Omar! My Life On & Off the Field – Omar Vizquel with Bob Dyer

In 2002, despite being a decade away from the end of his playing career, Omar Vizquel felt the need to record the details of his career in his official auto-biography, Omar!: My Life On and Off the Field. Whether he was trying to cash in one more time on the success of the 1990’s (which was obviously coming to an end), get things off his chest (like in Terry Francona’s Red Sox book) or simply jot things down before he forgot, what came about was one of the most brutal looks at the Central Division winning teams of the late 1990’s you’ll ever see. Unlike other story collections of the time, such as Terry Pluto’s Burying the Curse, Vizquel didn’t have quite the positive view of the Tribe’s success. For example, the book begins with this story:

Jose Mesa, our ace relief pitcher, had come in to try to protect a one-run lead. All we had to do was get three outs and we’d win the ultimate title. The eyes of the world were focused on every move we made. Unfortunately, Jose’s own eyes were vacant. Completely empty. Nobody Home. You could almost see right through him.

After all the successes the Indians had during the 1990’s and the personal accolades for Vizquel including nine straight Gold Gloves prior to the book coming out, Vizquel’s first topic of discussion was to blame Jose Mesa for the Indians loss in the 1997 World Series against the Marlins (despite the fact that it was Charles Nagy who gave up the game winning run). This quote lead to some on the field antics as the deposed closer took issue with the Gold Glover, threatening to kill Vizquel if he ever saw him again. Luckily for Omar, the two played in different leagues for a few years, but when they finally did oppose each other, Mesa threw at Vizquel’s head and was ejected. Obviously, not everyone has appreciated Vizquel’s writing prowess.

Overall, the great Omar comes off a bit cocky in his book. Even in his retelling of the 1997 World Series finale, he focused on other’s failures rather than the fact that he went 1/5 with two strike outs in that game. He also over emphasizes his own musical talent (just listed to his rendition of the Goo Goo Doll’s Broadway to find out for yourself) and his artistic abilities. In fact, another negative statement that may bother Clevelanders is his hatred of the song Cleveland Rocks written about living on the North Coast. Of course, his prowess on the field has given him some deserved ego and if you can get through that, this seems to be an accurate telling of the early years of Vizquel’s life. While the book starts in 1997, he quickly goes back and describes his upbringing in Venezuela, his time in Seattle and beginnings with the Indians.

While this is a baseball book, it is much more than a retelling of Vizquel’s baseball career. There is a lot of insight into the culture shock of moving to a new country, then being traded to another city. In addition to base feelings as well, Omar has quite a few stories, including his tale of climbing into a ventilation shaft to switch out Albert Belle‘s bats, a tale that may or may not be true.

Overall, this is a fairly short book (just 251 pages, a decent section of which are pictures) and if you are going to read it, I would recommend the paper back edition as it has an extra year’s worth of Omar. This final chapter is also an interesting read as he discusses some of the more difficult things such as losing the Gold Glove in 2002, the team’s failures on the field and the ultimate loss of Jim Thome to the Phillies. Opinions like these are the exact purpose why one would read this book and every Indians fan should. That being said, keep an open mind. You might come away with a different opinion about Little O.