Vida Blue 1949-2023

Vida Blue, 1949-2023.

Vida Blue spent almost his entire career pitching for Bay Area teams.

My signed 1983 Topps Vida Blue card. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Vida Blue had one of the best baseball names ever. I was just starting to become a baseball fan in 1986-87, at the very end of Blue’s career. He was one of those players that I was drawn to because of his cool name, like Buddy Bell. Back in those pre-internet days, baseball cards were one of the only ways that I knew anything about baseball players, so I’d become a fan of someone just based on their name. My baseball card collection included many players who I found in the commons bin who had cool names, like Enos Cabell, Kurt Bevacqua, and Mike Lum. And Vida Blue is a really fantastic name. I mean, his last name is a color, how cool is that? And it helped that Blue’s final baseball card appearances were in the iconic 1987 sets, which was my favorite year of baseball cards.  

Vida Blue died on Saturday, May 6th, at the age of 73. The cause was complications from cancer, the Oakland A’s said. Blue played a key role in the Oakland A’s dynasty of the 1970’s, as the team won 3 World Series in a row from 1972-74.

As I grew older, I learned about Vida Blue’s fantastic 1971 season, when he won the AL Cy Young and MVP awards. Blue is still the answer to a great trivia question: who is the last switch-hitter to win the AL MVP award? In 2017 Vida Blue was at a card show in the Twin Cities. I brought my son Miles along; he would turn 3 a couple of weeks after this card show, but he was already a big baseball fan. We met a lot of great players like Bob Gibson, Tim Raines, Amos Otis, Rod Carew. And Vida Blue, who was one of the nicest baseball players I’ve met. I told Vida that he was one of my favorite baseball players from the 1970’s, and he said, “Thanks for being a fan.” He shook my hand twice and gave Miles many fist bumps. About an hour later, as Miles and I were just about to leave the card show for the day, Vida was walking by and called out “Go team Blue, Mark!” I had to turn around to see if Vida was talking to someone else, but he was calling out to me. I was very impressed that he remembered my name an hour later. So that’s my encounter with Vida Blue, and he was just as cool as I had hoped he would be. He was just a really nice, positive person in my brief interaction with him, and I’ll always appreciate that.  

In November of 2021, I wrote a couple of long articles about Vida Blue: “A Baseball Career Overview” and “Vida Blue: 110 Baseball Cards.” I don’t want to sound too self-congratulating, but my article “A Baseball Career Overview” is more in-depth than many of the obituaries I’ve read of Vida Blue today. Because Vida Blue’s first full season in the major leagues was 1971, which was also his greatest season in the major leagues, much of the writing about him focuses on how Blue “never lived up to the promise” he showed that year.  

As I attempted to show in my article, Vida Blue’s 1971 season was not merely a very good season, it was an historic season that very few pitchers in the last 50 years have come close to approaching. In 1971, Blue finished the season with a 24-8 record, a 1.82 ERA, and 301 strikeouts. I looked at all of the other pitchers to strike out 300 batters in a season since 1971 to see if any of them also won 24 games during the same season. Oddly enough, Mickey Lolich achieved the same feat in 1971, as he won 25 games and struck out 308 batters. (It was Lolich’s bad luck to have his finest season the same year that Vida Blue captured the nation’s attention.) Since 1971, only two pitchers have matched Lolich and Blue’s feat. Like Blue and Lolich, these two pitchers were also left-handers.  

Steve Carlton in 1972: 27 wins, 310 strikeouts, and a 1.97 ERA. Won the pitching Triple Crown. (Leading the league in wins, strikeouts, and ERA.) 

Randy Johnson in 2002: 24 wins, 334 strikeouts, and a 2.32 ERA. Won the pitching Triple Crown.  

And that’s it. As starting pitchers throw fewer and fewer innings, it seems unlikely that anyone will join Blue, Lolich, Carlton, and Johnson in this illustrious group.  

And Vida Blue still had other fine seasons: he won 20 games in 1973 and 22 games in 1975. He also won 18 games in 1976 and 1978. He was hardly a one-season flash in the pan.  

Of course, many of the obituaries of Vida Blue focused on his jail term and baseball suspension for cocaine use and possession. But few of them noted that Blue worked his way back into baseball, making the roster of the San Francisco Giants in 1985 after being suspended for the 1984 season. Blue wasn’t overpowering during his second tenure with the Giants in 1985 and 1986, going 18-18 with a 3.87 ERA, but the fact that he returned at all was a victory. And during those two years, Blue got his 2,000th strikeout and his 200th win, significant milestones in any pitcher’s career.  

Should Vida Blue be in the Baseball Hall of Fame? I don’t know, but he definitely deserves more consideration than he has received. It’s past time for Vida Blue to be considered on an Era Committee ballot and have his baseball peers decide if he’s worthy to be enshrined. As I wrote in 2021, I think a Black pitcher who had a fine career and also struggled with drug addiction during his career might find a more sympathetic audience now than Blue did in 1992 when he debuted on the Hall of Fame ballot. There’s also less emphasis on pitcher wins than there was in 1992, when Blue was overshadowed by the stunning group of 300-game winning pitchers he was competing with on the ballot. Blue’s career win total of 209 seems more impressive now, as well it should. And, as I never tire of reminding people, Vida Blue had a better career winning percentage than Don Drysdale.  

One of my favorite Vida Blue cards that I own is a signed 1983 Topps card. It shows Vida with the Royals, the team he spent the least amount of time with during his career. The card shows Blue wearing the powder blue road uniforms the Royals sported throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s. So, you have Vida Blue wearing powder blue, Royal blue even, and the icing on the cake is that the card is signed by Vida using a blue sharpie. It’s just perfect. 

Vida Blue was a player who will live on in the hearts and minds of baseball fans, and I’ll end this tribute with the same quote I ended my 2021 article with: In a 2017 interview with The Sporting News, Blue had this to say about the Hall of Fame: “I think if I could get in there, it would be a great honor. But until then, I’ll just bide my time and continue to be Vida Blue.” 

Vida Blue: 110 Baseball Cards

 

A collage of some of the Vida Blue baseball cards I bought. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

A while ago, I decided I should collect more of Vida Blue’s baseball cards. So, I bought a lot of 110 cards from eBay. The oldest cards in the lot are from 1980, so there’s nothing covering his years with the Oakland A’s.

I just wrote an overview of Vida Blue’s career in baseball, and I was planning on writing about these baseball cards in the same post, but the overview became longer and longer, and it felt like too much to shoehorn the discussion of the baseball cards into it, so I decided to discuss Blue’s baseball cards in a separate post.

1981 Topps Scratch-off, 1982 and 1983 Fleer Stamps

There was nothing truly rare in this lot of cards, but there were some fun oddities included, like the 1981 Topps scratch-offs and the 1982 and 1983 Fleer stamps. These are the types of curiosities that I never encountered at the card stores back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, so it’s nice to add them to my collection.

Vida Blue's 1980 and 1981 Topps cards. Blue with a blue sky.

Blue’s 1980 and 1981 Topps cards are similar, as I guess the temptation to photograph Vida Blue against a blue sky was just too much. Both cards still look cool, though. I like the classic simplicity of the 1980 design, and I have a soft spot for the 1981's, with their ridiculous hat, because I was born in 1981.

1983 Donruss and 1983 Fleer, featuring those cool power blue uniforms.

Because of his name, it seems only fitting that Vida Blue got to play for the Kansas City Royals when they had those cool powder blue uniforms. One of my cool baseball card treasures is a Vida Blue 1983 Topps card of him with the Royals signed in blue sharpie. Blue on blue on blue. Unfortunately, Blue’s tenure with the Royals wasn’t that successful, and they ended up releasing him in August of 1983.

Shortly after the Royals released Blue, he pleaded guilty to cocaine possession and served about 3 months in jail. Blue was banned from baseball for the 1984 season. He went to spring training in 1985 with the Giants as a non-roster invitee and pitched well enough to be added to the roster.

1986 Topps and 1987 Fleer

Blue went 18-18 for the Giants over 1985 and 1986, and he picked up his 200^th win in April of 1986. After the 1986 season, Blue became a free agent. The photo on Blue's 1986 Topps card has the glossy look of a traded card.

1987 Topps and 1987 O-Pee-Chee. Blue retired just before spring training 1987 began, so he didn't get to finish his career with the team he started with.

Blue signed with the Oakland A’s in January of 1987. This is reflected in his 1987 O-Pee-Chee card, with the designation “Now with A’s.” A month later, Blue abruptly retired just before spring training began. It turned out that Blue had tested positive for drugs, and no doubt this was his impetus behind retiring. Blue's O-Pee-Chee card remains the only baseball card evidence of his short-lived second tenure with the A's.

SPBA cards featuring Blue with the Orlando Juice and St. Lucie Legends.

Vida Blue pitched again in 1989 for the St. Lucie Legends and the Orlando Juice of the Senior Professional Baseball Association. Blue was 2-7 with a 4.87 ERA for the Legends over 11 games, and 1-2 with a 7.20 ERA in 4 games for the Juice. He finished the 1989 season with a record of 3-9 with a 5.55 ERA over 15 games. In 1990, Blue pitched for the San Bernardino Pride and pitched in 3 games with no decisions and a 4.15 ERA when the league went under. The Senior Professional Baseball Association is fascinating to me, as I only heard about the league, made up of former MLB players, maybe 10 years ago.

Blue pitched in 3 games for the San Bernardino Pride in the winter of 1990 before the SPBA folded.

The fact that this lot included Blue’s cards with the SPBA helped me in deciding to buy it. The SPBA cards aren’t especially valuable, but you don’t see them very often, and they’re cool post-career mementos to have.