Overview:
Jesse Orosco set a Major League Baseball playoff record with three pitching wins during the 1986 National League Championship Series against the Houston Astros before closing out the New York Mets’ World Series championship against the Boston Red Sox
An old baseball coach made a good wingman for my 1979 interview with Jesse Orosco, a rookie pitcher that year for the New York Mets.
Orosco had been winging heaters as the ace pitcher of Rusty Fairly’s Vaqueros at Santa Barbara City College just one year earlier.
I warmed the bench for Fairly a few seasons before that.
That connection gave me the hot idea of bringing our old coach along on my quest to chronicle Orosco’s first road trip to Dodger Stadium.
I made good use of the 100-mile drive to Chavez Ravine by quizzing Farily about his lefthanded protégé.
Coach spent the first 95 miles delivering honest but mostly vanilla compliments, noting Orosco’s “great pride and desire … and perhaps his greatest asset of self-confidence.”
But I knew the late, great, straight-shooting Fairly would eventually speak his mind.
I triggered that by asking about Orosco’s astonishingly quick ascension to the big leagues.
“I think he’s still asking for autographs in the clubhouse,” he began with a smile.
And then he turned paternally protective.
“Jesse’s only 22,” Fairly continued, shaking his head as we wheeled through Echo Park in our final approach to the stadium.
“He’s pitched just one season in the minors, and this is a whole new ball game, facing guys like Steve Garvey and Dusty Baker.
“Those guys will just crush the spirit of a young pitcher.”
Fairly sat in on my pregame interview with Orosco … before proceeding to lift the spirits of the nervous, young pitcher.
I flashed back to that pep talk about a decade later while watching the movie Bull Durham.
Fairly’s words had sounded so much like those scripted for Crash Davis — the film’s fictional, veteran, minor-league catcher — in his farewell to young, MLB-bound pitcher Nuke LaLoosh.
I recall it going something like, “Look, Jesse, these big-league hitters might light you up like a pin-ball machine for a while … Don’t worry about it.”
I did jot down a verbatim account of Fairly’s final words to his former ace.
“Believe in yourself,” he said, “because I sure do.”
Anniversary Celebration
I had another flashback to that exchange a few weeks ago when Orosco, now a 69-year-old retiree, made one last appearance in a Mets uniform.
He returned to Queens for the 40th anniversary of the Mets’ memorable run to the 1986 World Series championship.
That season was the peak of a 24-year MLB career in which Orosco set a big-league record with 1,252 pitching appearances.
No outing was more historic than his save in Game 7 of the 1986 World Series against the Boston Red Sox.
Orosco gets the shivers while recalling the Mets’ late surge to a 6-3 lead that night.
Police horses were joining him in the team’s bullpen, positioning themselves to provide security during the post-game celebration.
A two-run double by Boston’s Dwight Evans, however, put that celebration in doubt by reducing that lead to just 6-5 with no outs in the top of the eighth inning.
“I thought I was coming into the game,” Orosco said, “but with so many police and horses in the bullpen, I could barely see a thing.
“I remember jumping, trying to see what was going on.
“I felt goofy, but I wanted to see.”
He soon heard the bullpen phone ringing. It was ringing for him.
Orosco got most of Shea Stadium jumping for joy when he retired the next three Red Sox batters to strand the tying run at second base.
He admitted later that he’d felt sick with nervousness, joking that, “I wasn’t thinking about baseball … I was looking for the bathroom.”
“I just told myself, ‘Stay within yourself,’” he added. “This is no time to fold.’”
Orosco also chopped a run-scoring single after feigning a bunt in the bottom of the eighth, capping a two-run rally that increased the Mets’ lead back up to 8-5.
“Honestly, to this day, I am more proud of the single,” he said with a laugh. “Not many relief pitchers get a chance to bat in the late innings of a game like that.”
He also got a chance to complete the biggest save of his life — his second in the 1986 World Series — by retiring Boston in order during the ninth.
Orosco struck out Marty Barrett for the final out, flung his glove high into the air, dropped to his knees and was then swarmed over by his joyous teammates.
A photographic image of him in that moment is engraved onto one of the bronze plaques that are cemented into the “Fanwalk” at New York’s Citi Field.
“It was the happiest moment of my life,” Orosco said.
Astro-nomical Triumph
His most nerve-wracking moment actually came at the Houston Astrodome a dozen days earlier.
The Mets and Houston Astros battled for four hours and 42 minutes in an epic, 16-inning Game 6 of the National League Championship Series.
It set a record for the longest game in MLB playoff history up to that time.
Orosco had already gotten a pair of wins in relief to help the Mets take a 3-2 series lead in their best-of-seven matchup against the Astros.
New York rallied to the brink of a World Series berth when it broke a 4-4 deadlock with a three-run outburst in the top of the 16th.
But Orosco was tiring after having already pitched two innings of relief. The third inning was no charm as he threw one fading fastball after another.
The Astros took advantage with a walk, three singles and two runs to reduce their deficit to 7-6.
They also got the potential tying run to third base and the winning run at first as Kevin Bass came to bat with two outs.
“My fastball was just dead,” Orosco recalled.
The Mets, however, were going to live or die with the lefthander from Santa Barbara.
“I had put the team in a pickle,” Orosco said. “I put us in a bad spot … But Davey (Johnson, the Mets manager) said he’d stay with me.
“He’d win or lose with me.”
First baseman Keith Hernandez put in his own two cents after Bass belted another wilting fastball for a long foul ball.
“I went to the mound and told Jesse, ‘He can’t handle your breaking ball … Forget the fastball,’” Hernandez said. “Then I waited for Gary (‘Kid’ Carter, the Mets’ catcher) to get there.
“I was looking at Jesse, but I was talking to Kid. I just looked at him and said, ‘If you call one more fastball, we’re gonna fight.’
“Kid just said ‘I know … I know.’”
Mets ace Ron Darling once described Orosco as the only pitcher he knew who could spin a baseball so hard that “you could hear it whistle.”
Hernandez noticed that it had “a nasty tilt to it.”
And so Carter was set to signal for that slider for as long as the lights remained on at the Astrodome.
Even Bass knew what was coming when the count reached one ball and two strikes.
“I tried to snap it harder, and it missed away,” Orosco said. “The 2-2 pitch to Bass was close to a strike. I just missed the outside corner with it.
“On 3-2, I knew I had to throw something he would want to swing at.”
His final slider earned a swing and a miss — and only the third World Series berth for the Mets in their 24 seasons of baseball.
It also gave Orosco an MLB playoff series record with his third pitching win in relief.
“If you ever get a chance to throw the last pitch, that’s a dream come true,” he said.
Hometown Hero
Orosco, the son of Santa Barbara’s Tomasa and Raymond Orosco, had dreamed of a big-league baseball career for as long as could remember.
He was only 6 when his father signed him up for the Santa Barbara Boys Club Baseball League. The league’s minimum age requirement was 7.
The younger Orosco learned the game by watching his dad pitch and play first base at the old clapboard stadium that once occupied Pershing Park.
Ray Orosco, a construction worker by trade, was also the player-manager for the semipro baseball team he founded called the Santa Barbara Jets.
Jesse and older brother Raymond Jr. served as batboys. Their five sisters sold sno-cones and game tickets. Their mother kept score.
Tomasa Orosco even sewed the name “Jets” on all the jerseys her husband had bought for the team.
“My dad also played both fast-pitch and slow-pitch softball,” Jesse recalled several years ago on a trip back to SBCC.
“Then he got into playing semipro hardball for the Goleta Merchants and Santa Barbara Jets.
“He played right here, at Pershing … and I played here right after that.”
Orosco, like his father, competed as both a pitcher and first baseman. He batted .472 during his senior season at Santa Barbara High School and was later enshrined on the Dons’ “Wall of Fame.”
Fairly considered him to be one of the most natural athletes to ever play baseball for SBCC.
“When he wasn’t pitching for us, he’d play first base or be our designated hitter,” he said during our 1979 trek to Dodger Stadium. “He’s also got a bowling average of like 215 or 220 — he’s one of the best bowlers in town.
“He was the best badminton player at SBCC.”
Orosco was also one of California’s best junior college pitchers in 1978, posting a 10-2 record and 1.72 earned-run average for a 24-9 Vaquero team.
He was enshrined into the SBCC Athletics Hall of Fame with the rest of the 2000 induction class in 2023 — a delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I always think about Santa Barbara,” he said. “It’s always been good to me, giving me awards for the things I’ve done in baseball.”
His wife, Leticia, stood in for him during his induction into the Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table Hall of Fame on May 15, 2000.
Orosco, 43 at the time, was still busy pitching in the big leagues.
Family Affair
His parents were the motivating force that forged his enduring grit.
Orosco was still trying to find his footing with the Mets in August 1982 when his father died of a heart attack at age 55.
“At the funeral Jesse told me, ‘Mom, Dad got me this far, and I’m going to work harder for him and you,’” Tomasa said in a Sports Illustrated interview.
Orosco had a breakout season the following year.
His 17 saves, 13-7 record and 1.47 ERA earned him a third-place finish in the voting for the 1983 National League Cy Young Award.
One season later, during the Orwellian year of 1984, he went 10-6 with a career-high 31 saves and a 2.59 ERA as the Mets closer.
He made the National League All-Star Team both years.
The Mets divided the duties of closer when they set the club record of 108 victories during their championship season of 1986.
Roger McDowell got the call against righthanders while Orosco took on the lefthanded bats.
His late-career role as a lefthanded specialist, often facing just one batter a game, enabled him to extend his career into four decades, from 1979 to 2003.
He’s one of only 31 big leaguers to have accomplished that feat.
Orosco’s mother once admitted that she tried to convert him into a righthander when she fed him as a toddler.
“We would give him his plate, and he would reach for the spoon with his left hand,” she said. “I took it away and put it in his right hand.
“But he immediately switched back to the left hand. Finally we just let him go.”
His mother died in 2018 at age 88.
Orosco has lived in San Diego for several decades, but plenty of his siblings and other relatives have remained in Santa Barbara County.
“We have a big family,” he said. “We’ve got all of California covered.”
His son, Jesse Jr., spent a year at SBCC before pitching at Grossmont College in El Cajon. He also played four seasons in the minor leagues.
The Oroscos also have two daughters. Alyssa focused on volleyball while Natalie dedicated herself to softball.
Natalie’s career took her to SBCC in 2012 to play in the same park that both her grandfather and father had once excelled.
“I’ll look up and see my dad’s number 47,” she told me that season while gesturing toward the Pershing Park backstop.
Hanging there were signs that identified the numbers of all the Vaqueros who had their jerseys retired.
“I just want to make him proud,” Natalie said.
Orosco played long enough — retiring at age 46 — to allow all three of his children to watch him pitch in the Major Leagues.
“They’d show up in about the sixth or seventh inning, every time,” Jesse said. “I was always looking out for Natalie and the rest of them, to see when they’d get there.
“It was always a great incentive for me.”
Natalie knew full well why Mom would wait until the final innings to arrive.
“That’s when Dad would be coming in,” she said.
He may have been an early riser in 1979, but few were better when the game got late.
