Vida Blue is in the same position as a lot of Baseball Hall of Fame candidates.
The former Oakland Athletics ace was anything but a sure induction when he debuted on the writers’ ballot for Cooperstown in 1992, never cracking 10 percent of the vote in four tries on the ballot. He has better numbers than several lower-tier Hall of Famers. But so do many candidates long passed over by what’s colloquially known as the Veterans Committee.
The omissions grate on 68-year-old Blue, who now lives in Tracy, Calif.
“I have the utmost of my respect for the Hall of Fame,” Blue told Sporting News in a phone interview. “I think they do a good job. But at the same time, sometimes, I think they miss the boat. It’s not sour grapes or nothing.”
Blue stressed that he was speaking as a fan, not necessarily as a Hall of Fame candidate.
He mentioned players like Lee Smith, Luis Tiant and — he’s probably not the first player to say this, either — Jose Canseco.
Blue cited how the former Bash Brother fell just short of 500 home runs, once a sure marker of induction. Then he mentioned a man who scouted him in Louisiana, Negro League legend Buck O’Neil.
“I don’t know what his numbers look like but I think he was worthy,” Blue said of O’Neil.
MORE: Luis Tiant on Hall of Fame: ‘I think it’s wrong what they do’
Then there’s the one candidate’s omission that “really, really hurts” Blue, Marvin Miller who served as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association from 1966 through 1982 and helped topple the game’s hated Reserve Clause, which paved the way for free agency and exponentially higher salaries.
“He came in and turned the tables,” Blue said. “The inmates might be running the asylum now, but still, I think the players would be (supportive) of him like 100 percent. I thought it was a big mistake that they didn’t get a chance to induct him while he was still alive.”
For Blue, the Hall of Fame is more than just statistics.
“The Veterans Committee, they’ve got to have a better grasp on what a player’s contribution was to the game -- not just numbers but what his contribution was to the game,” Blue said.
Blue could have a shot at Cooperstown when he’s eligible again this fall as a Hall of Fame candidate through the Modern Baseball Committee, which formed in 2016, is scheduled to meet twice every five years and will consider players, managers, umpires and executives who made their greatest contribution to the game between 1970 and 1987.
But, like most other veteran candidates, Blue shouldn’t hold his breath this year.
Cooperstown chances: 10 percent
Why: The Hall of Fame’s veteran candidate structure hasn’t enshrined a living former player since Bill Mazeroski in 2001, with just three dead players — Joe Gordon, Ron Santo and Deacon White — getting into Cooperstown in the decade and a half since. Hall of Fame committees have also somehow never enshrined an African-American player who spent their entire career in the major leagues.
MORE: Black MLB players get little HOF help from Veterans Committee
Don’t expect the trend to shift for Blue.
Blue went 209-161 with a 3.27 ERA, 45 WAR and 15.4 WAA. Those stats arguably place him in front of dubious Hall of Famers like Jesse Haines, Rube Marquard and the teammate who got into Cooperstown fairly easily with the writers but who Blue was actually a bit better than, Catfish Hunter.
None of those men had Blue’s 1971 season, either, where he won the American League Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards and made the covers of Newsweek and Sports Illustrated as a 21-year-old phenom.
All the same, cocaine addiction derailed the second half of Blue’s career, with Blue drawing a 90-day jail sentence and his name coming up in the Pittsburgh Drug Trials late in his career. Of cocaine, Blue said it was something “that happened in my life that you can’t erase. You have to deal with it and you move forward with your life.”
He added, “We’re only human, man.”
Asked if he ever wondered how many more wins he might have had, Blue said, “My mind doesn’t drift that far off to the side, man. My 209 wins are good enough for me. Yes, you do wish that you could erase that, like I said. But it happened, I dealt with it and you move forward.”
MORE: Denny McLain wants more recognition from Hall of Fame
Granted, it’s over-simplistic to say cocaine alone cost Blue the Hall of Fame. Like many pitchers of his era, he was also egregiously overused, averaging 266 innings from 1971 through 1977 and managing 312 innings in his iconic ‘71 season.
People like Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley might not have cared less about pitching Blue too often that season.
“I was young and dumb, as they say, and of course I wasn’t making $10 million a year,” Blue said. “So had I hurt myself, I’m sure he would have rolled me off the field and put my uniform on some other guy to take my place. That’s the way it was then.”
Blue and Finley engaged in protracted negotiations after the ‘71 season, with Finley finally agreeing to give a raise provided some of it be labeled money for Blue’s college education. Finley being Finley, he eventually tried to get that money back.
“There was a timetable on the usage of the funds,” Blue said. “He actually called me one day and said, ‘Vida, you know that X number of dollars that we set aside for your college education? I don’t have to pay that to you now’ because that time had lapsed on it.”
Blue got the last laugh, though. During the ‘71 season, Finley had given Blue a baby blue Cadillac (“I’m like, ‘C’mon, I’m 21. Give me a frickin’ Camaro. Don’t give me no damn Cadillac.’”) Blue asked Finley for, and received, an Atlantic Richfield gas card. For two years, Blue had a routine when he went to buy gas.
“The next car behind me, I’d fill it up and go about my business,” Blue said.
It’s not to say Blue seems bitter in any of this. Though he’s had problems in retirement, including a stint in rehab following a DUI a decade ago, he seems thoroughly affable and fun to talk to. This could help him as a veterans’ candidate.
Blue could be his generation’s Lefty Gomez, the hilarious former New York Yankees ace enshrined by the Veterans Committee in 1969.
Asked if he thought he was a Hall of Famer, Blue said, “I can’t answer that, man. All I know is I played baseball. It opened a lot of doors in my life and I gave it all I had at the time. I think it was a win. I think I got a lot out of baseball and I think I gave a lot to baseball. I let the pundits (decide who’s a Hall of Famer). The politics of it kind of gets in the way.
“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.”