HONOLULU — Hilo native and former University of Hawaii standout Kolten Wong told local media on Friday that he plans to retire from professional baseball.

Wong, 34, a second baseman who spent 11 seasons in Major League Baseball, last played in the big leagues in 2023. He signed a short-lived minor league contract with the Baltimore Orioles in 2024.

Wong, who has two children, said he will focus on spending time with his family.

"Pretty much right now, I'm done,” Wong said at UH’s Les Murakami Stadium, where he threw out the first pitch before the Rainbow Warriors' game against UC San Diego. “I've kind of come to the conclusion that I'm probably going to be hanging them up. It's just one of those things where, the game how it's going now, there’s no sense of chasing (it). … I'm a dad now, yes, I'm enjoying that. I'm trying to be the best big league dad that I can be. So I'm going to stick to that.”

He won Gold Gloves in 2019 and 2020 with the St. Louis Cardinals, the team that drafted him 22nd overall out of UH in the 2011 draft, and for whom he played eight seasons.

Wong went on to play two seasons for the Milwaukee Brewers and finished his big league career with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2023 after being released by the Seattle Mariners.

His last MLB action was three games for the Dodgers in the 2023 postseason.

Wong hit 86 home runs for his career with 973 hits, 405 RBIs, 511 runs scored and a .256 batting average. He added another five postseason home runs, including a walk-off for the Cardinals against the San Francisco Giants in the 2014 NLCS. As a rookie, he appeared in the 2013 World Series against the Boston Red Sox and had a memory of another kind; he was picked off at first for the final out of Game 3.

The Kamehameha-Hawaii graduate is in town for his induction with the 2025 class of the UH Sports Circle of Honor. He was already one of two individual players to be honored with a mural on the “Wall of Fame” in center field at Les Murakami Stadium, along with pitcher Derek Tatsuno.

He averaged .358 for his three-year UH career with a .449 on-base percentage and 25 home runs. He was named a three-time first-team All-Western Athletic Conference selection. He's remembered for his heroics against Louisiana Tech in the first game of the 2010 WAC tournament, in which he hit the tying and walk-off home runs en route to tournament MVP honors. That remains the last time UH made it to the NCAA Tournament.

Wong was a Freshman All-American in 2009 and a first-team All-America selection in his final collegiate season as a junior in 2011.

Wong called playing for UH his “big league” before he actually made it to the bigs.

“I was shocked (about the Circle of Honor induction)," Wong said, "but after it set in, it was very, very happy for me and my family just to know that all the hard work paid off and know that I'll be remembered forever in this university that was a goal of mine from Day 1.”

Note: This story has been updated with details on Kolten Wong's baseball career.

Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at [email protected].