and other students participated in a home run derby during lunch. Tales of Thames depositing baseballs over the railroad tracks beyond the outfield fence and into the grounds of Central Concrete Supply Co. are still the stuff of legend around campus. Thames’ performance was so prolific that the event concluded with about half of his allotted 10 outs (non-home runs) remaining because the lunch hour was over and everyone had to return to class.

“He got in there with about 20 minutes left and we ran out of time. It was home run after home run after home run,” said former Bells baseball coach Gary Cunningham, who was pitching to Thames that day. “He was just launching them. He was in a groove, it was like a Little League field for him. There was like 1,000 people in the stands watching, students and faculty, and they couldn’t get enough. But we ran out of time.”

“He loved it. He was always a unique, free-spirited fun-loving guy.”

Thames, in his retirement announcement, also thanked his parents, who happened to be in the stands for his final professional home run on May 5 in Sacramento.

He wrote of his parents, “The two people that supported me ever since the day I decided I was too short for basketball.”

For a while, it didn’t look like baseball was going to work out, either. In fact, he once said he considered retiring in 2013, when he was just 26 and all his MLB options appeared to have been exhausted.

Thames made his big league debut in 2011 and hit .262 with 12 home runs in 95 games with the Blue Jays, but in short order his career path began to zig-zag, sending him from Toronto to Seattle to Baltimore and, eventually Venezuela. It was there, for winter ball, that Thames caught the attention of the NC Dions of the KBO. Thames used the fresh — and likely last — chance to reinvent himself as a player, and he became a sensation.

Thames batted .343 with 37 home runs and 121 RBIs in 2014, but was even better the following season, becoming the first player in KBO history to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in the same season. He hit .381 with 47 home runs, scored 130 runs and drove in 140 more (in 142 games) and became the third foreign-born player to be named the league’s Most Valuable Player. In his final season in South Korea, Thames hit .321 with 40 home runs.

“He loved to hit -- that was his office, the batter’s box,” said Cunningham. “He always took pride in his at-bats. And it was always so much fun to watch him hit.”

Thames was so beloved in South Korea that in 2016 he was awarded honorary citizenship by Changwon city and his “cheer song” resonates with KBO fans to this day. (The song is set to the music of the “Colonel Bogey March”, which was written in 1914 and has been widely used, including as the theme song to “The Bridge on the River Kwai”).

Eric Thames! Crush that ball!

Eric Thames! Crush that ball!

Eric Thames! Homerun!

Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh

In the end, his three-year assault on KBO pitchers over 390 games produced a .349 batting average, 1.173 OPS, 124 home runs, 382 RBI and 343 runs scored and created an opportunity for Thames to return to the U.S. and the majors in 2017. He signed a $16 million, three-year deal with Milwaukee and was an instant smash, hitting 11 homers in April -- including homers in five straight games.

Thames hit 31 home runs during his first season with the Brewers, but then injuries began to derail his career. He hit .203 with three home runs in 41 games with the Nationals during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, then on opening night of the Japansese League season he ruptured his Achilles trying to catch a fly ball for the Yomiuri Giants.

That led him to the A’s, where “The goal was always to come back and see if I could still play,” Thames told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last spring.

Cunningham, his high school coach, said, “He played for such a long time and battled the whole way, which isn’t a surprise. He fought through adversity his entire career to make it the best it could be. And it was a pretty good one.”

Thames was All-League in both seasons he played at Bellarmine and then was named to the Northern California all-state team at West Valley Community College before starring for two seasons at Pepperdine. After batting .407 with 13 home runs for the Waves, and being named the West Coast Conference’s most valuable player, he was picked in the seventh round of the 2008 draft by the Toronto Blue Jays.

Thames gave a shout-out to both of his alma maters, ending his post with “GO BELLS! GO WAVES! And long live the metal.”

The reference to Heavy Metal music probably wasn’t a surprise to those who have followed his career. Thames’ walkup music with the Brewers was Killswitch Engage’s cover of Ronnie James Dio’s classic, “Holy Diver.” But like his work addresses, Thames’ musical tastes are all over the map.

In 2019, nearly three years after his final at-bat in the Korean League, he appeared on “King of Mask Singer”, singing Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” and K-pop’s “Americano” to rave reviews.

As for what’s next, Thames promised more adventure and surprises, of course.

“The next chapter is going to be absolutely insane and I cannot wait to take you on that journey.

“Thanks for the ride!”