Vida Blue, a former Cy Young award-winning pitcher, and MVP who won three consecutive World Series championships with the Oakland Athletics in 1972-74 and was a six-time All-Star, has died, the team announced.
He was 73. A cause of death was not made public.
“There are few players with a more decorated career than Vida Blue,” the Athletics said in a statement on their social media platform. “He was a three-time champion, an MVP, a six-time All-Star, a Cy Young Award winner, and an Oakland A’s Hall of Famer. Vida will always be a franchise legend and a friend. We send our deepest condolences to his family and friends during this arduous time.”
Blue attended a ceremony in Oakland during the Athletics-Mets series last month commemorating the 50-year anniversary of the 1973 championship team.
The southpaw from Louisiana, who pitched a no-hitter in 1970, won the AL MVP and Cy Young awards in the same season in 1971, when he posted a record of 24-8 with a 1.82 ERA, 0.95 WHIP and 301 strikeouts in 312 innings of work, pitching 24 complete games and eight shutouts along the way.
After that breakout season, the 22-year-old Blue and owner Charlie Finley were locked into a contract impasse that reportedly led Blue to briefly hang up his cleats.
He ended up pitching in only 151 innings in ’72 and mostly pitched as a reliever out of the bullpen in the postseason.
Blue pitched five more seasons for Oakland before he was traded to the Giants.
He pitched four seasons for the San Francisco Giants and was then traded to the Kansas City, where he pitched two seasons for the Royals.
In 1983, Blue was sentenced to three months in jail for possession of approximately a tenth of an ounce of cocaine amid a federal cocaine investigation, according to an AP report at the time, and was banned from MLB for the 1984 campaign.
Blue pitched two more seasons for the Giants in 1985 and ’86.
He finished his career with a 209-161 record, 48 games over .500, a 3.27 ERA and 2,175 strikeouts.
Most recently, Blue had been an analyst on Giants broadcasts.
“Vida Blue rest in peace, my mentor, hero, and friend,” former Oakland A’s star Dave Stewart wrote on social media. “I remember watching a 19-year-old phenom dominate baseball, and at the same time alter my life. There are no words for what you have meant to me and so many others. My heart goes out to the Blue family.”
