Cole Hamels’ career ended this summer on the Ocean City beach. Now he’s looking for the next chapter.

Cole Hamels felt great in July as he traveled to Ocean City, spending baseball’s All-Star break at the Jersey Shore just like he did when he was pitching in the majors. The 39-year-old threw 45 pitches a few days earlier in Arizona, felt great, and believed a comeback was close.

Hamels signed in February 2023 with the Padres, the team he grew up rooting for in San Diego before becoming an icon with the Phillies. He had not pitched in a game since September 2020 and underwent left shoulder surgery in September 2021. The recovery was arduous but the reward was finally near.

Hamels planned to spend a few days in Ocean City with his children, return to Arizona, and get ready to join the Padres for a late-season push. And then he picked up a Wiffle ball on the beach.

“I could not throw a Wiffle ball,” Hamels said. “My shoulder just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t recover.”

That’s how Hamels — 15 years after spending Halloween in a Broad Street parade — became the final player from the 2008 world champion Phillies to walk away.

His fastball zipped days earlier in the low 90s and he was able to throw his off-speed pitches. Hamels — the MVP of the 2008 World Series, a four-time All-Star, and one of the better pitchers of his generation — was back. Suddenly, it was gone. He returned to Arizona, tried to throw again, and called it a career.

“I told the Padres, ‘OK. I think time is up,’” Hamels said. “I just said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ You come to that realization of ‘I can’t compete. My body just won’t allow me to compete even though mentally I feel great and I know what to do and I know how to get guys out.’ Physically, my body won’t allow what I envision or what I know I’m capable of.”

Hamels arrived in Philadelphia in the summer of 2002 to tour Veterans Stadium with his family after being drafted 17th overall out of high school. The old stadium was intimidating — “It was ginormous,” Hamels said — and he didn’t know much about the Phillies — “I knew John Kruk,” he said, as Kruk played for the Padres before coming to Philly — but Hamels knew the team wanted to win.

Jimmy Rollins and Pat Burrell reached the majors two years earlier. Chase Utley was coming soon and Jim Thome signed that winter, bringing Charlie Manuel with him. A championship core was starting to percolate.

“I was like, ‘All right. I can do my part and get up here, too,’” Hamels said.

Six years later, he was packing his luggage for a trip he didn’t want to take. The Phillies were a win away from clinching their first World Series title in 28 years and Hamels was on the mound. It was his fifth start of the postseason and the Phils had won the previous four. A loss in Game 5 meant the Phillies would fly to Tampa for the rest of the series with the Rays.

“You don’t want to go back down to Tampa. That was my goal,” Hamels said. “Plus, we kept winning on the road. We wanted to celebrate at home.”

He pitched six innings, allowing two runs as the teams played through a brutal rainstorm before the game was finally suspended. Hamels said it was probably the first time in his life that he pitched in rain like that.

His focus, Hamels said, was tighter than normal as he didn’t want the weather to become an excuse for any mistake he made. His uniform was soaked and the ball was so wet that he put it under his armpit to dry. But he pitched through it, bearing down to meet the demands of a demanding town.

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“Being a kid from Southern California, I think what I needed to learn was to not be offended,” Hamels said. “I learned so much about the East Coast and how much sports means to the cities. I didn’t know how prevalent sports-talk radio is. I learned to not take things too seriously. I have a job and love what I do, but other people are going to be happy and angry at the same time. They just want you to be the best and be the best every day. Basically, put in everything you have every single day and really try to be something that they create in their heads.”

Before Game 5 resumed two nights later, the Phillies took batting practice in what felt like a full stadium. They opened the gates early at Citizens Bank Park and fans flooded in, hungry to see the city’s first championship in 25 years.

“They were going nuts,” Hamels said. “I don’t know what they were passing out in the parking lots, but everyone was fired up. It was the most exciting batting practice I ever had. We were on the highest high and we knew that we were only playing a couple innings. An hour of baseball. That was something I don’t think you’ll ever see again. We were jacked up for that game.”

Hamels’ bag was packed for Tampa, where he would pitch again if the series reached a Game 7. But that wasn’t necessary. Six years earlier, he was a teenager in an intimidating stadium. And now he was sitting in the dugout watching his team win the World Series with a 4-3 victory, knowing he was a catalyst not only for a championship but a baseball renaissance.

“The saying at the time was ‘This was a football town,’” Hamels said. “To kind of take the focus away and put it on us and see the excitement and paint the town red. Now, the Red October saying that they have, I really do feel like ‘07, ‘08, we were the ones who were able to turn that perspective.

“When you’re in the dugout and you look in the crowd and everyone is levitating, they’re standing for every pitch and you could feel the positive energy. You see the rally towels. You could feel just pure joy and excitement. [Brad Lidge] gets that last out and we all just run out on the field, I don’t think any of us went to sleep that whole night. You get some sort of feeling that you never had in your life and I don’t know how you could ever replicate it unless you win again.”

Hamels nearly made a comeback in 2021 after signing a contract that summer with the Dodgers. But he experienced shoulder pain two days later while throwing at the team’s spring-training facility and never threw a pitch for them.

“That was tough,” Hamels said. “I felt really bad about that situation.”

His career could have ended there, but Hamels wanted more after his last major-league game came during the pandemic season in 2020 with Atlanta in an empty ballpark. He didn’t want to always wonder about what could have happened if he kept going. He had surgery in September 2021, knew the odds of reaching the majors were steep, but was determined to get there.

Hamels told the Padres that signing him was a “low-risk, high-reward” move. He spent seven days a week at their facility in Peoria, Ariz., rehabbing for nine hours a day. Hamels was set on bucking the odds. He went to Ocean City thinking he did.

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“It allowed me to clear my head and prepare for the next chapter,” Hamels said. “It allowed me to close that door more gracefully. I think every athlete wants to close the door on their career out on the field, walking off and knowing they gave it their all. I think this was just a different scenario. It wasn’t the Hollywood ending, but it was good enough for an ending that I was really happy with. I did everything I possibly could. I had goals when I set out at 18, 19 years old and I accomplished 90% of them. I would say that’s pretty good as an athlete.”

The Phillies plan to honor Hamels’ retirement next season, which he hopes is just the start of his return to baseball. Hamels turns 40 in December and is looking for his next chapter. He would like to stay in the game, perhaps working as a conduit between the clubhouse and analytically-driven front offices.

“I think I can bridge a certain gap or just bring a different perspective that can make them see certain things,” said Hamels, who was drafted a year before Moneyball was published and retired long after every team incorporated the use of analytics. “Everything is about winning and what you can do to make a player better so he wins in the big moments. We all think differently. We’re not all the same cookie-cutter self that sometimes analytics tries to show. There’s a little bit more in people and especially in athletes.

“You have to understand the player, what he’s going through, and how he learns. How he decompresses, how stress affects him, and I could try to help him with what I had to go through.”

Utley spent a few seasons with the Dodgers in a similar role, working in their front office while learning how it all worked. He’s now living in London as an ambassador for Major League Baseball and would be a popular hire for a front-office position once he decides to come home. Hamels, who lives near Dallas and considers Philadelphia “a second home,” is looking for a similar first gig.

“I don’t know everything,” Hamels said. “I don’t want to come in and just think, ‘My way is the greatest way and you have to implement it right now.’ I’d like to kind of stay on the sidelines, stay in the back, and observe. If I’m able to do that for a year or two, I’d be able to pick up how it really works.

“The inner workings of a front office are completely different from the inner workings of the clubhouse or on the field. Yes, I might have the on-field and clubhouse checked, but I don’t have anything about what happens upstairs and why and then how to implement certain things into the clubhouse. I think that will be the process that I want to learn. I don’t want to mess up. I want to be an asset, and I want to provide something that’s beneficial. It takes learning.”

The pitcher nicknamed “Hollywood” didn’t receive a movie-like finish to his career. But he did return to Philadelphia last October to watch the Phillies in the World Series. He caught a ceremonial first pitch, sat in a suite with his 2008 teammates, and cheered like crazy for the current team. Twenty years earlier, he came to a city he didn’t know and helped it love baseball again. Now, he was watching the city fall in love again. It was a great finish to a great career.

“The very lucky part of what we get to do is we get to be embraced forever,” Hamels said. “We remember these big key points, but then it just becomes a blur of what was going on. That’s why when we talk to players who become Phillies, we’re like, ‘This is why you do it. One time in your life, you want to be able to experience a parade down Broad Street. Then you become part of the group and you’re forever a Phillie and you mean something to such a great city.’”