Jose Lima hasn't actually pitched in the major leagues since 2006, but that doesn't mean his career is over, In fact, today the Long Beach Armada of the Golden Baseball League announced that Lima will spend 2009 with them in the independent minor league. Last year, he pitched in a minor league in Korea and the year before that, in Mexico. It's hard to imagine anyone with a wilder career than Lima. In 1999, he won 21 games and finished fourth in the NL Cy Young voting. He flamed out in 2000 after the Astros' move to Minute Maid Park (then Enron Field), and since then moved to Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles (where he had a brief resurgence in 2004), back to Kansas City, and then to New York before his international adventures.
The amazing part of the story is that Lima's actually only 36. It seems like a lifetime ago that he was a promising young pitcher in Houston, but it was really only 10 years. Of course the 479 2/3 innings he logged in 1998 and 1999 in Houston probably have something to do with the cliff his career's fallen off of since then. Now he's pitching in a small independent league as a sideshow attraction, with Long Beach's GM promising "special promotions" and "fan activities" on the nights he pitches.
The craziest part of all? He's probably about three quality starts away from a minor league deal with someone.
