Vida Blue, a hard-throwing left-hander who grew to become one among baseball’s largest attracts within the early Seventies and helped lead the brash Oakland Athletics to 3 straight World Series titles, has died. He was 73.
The A’s mentioned Blue died Saturday however didn’t give a explanation for dying.
“I remember watching a 19-year-old phenom dominate baseball, and at the same time alter my life,” Dave Stewart,” a four-time 20-game winner for the A’s a technology later, wrote on Twitter. “There are no words for what you have meant to me and so many others.”
Blue was voted the 1971 American League Cy Young Award and Most Valuable Player after going 24-8 with a 1.82 ERA and 301 strikeouts with 24 full video games, eight of them shutouts. He was 22 at when he received MVP, the youngest to win the award. He stays amongst simply 11 pitchers to win MVP and Cy Young in the identical yr.
Blue completed 209-161 with a 3.27 ERA, 2,175 strikeouts, 143 full video games and 37 shutouts over 17 seasons with Oakland (1969-77), San Francisco (1978-81, 85-86) and Kansas City (1982-83).
“Vida Blue has been a Bay Area baseball icon for over 50 years,” Giants President Larry Baer mentioned in a press release, “His impact on the Bay Area transcends his 17 years on the diamond with the influence he’s had on our community.”
A six-time All-Star and three-time 20-game winner, Blue helped pitch the Swingin’ A’s, as Charley Finley’s colourful, mustachioed staff was recognized, to consecutive World Series titles from 1972-74. Since then, solely the 1998-2000 New York Yankees have completed the feat.
“There are few players with a more decorated career than Vida Blue,” the A’s mentioned in a press release. “Vida will always be a franchise legend and a friend.”
Selected by the then Kansas City Athletics on the second spherical of the 1967 novice draft, Blue made his massive league debut with Oakland on July 20, 1969, a couple of week shy of his twentieth birthday. He made 4 begins and 12 reduction appearances, then spent most of 1970 at Triple-A Iowa.
Called up when rosters expanded, he pitched a one-hit shutout at Kansas City in his second begin. In his fourth begin, Blue pitched a no-hitter towards Minnesota on Sept. 21, at 21 years, 55 days that made him the youngest pitcher to throw a no-hitter for the reason that stay ball period began in 1920.
He held out after his MVP season and signed a $50,000 one-year deal. Blue didn’t make his first begin till May 24 and went 6-10. From 1973-76, he went 77-48 and 0-3 within the World Series.
In 1975, he pitched the primary 5 innings of a no-hitter towards the California Angels, however was pulled early by supervisor Alvin Dark to relaxation him for the playoffs in a recreation completed by Glenn Abbott, Paul Lindblad, and Rollie Fingers
After Blue clashed publicly with Finley, the A’s proprietor traded Blue twice solely to be blocked every time by baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn.
Finley tried in June 1976 to commerce Blue to the New York Yankees for $1.5 million and Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Boston Red Sox for $1 million every. Kuhn vetoed the offers underneath the commissioner’s authority to behave within the “best interest of baseball.” In December 1977, Kuhn stopped Finley from buying and selling Blue to Cincinnati for $1.75 million and minor league first baseman Dave Revering.
Blue was traded to the Giants the next March in a deal that introduced Oakland seven gamers, together with outfielder Gary Thomasson and catcher Gary Alexander.
Blue was dealt to the Royals in March 1982 and launched in August 1983. He was ordered that December to serve three months in federal jail and fined $5,000 for misdemeanor possession of roughly a tenth of an oz of cocaine. Blue was sentenced to 1 yr in jail however U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Milton Sullivant suspended nearly all of the time period.
After sitting out 1983 and 1984, Blue returned to baseball with the Giants for 2 seasons. Blue was among the many gamers ordered by baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth in 1985 to be topic to random drug testing for the remainder of their careers.
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