‘I Believe the Piper Has to Be Paid,’ Judge Says : ‘Blue Moon’ Odom to Begin Sentence

A Superior Court judge Friday refused an emotional plea by former baseball pitcher John (Blue Moon) Odom to continue in a 150-day, live-in alcohol rehabilitation program rather than serve 90 days in jail for selling cocaine.

“I think your rehabilitative efforts so far are Herculean, and I commend you,” said Judge David H. Brickner. “But I believe the piper has to be paid.”

Odom, who had been scheduled to begin his sentence Friday, will report to the Orange County Jail Thursday. Odom’s attorney requested the delay to give Odom time to complete the first phase of the live-in rehabilitation program at the Roque Center in Garden Grove, where he has been for three weeks.

Odom, who pitched in three World Series for the Oakland A’s, told the court in Santa Ana that the Roque program began to help him overnight. Without the program, Odom said, “I might drink myself to death, or hurt somebody.”

Encouraged to Continue

Brickner encouraged Odom to return to the program when he leaves jail.

In July, a jury convicted Odom of two counts of selling small amounts of cocaine to a co-worker at a since-closed Zerox plant in May of 1985.

Brickner sentenced Odom to 90 days but twice postponed the sentence, first to give Odom 30 days to enter an alcohol-abuse treatment program and then to hear a request from Odom’s attorney to modify the sentence.

Odom’s attorney, Stephan A. DeSales, told the judge Friday that Odom’s stint at the Roque Center would be more than double the jail time. If Odom failed to remain at the center or complete the programs, DeSales proposed, the court could then give him a six-month jail sentence.

A rehabilitation director from the Roque Center, Lloyd Bjork, told the judge that if Odom had to leave the program now, “it will set him back.”

Emotional Appeal

After Brickner rejected DeSales’ suggestion, Odom’s wife, Gayle, jumped from her chair and asked to speak. As Odom sobbed loudly, she told the court:

“John is not a strong man; he is weak,” she said. “I know what a jail sentence will do to him. It will kill him. He might just end up taking his own life.”

Brickner answered that he had already given Odom time to get help.

“I’m not going to back off from what I think is right,” the judge said.

Odom retired from baseball in 1976 after playing 10 years.

Last year, he was arrested for allegedly threatening to kill his wife. On Friday, his attorney told the court that most of Odom’s problems stemmed from years of alcohol abuse.

Brickner said he would ask Orange County Jail officials to let Odom serve his sentence at the James A. Musick Facility, an honor farm.