Omar Vizquel

Omar Enrique Vizquel González is a Venezuelan professional baseball player currently signed as a shortstop for the Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball (MLB). He was born on April 24, 1967 in Caracas, Venezuela.

Vizquel is considered one of best shortstops currently playing in the Major League. He had won 11 Golden Gloves (nine consecutive) at shortstop and is the current holder of the Most Consecutive Games at Shortstop Without an Error, after supassing Cal Ripken with 95 fieldings, between September 26, 1999 and July 21, 2000.

On May 25, 2008, Vizquel broke the record for Most Games played at Shortstop, surpassing Luis Aparicio. He also has the Highest Career Fielding Percentage by a Shortstop, with 0.985.

Vizquel is known as a "Renaissance Man" as he is very talented in many areas. He also has a love for fashion.

He is also active in community service, having served as an honorary spokesperson for "Young Audiences", an arts education organization in Cleveland, and "Schools Now", which raises funds through the sale of entertainment booklets. Following the 1999 Vargas mudslide disaster that killed 25,000 in his native Venezuela, Vizquel not only donated his time to the relief effort but also helped to raise over $500,000 for the cause. Vizquel also has various charitable events in downtown Cleveland such as Tribe Jam, where he and some other teammates get together with each other or with retired singers and sing some of their favorite songs.

His 2002 autobiography, Omar!: My Life on and Off the Field, which he co-wrote with Bob Dyer, spent four weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List. It was also released in paperback in 2003. The accounts in the book about the Mesa scenario continue to fuel angst and misunderstandings between Mesa and Vizquel.

In 2003 a DVD called "Catch His Magic" was released in the Cleveland Indians Official Stores. It´s a documentary of his life, his best plays and it´s also a baseball clinic where he explains his techniques of how to be a master shortstop.

Vizquel is referenced in an episode of The Simpsons entitled "Bart's Friend Falls in Love". In the episode, Bart takes a distracted Milhouse's Carl Yastrzemski baseball card in exchange for one of Vizquel with the head cut out.

Feud with Jose Mesa

A long-running and well-publicized feud erupted between Vizquel and former teammate and friend José Mesa in 2002, following the publication of Vizquel's autobiography, Omar! My Life On and Off the Field. In the book, Vizquel criticized Mesa's performance in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series: "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. Not long after I looked into his vacant eyes, he blew the save and the Marlins tied the game." Mesa reacted furiously, pledging to hit Vizquel upon every subsequent opportunity: "Even my little boy told me to get him. If I face him 10 more times, I'll hit him 10 times. I want to kill him."

On June 12, 2002, Mesa made good on his promise and hit Vizquel the first time he faced him, in the ninth inning. Oddly, Mesa was not ejected and finished the game, which featured five other ejections, including both managers. They did not face each other again until 2006; by then, Vizquel was with the San Francisco Giants and Mesa was playing for the Colorado Rockies. When Vizquel came to bat against Mesa in Denver on April 22, Mesa hit him again. Meeting three more times in 2006, however, Vizquel escaped being hit by his former teammate, with two groundouts and an RBI single. In his career, Vizquel is batting .333 (7-for-21) against Mesa.