Odom Given 90-Day Jail Sentence

A Superior Court judge in Santa Ana sentenced former major league pitcher John (Blue Moon) Odom to 90 days in the Orange County jail Friday for selling two grams of cocaine but gave Odom 30 days to seek help for a drinking problem first.

Odom, 41, was convicted July 31 of selling cocaine twice--on May 17 and May 24 last year--to Willie Harris, a co-worker at a now-defunct Xerox computer plant in Irvine.

Odom, distraught and sobbing, told Judge David H. Brickner that he was innocent and asked for leniency before the judge announced the sentence.

“I’d like to get on with my life,” the former pitcher for the Oakland A’s told Brickner.

Dr. Seawright Anderson, Odom’s psychiatrist, told Brickner that Odom’s drinking and depression had escalated recently and said that a jail term would worsen Odom’s depression.

“He’s been under tremendous pressure over the sentencing,” Anderson said. “He thinks people are looking at him as a criminal.”

Brickner, in an emotional conversation with Odom, told him: “I don’t think you’re a bad person and I don’t think the world does either. And I am totally optimistic that you will not engage in this conduct again.

“But I got to do what I got to do and you have to do what you got to do.”