Editor’s note: This story is part of the Cleveland Baseball Countdown, a series of 30 features on the club’s 30 best players of the past 30 years. In 2020, Omar Vizquel was accused of multiple incidents of domestic violence by his wife. Vizquel denied the allegations. He was later sued over allegations of sexual harassment by a batboy for the Double-A Birmingham Barons, whom Vizquel managed. The White Sox, the parent club of the Barons, said in a statement in 2021 that they fired Vizquel upon learning of the alleged incident in August 2019. That lawsuit was settled in June 2022.
GOODYEAR, Ariz. — For a few years, Omar Vizquel’s Hall of Fame candidacy was a popular point of debate. Did defensive metrics dampen fond memories of his glove work? How much should we value his longevity, as he stuck around the big leagues for nearly a quarter-century? How many dazzling defensive plays are required to offset a rather unspectacular offensive resume?
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Now, as evidenced by his diminishing vote totals, there’s little deliberation. Vizquel received a tally on 19.5 percent of ballots this winter, a steep fall from his high of 52.6 percent three years ago. Off-the-field developments have certainly contributed to his drop in votes.
As for his on-the-field exploits, here’s what we can say, without any debate: His defense was mesmerizing. For more than a decade in Cleveland, he performed a magic act at shortstop.
Maybe the metrics weren’t bullish on his range. Maybe he didn’t possess the strongest arm. Maybe he shouldn’t have been sniffing the No. 2 spot in Mike Hargrove and Charlie Manuel’s lineups.
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But, go ahead: Visualize it in your mind right now. It’s a cloudless afternoon at Jacobs Field. A batter skies a popup toward the International Space Station. You peer up in your seat and immediately have to shield your eyes, your Ray-Bans failing to offer enough protection from the sun. Vizquel has his back to home plate. He casually looks up at the last moment and completes a semicircle motion with his glove, from shoulder to shoulder, snagging the baseball as it plunges toward the grass.
He really was a wizard with his glove, always in command, always calm, never panicking, never in a hurry, never making you think twice about whether a runner was going to beat out his throw, or whether the ball was going to scoot through the infield. He seemed to make time stand still as he put on a show for the audience. Vizquel actually wanted to play second base as a kid growing up in Caracas, Venezuela. When he was 7 years old, though, his coach shifted him to shortstop. He was too gifted not to play the more demanding position, and he stuck there for the ensuing four decades.
He made bare-handed snags on slow choppers that inched toward him and sharp bouncers his glove wouldn’t reach. He belly-flopped onto the infield dirt to vacuum up grounders to his side. He made the baseball equivalent of sweet, rhythmic jazz in teaming with Roberto Alomar for three years’ worth of double plays up the middle. Both players won Gold Glove awards in all three seasons from 1999 to 2001.
Vizquel is particularly fond of his diving stop in Game 6 of the 1997 World Series, when he sprawled out onto the outfield grass to corral a Charles Johnson grounder. He popped to his feet and threw across the diamond to end the sixth inning and prevent the Marlins from scoring a pair of runs, preserving Cleveland’s 4-1 lead.
In his ninth game with the franchise, in 1994, he committed three errors that directly contributed to a brutal loss to the Royals. Kenny Lofton once told me, regarding that game: “The first thing we said was, ‘Who is this guy?’” Vizquel recalled a fan berating him from the stands, shouting for the team to “send this guy back to Seattle!” He went another 52 games without committing another defensive miscue.
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One of his first coaches, Bill Plummer, would joke that Vizquel “never got a bad hop” because he could make any adjustment necessary to be properly positioned to field a baseball. Vizquel won eight of his 11 Gold Gloves during his 11-year stint in Cleveland.
He logged a 90 OPS+ in that stretch (meaning he produced offense at a rate 10 percent worse than league average). Much of that is tied to his lack of power. He walked more often than he struck out and he stole 279 bases with Cleveland, so it’s not as though he was a complete offensive liability.
But if there’s something worth remembering, it’s the effortless nature of his slides, his dives and his barehanded snags.
About the series
The Cleveland Baseball Countdown is a series of features on the club’s 30 best players of the past 30 years. There surely will be debate about the rankings. I tried to balance longevity with dominance, but this is an inexact science. Feel free to spout off in the comments with your frustrations about where I placed Albert Belle or how I omitted Ryan Garko. Just please keep it lighthearted. This isn’t a definitive ranking. It’s supposed to be fun. Throughout the series, we’ll have some bonus pieces, extra anecdotes, honorable mentions, one-year wonders and more.
• No. 30: José Mesa • No. 29: Travis Fryman • No. 28: Andrew Miller • No. 27: Shin-Soo Choo • No. 26: Asdrúbal Cabrera • No. 25: David Justice • No. 24: Shane Bieber • No. 23: Cody Allen • No. 22: Jason Kipnis • No. 21: Cliff Lee • No. 20: Carlos Carrasco • No. 19: Bartolo Colon • No. 18: Charles Nagy • No. 17: Victor Martinez • No. 16: Sandy Alomar Jr. • No. 15: Carlos Baerga • No. 14: Carlos Santana • No. 13: Travis Hafner • No. 12: Michael Brantley • No. 11: Roberto Alomar • No. 10: Grady Sizemore
(Photo of Omar Vizquel in 1999: John Reid III / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
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