Bartolo Colon officially retires with Mets, whose fans ‘accepted me’ and ‘supported me’

Bartolo Colon was 41 years old when he debuted with the Mets.

He played longer and won more games with Cleveland, where he began his MLB career in 1997, and with the Angels, who he won the AL Cy Young Award with in 2005.

But Colon felt such a connection to the fans in New York that he decided to officially retire Sunday as a member of the Mets.

“If it was up to my parents and the rest of my family, they probably would’ve wanted me to retire there in Cleveland,” Colon said. “I also had good years in Anaheim, but once I was done there, this was the fan base that accepted me the most and supported me the most.”

The Mets honored Colon, 50, during a pregame ceremony Sunday afternoon at Citi Field, a little over a year after the fan-favorite starting pitcher announced his retirement following 21 MLB seasons.

Colon spent three of those seasons with the Mets, posting a 44-34 record and 3.90 ERA from 2014-16. He won at least 14 games in each of his seasons with the Mets, appeared in seven postseason games during their run to the 2015 World Series and was named an All-Star in 2016.

Equipped with impeccable fastball command and impressive durability, Colon won 247 games in his MLB career, the most ever by a Dominican-born pitcher. He was a two-time 20-game winner, including in his 2005 Cy Young year, when his 21 victories led the AL.

“I’ve never seen anybody make the adjustment from being an absolute power guy to being a finesse pitcher with great command of the pitches he threw,” Terry Collins, who was the Mets manager throughout Colon’s time in Flushing, said Sunday.

“What he did in the clubhouse was showed all of the other pitchers you don’t have to throw 100 [mph] to be successful.”

Colon played for 11 teams, including the crosstown Yankees, but several of the four-time All-Star’s most memorable moments occurred with the Mets. One of them came in 2016, when Colon, a career .084 hitter, hit his only MLB home run in a game against the San Diego Padres.

“The only thing I could think about when I was running the bases were those bases were getting further and further away from me at the time,” Colon said Sunday. “Once I came home, and the two guys that were on base were there waiting for me, I just felt like it was a dream.”

It was also with the Mets that Colon adopted the nickname “Big Sexy,” a moniker given to him by fellow pitcher Noah Syndergaard.

“There was one day I came into the clubhouse, and there was a T-shirt that says ‘Big Sexy’ on it,” Colon recalled. “I look at it, and I’m like, ‘Who put this on my chair? I think they’re calling me fat.’ Then Syndergaard came up to me and was like, ‘No, that’s a good thing.’ The nickname stuck and I ended up liking it.”

The first 15,000 fans to arrive Sunday at Citi Field received a “Big Sexy” T-shirt featuring Colon’s face on the back.

The pitcher earned the admiration of Mets manager Buck Showalter, whose tenure with the Texas Rangers overlapped with Colon’s time with the AL West-rival Angels.

“He didn’t take himself too seriously but did take the game and the competition very seriously,” Showalter said Sunday. “He wasn’t much fun in the other dugout.”

Colon last pitched in 2018, when he appeared in 28 games, including 24 starts, with the Rangers at age 45. His 44 wins with the Mets rank 23rd in team history, while his 1.22 WHIP ranks 17th.

BATY REMAINS OUT

Brett Baty remained out of the Mets starting lineup for a fourth consecutive game Sunday as he continues to recover from a mild left groin strain.

The rookie third baseman, 23, is feeling “better” but progressing “a little slower than we hoped,” Showalter said Sunday.

The Mets will assess whether Baty can start Monday’s series opener in Miami after he undergoes further treatment and testing, the manager said.

Baty hasn’t played since Wednesday, when he left early from a game against the Diamondbacks.