Beef timeline: Jose Mesa vs. Omar Vizquel

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Once upon a time, Clevealand had a very good baseball team that included an imposing relief pitcher named Jose Mesa and an athletic shortstop Omar Vizquel. These two fellows were once friends, but began having issues after the team lost to Florida in the 1997 World Series.

Things got really heated in 2002 when Vizquel included a blunt and honestly kind of mean description of Mesa’s shortcomings at the start of his memoir. Mesa has never gotten over it.

Timeline

October 26, 1997 – Jose Mesa entered in the ninth inning of Game 7, Cleveland leading Florida 2-1. Mesa gave up two singles over the first three batters he faced, putting runners on first and third with one out. Craig Counsell hit a fly ball to right field, which was caught for the second out, but Moises Alou tagged up and scored without a throw, tying the game 2-2. Mesa struck out Jim Eisenreich to end the inning, and then faced four batters in the 10^th. Cleveland lost the game – and the series -- in the bottom of the 11^th.

March 1998 – Vizquel homered against Mesa in spring training during an intra-squad game, and did something to irk Mesa. One account stated Vizquel waved his arms and ran sideways as he circled the bases before doffing his cap as he got to the plate. Another account stated Vizquel performed a cartwheel, which is awesome but utterly unconfirmed as the Bleacher Report video that made this claim was the only place where I found the fact of the cartwheel mentioned. Mesa was traded to the Giants later that year.

August 2000 – After one season in San Francisco, Mesa moved to the Mariners in 1999 where he pitched for two seasons.¹ Mesa faced Vizquel four times without incident, but on Aug. 19, 2000, Mesa threw a pitch near Vizquel’s head. Vizquel did not leave the batter’s box, glaring out at Mesa. Mesa’s next pitch was waist-high and inside. Vizquel walked toward the mound, Mesa walked toward Vizquel and players from both teams rushed onto the infield. No punches were thrown, however, and no one was ejected.

What’s interesting is that while Mesa was playing for the Mariners, it was Cleveland’s Sandy Alomar who ran to Mesa and escorted him back to the mound.

“I just told him, come on, let’s get this game over with,” Alomar said afterward, according to the Morning Journal. “I don’t know what it was about. It must go back a few years or something. That’s something between the two of them.”

News accounts have repeatedly stated Mesa hit Vizquel in this at-bat, but that’s not true. Vizquel grounded out to end the inning and Mesa waited for Vizquel on the first-base line where the two shouted at each other, each pointing at the other.

“I have no idea what that was about,” said Charlie Manuel, Cleveland’s manager at the time. “I’ll leave it to those two to explain it.”

Neither addressed what happened. However, there was a subsequent at-bat between the two, and nothing happened.

April 2002 – Vizquel’s memoir “Omar! My Life On and Off The Field” is published.

June 13, 2002 – Mesa, now with the Phillies, faced Vizquel in the ninth inning. The first pitch was inside, but missed Vizquel’s elbow. The second pitch hit him in the middle of the back. Mesa declined to speak to reporters after the game, and Vizquel was not in the team’s clubhouse after the game.

Charlie Manuel, Cleveland’s manager said, “Yeah, he meant to hit him. I think it was on purpose.” 

Mesa was fined $500.

March 11, 2003 – Cleveland and Philadelphia played in a spring-training game, but Vizquel was removed from the game before Mesa entered. Afterward, Mesa told the Bucks County (Pa.) Courier-Times, “I won’t try to hit him in the head, but I’ll hit him. And if he charges me, I’ll kill him. If I face him 10 more times, I’ll hit him 10 times. Every time.”

March 12, 2003 -- Vizquel told reporters he did not believe Mesa actually wanted to murder him.

"I don't know if that's really what he meant when he said that," Vizquel said. "Sometimes we would say in Spanish, 'I'm gonna kill you.' But in the translation, that's not really what we meant."

Hmmmm. I dunno about that. Mesa was asked whether he would accept an apology from Vizquel, and he said, “If he comes to apologize, I will punch him right in the face,” Mesa said, according to Jayson Stark, then of ESPN. “And then I'll kill him. If you're a writer and you want to write a good book, you don't write a story about somebody else."

As for a fight? Vizquel said he’d be down for that even though it would mean moving up a couple of weight classes. Vizquel stood 5 feet 11, weighed 175 pounds. Mesa was more like 6-2, 235.

“That would make me happy,” Vizquel said. “I'd go and fight him. Hey, anything can happen, man. When Jones fought Ruiz, that went against the odds, didn't it? Of course, everybody says I have soft hands, so I don't know. I'm a flyweight. He's a heavyweight."

April 22, 2006 – The two had no one-on-one encounters for three years, owing in part to managers knowing better than to send Vizquel up to the plate with Mesa on the mound. But in 2006, with Vizquel came to the plate for San Francisco with Mesa on the mound for Colorado. Mesa hit Vizquel with a pitch. Now, given Mesa’s previous statements, he probably should have been ejected. However, the home-plate umpire contended he was unaware of the history between the two.

The next game, San Francisco starter Matt Morris hit Colorado’s Matt Holliday, which resulted in a warning to both benches. When Morris hit catcher Eli Marrero later that inning, Morris was ejected along with manager Felipe Alou and pitching coach Dave Righetti, who’d thrown his pitch counter onto the field. The Giants were furious, contending that Morris had not at all intended to hit Marrero, which was backed up by the fact that it was a breaking ball.

Later in the game, Rockies reliever Ray King was ejected after hitting a batter in the eighth inning. The Rockies — like the Giants — were angry, saying that King was not perpetrating any sort of payback.

After all of that, the league office took a look.Mesa was suspended four games for having plunked Vizquel, and afterward, he told reporters that he would just try to get Vizquel out going forward, which was true. The two faced each other three times the remainder of the season and Mesa refrained from pegging Vizquel on each occasion.

Grudge status: active

Jose Mesa was interviewed on a Spanish-language podcast in July 2023, and he said that he had not seen nor spoken to Omar Vizquel since 2006, which was the last time the two faced each other.

At about the same time, Vizquel expressed his regret for the rift during an interview with another podcast.

A postscript

This has absolutely nothing to do with the grudge …

However …

I do feel compelled to include that Vizquel was arrested in 2016 on suspicion of assault over an incident in which his wife suffered injuries that were documented by police. Vizquel was not prosecuted for that incident, and his wife later said she was coerced into signing a letter to the prosecuting attorney that refuted the account in the police report. Vizquel stated he had never hit or been violent toward his wife. The dispute was detailed by USA Today in 2020.

In 2021, Vizquel was sued for sexual harassment by a former batboy for the minor-league team he had managed in the White Sox organization. The batboy, who has autism, was 22 at the time and said Vizquel sexually harassed him, exposing his genitals to the young man and at one point demanding the young man wash his back. The White Sox conducted an investigation after learning of the suit and decided not to renew Vizquel’s contract. Vizquel settled the civil suit against him.

This has occurred while Hall of Fame voters have been considering Vizquel’s induction. Last year, Vizquel spoke with USA Today with the not-so-subtle hope of being excused from the Bad Man Purgatory. You can judge for yourself how compelling a case he made. I was unconvinced.

1  As an aside, I covered some Mariners games that season, and Mesa was not generally approachable for interviews. Jose Miguel Romero, my colleague at The Times, once got Mesa to agree to an interview, and then — when the appointed time came — sent one of his children to tell Jose that the interview wouldn’t happen. Jose loved to recount the way the kid told him, “My Dad said he’s not going to talk to you because he’s mad.”