Mike Norris Remembers Athletics' Claudell Washington as a Great Player and a Great Friend
Claudell Washington, the Berkeley High non-baseball player who nonetheless debuted with the A’s at the age of 19 in 1974 and went on to spend 17 years in the Major Leagues, died Tuesday at the age of 65 in Pittsburg, Calif.
The cause of death was not immediately announced, but in 2018 Washington said that he had prostate cancer and had opted to stop treatment for the disease.
Mike Norris, the former A’s pitcher who was Washington’s roommate in the A’s minor league system from 1972-74, said that his lifelong friend “was given a year to live and he beat that by six months.”
“He was just an amazing guy,” Norris said. “He had an incredible sense of humor that most people never really got to see, because it wouldn’t come out around people he didn’t know well. But if you really got to know him, he was a wonderful friend.
“We hung out all the time when we were roommates in the minors. I nicknamed him Joke Box because of just how funny he was, the sense of humor he had. Every day he’d come up with something new.”
Washington played baseball throughout high school, but didn’t actually play at Berkeley High because, as Norris put it, “he had a bit of a truancy problem,” so he didn’t have the grades needed to be eligible to play high school sports. An A’s scout, J.J. Guinn, saw him playing in a summer league and got the A’s to sign him in 1972.
Guinn was at Washington’s bedside after he’d been admitted to intensive care three days ago, Norris said.
“J.J. told me he’d sat with him the whole day the other day,” Norris said, “and he said Claudell said just one word all day, so we knew this was coming. When he got cancer, that kind of slowed down how much we would see each other. I had a respiratory disease myself, and with the coronavirus going around, we didn’t get a chance to see each other the last three months. But he and I would talk and text all the time.”
That ended just before Washington was admitted to ICU.
“It’s a sad day,” Norris said.
A two-time All-Star who took home a World Series ring with the 1974 Oakland Athletics, Washington announced his presence with authority. In his first Major League start, he played left field and batted second for the A’s against Gaylord Perry on a half-price night at the Coliseum on July 8, 1974.
Perry came into the game with a 15-game winning streak, one shy of the American League record. Thanks to the pitching matchup – Perry was facing Vida Blue – and the ticket discount, a packed house of 47.582 was on hand, and the fans were into it.
Perry was one out away from his 16 consecutive win when Joe Rudi tripled and pinch-runner Herb Washington tied the score at 3-all on a Gene Tenace sacrifice fly. Washington, who’d picked up his first big league hit, a triple, in the eighth inning, came up in the 10 and delivered the game winner, a single that scored pitcher Blue Moon Odom, who was pinch-running for Pat Bourke. Blue and the A’s won, 4-3.
“If Claudell told me about that game once, he told me about it 20 times,” Norris said. “He was really proud of what he did that day.”
After the game, Washington said he was pretty sure that Perry would “remember me.” For Perry, who came into the game 15-1, the 1974 season was never the same. He would go just 6-11 the rest of the season.
Washington, who spent his first three seasons with Oakland, would go on to play for seven different big-league franchises. When the A’s owner, Charlie Finley, traded Washington to Texas for Rodney Scott and Jim Umbarger the week before the 1977 season began, Washington took it hard.
“It was the first time I’d ever seen him cry,” Norris said. “Mr. Finley had told him he was going to keep him and build a franchise around him. And then he traded him.”
To all of those cities the man with the big shoulders would bring his 42-ounce bat, much heavier than that used by almost all of his contemporaries.
“He called it a pole,” Norris said. In Washington’s hands, it could be lethal.
One of the youngest players ever to be named an All-Star when he made the American League team in 1975 at just 20 during a season in which he averaged .308, he was the first player to hit three homers in a game in both the National and American leagues. During a three-year stint with the Yankees, he hit the 10,000 homer in Yankee history on April 20, 1988.
And he struck out 39 times against Nolan Ryan – the most for any player against baseball’s all-time strikeout king.
There were troubles along the way, including being one of 21 players implicated in a cocaine scandal in 1985.
“Those were just the times,” Norris, who had his own troubles with cocaine but who says he is 21 years clean, said. “Claudell didn’t smoke or drink or chase women. I’ve never seen anybody more dedicated to the game of baseball as far as taking care of himself.”
Washington retired after the 1990 season with a career slash line of .278/.325/.420 with 164 career homers.
“If I go tomorrow, I’m good,” Washington told theathletic.com in 2018. “I’m at total peace with my life. I wouldn’t change my script for nothing in the world.”
Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3
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