MLB: Jesse Orosco & The Persistence of Self-Deception

Self-deception is oftentimes the last bastion of the aging player. Consider Jose Canseco’s February prediction that he would hit 60 this season for the Anaheim Angels: I pal around with a bunch of Halo fans, and every one of them rolled their eyes at the claim. 60 what, they wanted to know. Days on the DL? Games played this season? At bats before his first injury?

Yet Canseco said it in dead earnest, and thus was shocked when the Angels released him after a spring where he only occasionally ventured out of the trainer’s room. How could they simply discard such a valuable player, Jose wanted to know? Didn’t they recognize that Spring Training was for working out the kinks? If manager Mike Scioscia had told Canseco that he was in a fight for his professional life, why of course he’d have been out there every day…

The newest victim of this desire to believe the unbelievable is Jesse Orosco, baseball’s last remaining link to the Carter era who up until Friday was trying to catch on as a situational lefty in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ bullpen. According to agent Alan Neersand the Dodgers’ release of his client amounted to nothing less than treachery on the part of GM Kevin Malone. “Jesse was promised that he would be on the team if he was healthy and he’s healthy”, Neersand stated (and Orosco confirmed) in an Associated Press article. The column went on to quote Orosco as saying that “My main concern was getting through Spring Training healthy and helping the team in the long run”.

Yeah, sure…

Let’s think about this logically for a moment. Malone has taken a lot of flak in recent years for… well… pretty much everything he’s done, but we have to assume that Rupert Murdoch wouldn’t entrust the combination to Fox’s safe to someone that didn’t have at least a modicum of baseball sense. Given that assumption, what do you think is the likelihood that Malone promised a job to a guy who:

1. Will turn 44 later this month

2. Was offered and signed a minor league contract

3. Spent virtually the entire 2000 campaign on the sidelines with elbow miseries (a particularly nasty problem for a pitcher who relies on a slider to come down with), AND

4. Was 0-2 with a 5.34 ERA in his last full season (1999), a year in which the left-handed hitters Orosco was dictatively brought in to retire tattooed him for a .476 slugging percentage.

Top all of the above off with an 0-3 record and a 6.35 ERA in nine Grapefruit League appearances and what you have is somebody that isn’t going north, regardless of whatever non-negotiable promises might have been made.

Even if Malone did temporarily take leave of his senses that February afternoon, you’d have to think that Orosco and Neersand would have known better. Do they honestly believe that the $500,000 (assuming that Orosco made the team) and 21 year difference between Jesse and Rule V draft pick Jose Nunez doesn't matter? Hasn’t Neersand been in business long enough to realize that any promise not written on paper and signed by both parties is meaningless? If Orosco were in manager Jim Tracy’s shoes, would he honestly pick himself as the best possible choice?

Of course not… but Orosco isn’t thinking with his head anymore. What Jesse knows is that a mere three seasons ago he was arguably the best lefty set-up man in the business… and he was ancient even then. That he still has the slider, a fastball, a backdoor curve, and a lot of heart. That he feels fine and is ready to pitch. That he could have gotten it going if he’d just had a little more time, or if he hadn’t been experimenting with a new way to hold his curve, or if that kid from A ball had been shading Ken Griffey just a little bit more into the left field gap…

Upon receiving an honorary Oscar late in her life, silent screen star Gloria Swanson asked fans to “remember me as I was, not as I am”. That would probably be a good idea for Jesse Orosco’s admirers as well – at least until the mist of self-deception clears from his eyes.