Omar Vizquel, the best defensive shortstop in history, was born today!
On April 24, 1967, the renowned Venezuelan baseball player Omar Enrique Vizquel Gonzalez was born in the city of Caracas, who was considered one of the best shortstops in the world.
In the year of 1984, he signed with the Seattle Mariners, but it was not until April 3, 1989 that he debuted in the big tent in a game against the Oakland athletes.
Vizquel began by highlighting his great work on defense, where he used to be really solvent. But in its beginnings in the big leagues, it did not have major relevance at an offensive level, although in the following years it was working on it and achieved a great improvement. Already in his last 2 years with Oakland, he had greatly improved the offense where he achieved a .294 average. Then he goes to Cleveland, where he would continue with his work on offense to continue maintaining the good level maintaining an average above the .280, in addition to go highlighting each year with his great talent on defense in the shortstop.
The years 2002 and 2003 were depleted for the player in their numbers, because he had to be operated on 2 occasions of his knee, but after overcoming this adversity, he returned to the field to shine in the way he knew how to do it. Even in 2004, he had a pretty good offensive campaign that caught the attention of the San Francisco Giants, with whom he would sign a new contract in 2005 and play in this entity until 2008. Already in his final years of career , played with the Texas Rangers in 2009, then the White Sox of Chicago between 2010 and 2011 and Toronto Blue Jays in 2012, in which he retired from the big leagues on October 3 with 45 years of age and 25 years of career.
There were many important marks that Omar Vizquel reached in all those years in the big tent and that took him to the hall of fame of the Cleveland Indians. Among the most outstanding we have:
- Player with more games as shortstop with 2585 games.
- More seasons played as shortstop with 23 seasons.
- Venezuelan and Latin player with more games in the big leagues with 2968 games.
- 40th place in hits, beating the Babe Ruth mark with a total of 2877 hits.
Definitely, those of us who enjoy watching him play, we know that the words are short before all the magic and the show that Omar was able to offer us in those days. Besides being a great player is also known as a great person participating in many charities and for this we remind you today.
Thank you very much for reading and appreciating.
