JUPITER, Fla. — Six-time All-Star and twice a winner of the Silver Slugger, Moises Alou sat in the dugout this afternoon before starting in left field for Team Dominicana and said he has to listen to his body, and his body is hinting this tournament will be the last swings of his career.

“I’m going home after this,” Alou told a group of us reporters before playing the St. Louis Cardinals at Roger Dean Stadium in a pre-World Baseball Classic exhibition game. “I haven’t decided 100 percent. But it looks like it. It looks like it.”

Alou, who will turn 43 in July, didn’t even expect to play in the WBC.

All-Star outfielder Moises Alou thinks after the WBC he'll head home to retirement. (Photo: Getty Images)

His father, Felipe Alou, is the team manager and Moises said he expected to only serve as an assistant general manager, helping to construct the teams roster. A little while ago he found himself trying to find candidates to fill in the holes in that roster — and realized he might have to. (Though he joked today he’s still looking to fill positions, as he’s called Aramis Ramirez recently to see if he might take the place of Alex Rodriguez on the roster. “He’s not returning my messages,” Alou joked. He also heard former Cardinal Fernando Tatis is an option.)

When Alou, a career .303 hitter with that distinctive pinched-knees batting stance, decided he would try to play, he found it difficult just to bend down to field groundballs.

“At the beginning, I couldn’t catch a groundball,” he said. “I didn’t think I would play that much. Now I have a chance to play a lot.”

Team Dominicana is not the team it could have been, what with the expected departure of Rodriguez and the absences of such stars as Albert Pujols, Ervin Santana, Manny Ramirez, and on and on and on. Alou figured he wouldn’t be able to crack that lineup, but now that he has he’s not looking to use the WBC as a launchpad into a 2009 contract — like, say, Pedro Martinez is. Alou said he received some interest from Philadelphia and that he could be wooed by an American League team to be a full-time DH. But being a pinch hitter doesn’t interest him, being a part-time player doesn’t interest him and he’s all but decided playing baseball this season doesn’t interest his body.

“I’m tired of the nagging injuries — my calf, my quad, my hammy, everyday something different,” he said. “It got to the point that I didn’t trust going out there. … Everybody wants me to keep playing. I know the feelings inside — the pains and aches. Sometimes it is time to let it go. It’s not forever.

“This is my last rodeo, like you guys say,” Alou concluded, “it’s a nice one.”

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