TIJUANA, Mexico — Standing out at shortstop sporting purple shorts and his same familiar broad grin, Andrelton Simmons was back where he belonged, looking like he’d never left.

He fielded fungo grounders, the movements as natural to him as blinking his eyes. Honing that craft, for Simmons, was more a source of comfort than a necessary warmup.

As he walked off the field, hours before his Dorados de Chihuahua were to play the Toros de Tijuana, he was approached for an interview. A chance to share his story, to fill in the blanks on a big league career that ended so abruptly that there has been little public understanding of the reason.

“Are you going to ask me tough questions?” he asked, half-joking as he walked into the dugout, realizing he’d already agreed to the interview.

“Probably a few,” he got in response, also half-joking.

It was his scheduled day off, which he confirmed with a glance at the lineup card as he sat down to recount where he had been since he last stepped on a major league field in 2022. Facing injuries, Simmons, at age 32, disappeared from baseball in what should have been the later part of his prime. Why leave for good? And why now, at age 36, after years away from the game and from the position he manned in a way few others ever have, was he playing in Mexico?

“Baseball, when you’re doing good, is fun,” Simmons said. “When you’re not, it’s a little stressful, you know? I needed a little break.”

In Simmons’ 11 seasons, he’d accumulated 36.7 bWAR, an astounding number given that his career OPS was just .678. He was a below-average offensive player. Well below average, in fact. Hitters like him don’t get free agent contracts or starting jobs or baseball security of any kind.

But his defense had the chance to put him on one of the sport’s most unique trajectories, one that, if he had kept up a similar pace, could have put him in the conversation for an Ozzie Smith-like Hall of Fame berth. Simply put, he was among the greatest defensive shortstops to ever play the game.

His 28 defensive WAR ranks 13th all-time, despite having by far the fewest games played among the first 49 names on that list. His 201 defensive runs saved is the highest for a shortstop since the metric was created in 2003. Every number reveals the same undeniable greatness.

Simmons opted out late in COVID-shortened 2020 season to seek help amid depression and thoughts of suicide, he told The Orange County Register at the time. He returned to play for the Twins in 2021.

And in 2022, after just 35 games, amid a debilitating shoulder injury, he was DFA’d from the Cubs and disappeared from the game.

“I don’t regret it,” Simmons said. “I needed a mental break.”

“I didn’t think I wanted to do all the stuff to rehab and come back, so I decided I was done.”

As a big leaguer, Simmons was always his own person. A somewhat unpredictable personality, he could be both prickly and affable. On this day, approached out of the blue to do his first interview in years, the shortstop known as Simba was introspective.

He asked to sit down in the dugout to chat, seemingly aware that an opportunity had come to finally get all of this off his chest. To talk about his sudden departure from the big leagues, and his random re-emergence in Mexico — a league that offers an outlet to play, without a legitimate hope of anything more.

“I never really cared for All-Star games, never really cared for the Hall of Fame,” he added. “It’s cool. Like I recognize the accolades are special. But it never really pushed me. I wanted to be good. I wanted to help my team win.”

And from 2022 to 2025, Simmons never felt a strong pull to return. He had made nearly $72 million in his 10-year MLB career, and save for four games in the 2023 World Baseball Classic and six games in winter ball a few months later, he didn’t play. Then before last season, as the Curaçaoan tells it, he was hanging with his countryman Jonathan Schoop.

Simmons participated in the 2023 World Baseball Classic with Team Netherlands and then largely disappeared from baseball. (Gene Wang/Getty Images)

Simmons light-heartedly mentioned joining Schoop in Mexico as a backup. He says it wasn’t intended to be serious, but Schoop took it that way, and called the Dorados’ general manager. Simmons was intrigued enough to indulge the possibility.

With all the time off, and his body finally willing to cooperate, a pathway opened up to try again, to find that love of the game, even if the backdrop looked far different.

“It’s fun, he said, repeating himself several times. “It’s not the Major Leagues, where everybody throws 100. The competition is not the same level. But you still have a lot of talent. So the competition still gets me going. It’s entertaining. There’s a lot more music involved.”

Now, Simmons appreciates seeing former big leaguers that he played against. The league — which, in recent years, began allowing many more foreign-born players — is full of them. The Liga Mexicana de Beisbol serves as a haven for players who were once peers of Simmons, some trying to get another big league shot, others just playing out the string, having fully accepted that there’s no upward career mobility.

Oftentimes those opposing players will tell Simmons that they’re big fans of his. Fans of the Braves and Angels, the two teams with which he spent most of his career, have shown up at his games to express appreciation, he said; those moments bring him back to his halycon days.

“It’s cool, because sometimes, I don’t view myself as a baseball player,” Simmons said. “Like, I play baseball. I’m like, ‘Oh people remember me?’ I lay low for the most part. I try to lay low. People still recognize me. That surprises me sometimes.”

Simmons’ Mexican League numbers — an .811 OPS last season, a .746 OPS this year — are solid enough, and his defensive reputation keeps his name alive in baseball circles. Is he one of the many Mexican Leaguers hoping for an MLB comeback? At his age, it’s unlikely but not impossible, at least in theory. Shortstop is a young man’s position, however, and Simmons is decidedly no longer a young man. Even he said his defense isn’t what it used to be.

“I don’t think about it, I don’t,” Simmons said, adding that he’s not a fan of MLB’s rule changes and departure from small ball. “I know there are guys here that have that ambition. I’ve been there. I’m happy with my career in the big leagues. I’m not trying to get back.”

When he’s done playing, that may be the last baseball fans see of him. It may take him a few more years, he said, but unlike several ex-big leaguers in this league, not past 40. He has no desire to coach, and if the last few years are any indication, no desire to stay in the game in any public way.

“I want to enjoy retirement for real after,” he said.

The next day, Simmons was back in the lineup. Back to being under the radar, out of the public view, but out on the field taking grounders. Enjoying that baseball, even in this different form, is finally coming easy to him again.