Esteban Loaiza had everything and just threw it all away.
It’s a wild tale of a baseball player who had the world at his fingertips, only to now find himself in federal prison today.
Two-time All-Star pitcher Esteban Loaiza spent 14 seasons in Major League Baseball with eight different teams. He once signed a three-year, $21.4 million contract with the Oakland A’s and finished his campaign with the franchise hosting a 4.62 ERA and 1.376 WHIP.
It was around that time he would get arrested for driving over 120 mph in his Ferrari on an Oakland-area freeway and receive a three-year probationary sentence. That’s basically when everything took a turn for the worse in is life, as detailed in an incredible piece by Bleacher Report’s Scott Miller.
“I think when we’re young, we all have a tendency to think it’s going to last forever,” Joe Torre, who managed Loaiza in his half-season in The Bronx, told the website. “And when you have to move on to something else, I guess you’re vulnerable. It’s sad.”
“He was just a knucklehead guy with some decent stuff upon occasion,” longtime Oakland radio broadcaster Vince Cotroneo told Bleacher Report. Cotroneo also called Texas Rangers games when Loaiza was there. “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.
“I went to Oakland and so did he in ’06,” Cotroneo added. “This was the Lamborghini-driving, 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.”
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Loaiza had married Mexican-American pop star Jenni Rivera after his carer ended, and was in the process of getting a divorce when Rivera was killed in a 2012 plane crash. His money kept dwindling down.
One person close with the Loaizas told Bleacher Report: “His family kept drawing and drawing and drawing from him.”
Loaiza last pitched in 2008 and would be arrested some ten years later in February 2018 after an investigation discovered that Loaiza had 44 pounds of cocaine — estimated to be worth $500,000 — stashed in a townhouse in California.
Loaiza’s attorney said in paperwork filed with the court that his client “made a huge error in [judgment] when he agreed to commit this crime.”
He ultimately was sentenced to 36 months in prison on March 8, 2019. On top of that, he is also set to be deported to Mexico after serving his prison sentence since he was born in Tijuana.
