Outfielder talks race, steroids, near death
His A’s career was brief, just 45 regularseason games, but José Guillén helped the team into the playoffs in 2003, even while playing through a broken hamate bone.
Then, after steroid allegations in 2010 when he was with the Giants — his 10th bigleague team in 14 years — Guillén decided to hang it up rather than serve a suspension. And then he disappeared. Friends didn’t hear from him, former agents couldn’t track him down.
Guillén says that one reason was that he was very sick in 2012, losing 100 pounds after being hospitalized for pancreatitis.
“I was in the Dominican Republic, drinking orange juice in a restaurant, then I went home and fell asleep and woke up with a sharp pain,” Guillén recalled. “I was alone, going through a divorce. It was the worst moment of my life. I thought I would die right there.
“I remember calling my son, saying, ‘You have to come right now. Something is not right,’ and he came over and I was rolling on the floor. It took me a week to find out what was going on. Everything went south. I lost a lot of weight. I looked pretty bad. … People thought I had cancer
or HIV. I looked like I was going to die.”
Even now, at 44 and back to full health, Guillén has no desire to get involved again with his former sport. There is no coaching job in his future. “Nope, I don’t want anything to do with baseball, to be honest with you,” he said. “I’m not that kind of person. I understand how it is now, the coaches have to be nice. I’m old school.”
His reticence is understandable. During his playing days, Guillén was something of a lightning rod, seen as a hothead or temperamental at times, though he also had many supporters. Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, Guillén’s manager in Washington, related to Guillén, telling him he’d had his own detractors when he played and he understood that Guillén played his best with a chip on his shoulder.
Former A’s catcher Jason Kendall — not easily won over — played with Guillén at two stops and said, “José is like a little brother to me. No one ever understood the kid, but he was just José. If he didn’t like you, he didn’t give a s—. I absolutely love the guy.”
Guillén believes some of the issues he had, particularly early in his career, might have stemmed from racism within baseball, especially because he was a teenager when he came up. He had left school in the Dominican Republic after the seventh grade, signing a contract for $2,000.
“I know there is racism everywhere, but I see how they treat white players, how they treat Dominican players,” Guillén said. “You have to be so good like (Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols) to be treated fair and equal to the white players. If you’re not the same level, you’re not going to be treated like those guys, and I understand that, in every sport.”
In 2008, in Kansas City, Guillén went after a heckler who he says shouted some racist epithets at him and badmouthed his family.
“There’s video of a person who told me, ‘Go back to the Dominican, you …,’ and he called me the nword. I wanted to jump over there in the stands,” Guillén said. “No one did anything, not even the police. And the guy was calling me all kinds of things, in front of kids. And everyone thinks I’m the bad guy, ‘Look at him, he’s so mean.’ But no one knows what was said that hurt me so much. All the nwords.”
The most prominent disagreement Guillén had was with former Angels manager Mike Scioscia, who lifted Guillén for a pinch runner in a game against the A’s in 2004. Guillén tossed his bat near where Scioscia was standing — the batboy was in front of Scioscia, Guillén says on The Chronicle “A’s Plus” podcast this week — and threw his glove against the wall.
After the game, Guillén says, Scioscia accosted him at his locker and aired him out, which is unusual behavior for a manager (an Angels team employee confirmed Guillén’s account, but added that Scioscia did so to summon Guillén to his office). The two exchanged words, and the next day, Guillén was suspended for the final week of the season.
“If he had let it go, nothing would have happened,” Guillén said, “but he had the gall to confront me in front of my teammates and was telling me all kinds of stuff I didn’t appreciate.”
Guillén’s career came to its end in 2010, when he was named in connection with a Florida clinic that had sold steroids and human growth hormone.
Guillén does not deny this. “That’s why you’ve got to be surrounded by good people who always help you do the good thing,” he said. “I was surrounded by some badinfluence people saying, ‘You’ve got to put up numbers. You’re going to be a free agent . ... I’m regretting it right now. I believe it was the wrong thing to do.”
With that blot on his reputation, Guillén leaves a mixed legacy, but he is remembered fondly by A’s fans after playing the final week of the 2003 season with a broken hamate bone in his left hand. Most players opt for surgery, but that would have kept him out a month; Guillén played through it, and he had a 1.117 OPS in the playoffs against Boston.
“A lot of people thought it was because a contract year, but I could have shut it down and have surgery because I was going to get paid, anyway . ... The numbers don’t lie,” Guillén said. “I decided to play because of my love for the game — if it hurts but if you can still play, play. I was able to open the eyes of a lot of people and it was not because of my contract year, it was because of my toughness and what I wanted to accomplish at that time.”
Guillén also leaves memories of one of the great outfield arms of all time, not just strong but impressively accurate.
“He had the best arm I’ve ever seen. Ever,” Kendall said.
“I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t think anyone in baseball can throw the baseball harder than me. I feel I have the best arm in baseball of all time, that’s the way I feel,” Guillén said, adding a current A’s outfielder into the mix. “I know they have a guy there, (Ramón) Laureano with a great arm, I’ve been watching him, but I would challenge anyone at my time, ’972006, before I got Tommy John surgery. That’s one thing I can say I’m proud of.”