FAST LANE HAS A TOLL
Former A’s pitcher Loaiza goes from living the high life to time for cocaine trafficking
As it turns out, being arrested for going 120 mph in his Ferrari on an East Bay freeway at 3:30 in the morning was only the beginning for former A’s pitcher Esteban Loaiza. In a sad but fascinating tale of missteps and misfortune, Loaiza’s descent from an Allstar pitcher with $44 million in career earnings to a broke, 48-year-old man doing time in federal prison for trafficking 44 pounds of cocaine was detailed in a Bleacher Report expose. These days, Loaiza sits in a cell at the Seattle-tacoma Federal Detention Center, where he has two years remaining on a three-year sentence after pleading guilty to trafficking cocaine from his native Mexico to Southern California in 2018. How he ever got there is a cautionary tale for those rolling in life’s fast lane. Thanks in large part to one of the most regrettable contracts in Oakland A’s history, Loaiza earned enough money during his 14-year baseball career to support his lavish lifestyle that included showering family and friends with expensive gifts and cars. The A’s went out of their comfort zone to give Loaiza a threeyear, $21.4 million deal in 2005, making him one of the highestpaid free agents in Oakland’s history. In Loaiza, they were counting on getting an All-star-level pitcher who was known as a likable guy, albeit a bit quirky. Like the time when he was with Texas and was seen washing his car in the parking lot — in the middle of a Rangers game while dressed in his uniform. There weren’t many lovable tales from Loaiza’s forgettable 1 1/2-seasons in Oakland, though. Despite starting the A’s last ALCS game in the Coliseum in 2006 (and getting bombed by the Tigers), Loaiza’s time in Oakland is best remembered for him being arrested on Highway 238 in San Lorenzo by a California Highway Patrol officer for suspicion of DUI and reckless driving that June. A’s announcer Vince Cotroneo, who coincidentally followed Loaiza from Texas to join the A’s in 2006, said the pitcher was a different person in Oakland. “He was just a knucklehead guy with some decent stuff upon occasion,” Cotroneo told Bleacher Report. “He wasn’t a bad guy. He was always helpful for what we needed to do. He was a little quirky, but you can say that with a lot of people. “This was the Lamborghinidriving, Maserati-driving, DUI Loaiza that we got. The paint was starting to dry. You were starting to capture the full portrait of the guy. When he got to Oakland, it got stranger.” And things were already