It only seemed to be a matter of time until Josh Rabe was back with a big-league team. After all, he had acquitted himself well during his time with the Minnesota Twins in 2006 and 2007, and he was tearing up the independent Atlantic League this spring.

The question wasn't whether or not Rabe was going to get back to the big leagues. Rather it was which team was going to be smart enough to pluck him from baseball purgatory and give him another chance.

Unfortunately, Rabe's body gave out on him.

His Atlantic League team, the Camden Riversharks, wanted him to get a cortisone shot to make his bad back better. Had he taken the shot, it would have been his fourth in a 14-month span. That was one too many Rabe was willing to take.

Instead, he told the management at Camden he was heading home, going back to the Mendon farm he grew up on and retiring at the age of 29.

"They couldn't believe it," said Rabe, who was making the Atlantic League his own personal playground with a .361 batting average to go along with six homers and 30 runs batted in.

So Rabe finished what he called "a nine-year round trip" in and out of Quincy Regional Airport earlier this week. After being drafted by the Minnesota Twins in 2000, Rabe flew out of Quincy Regional on his way to Elizabethton, Tenn. He flew back into the same airport with a suitcase full of memories.

"There's going to be a lot of stuff that I'm going to miss," said Rabe, who was a clubhouse favorite when he was working his way up the Twins' ladder.

"I will probably miss the clubhouse the most."

He couldn't put one thing he had done in his professional baseball life above another. Rabe made several minor league all-star teams. He singled in his first major-league start and later hit his first major-league homer in a game against Detroit in the middle of a playoff race at a packed Metrodome.

"I realize I'm pretty lucky," he said. "I played nine years of professional baseball."

Rabe doesn't really know what he's doing to do next. First on his to-do list is to spend some time with his family, who haven't seen a lot of him since he made that flight out of Quincy. His off-seasons were mostly spent on the road, working hard to become a big-leaguer.

He just finished his degree in the spring, getting a degree in policial science from Quincy University. He's thought about going to law school and has kicked around the idea of coaching.

No matter what path Rabe follows from here on out, he can be satisified with his baseball career.

-- dobrien@whig.com/221-3365