By Alex Coffey
May 21, 2020
Herb Washington can’t remember when he took his final at-bat. It might’ve been during his freshman year at Michigan State, while he was playing recreational baseball; maybe during his sophomore year. It was a long time ago. All he knows is that it did not happen in any of the 105 major-league games that comprised his brief but enduring career.
And yet, the cards keep coming. He estimates that he receives about two of them a week, sent by fans seeking an autograph from a man who used to be the world’s fastest. Last week he received five of the eye-popping Topps card — the only one that reads “pinch runner” — and a $10 bill, accompanied byspecific instructions: Sign this money and return.
That was funny, he said. He’s used to all that. It takes a lot to surprise Washington these days. He’s often introduced as a former big-leaguer. Did you know Herb played with the 1974 A’s? Reggie Jackson was on that team. Look at his finger; that’s a World Series ring around it. Those kinds of things. They’re woven into his legacy as much as his illustrious business career, or his legendary world-record-tying speed.
So yes, it takes a lot to surprise Washington, and yet, it happened, about two weeks ago, in the form of a phone call from a friend.
“Did you know that Jordan gave you a shoutout?”
“Jordan? Gave me a shoutout? Sure he did.”
And then later that evening, this time from his own daughter.
“Dad, you know that Jordan gave you a shoutout, right?”
“Jordan?”
“MJ.”
“MJ didn’t give me no shoutout.”
“Yes, he did.”
A cursory Google search proved her correct: If you type in “Herb Washington” and “Michael Jordan,” you’ll see it too, clear as the California sky.
“He didn’t want to be a Herb Washington type who would just steal bases and be a part-time outfielder,” Jordan’s agent, David Falk, said to MLB.com, in referencing an offer for Jordan to sign a major-league deal with the A’s.
“I’m like, hey, if MJ knows who I am, it’s all good,” Washington said.
Herb Washington never took a major-league at-bat, and never fielded a major-league position, and because of that, he is still who we think of — 45 years later — when we hear the word “specialist.” His Baseball Reference page generously lists him as a “designated hitter.” If you ever called Washington a “designated hitter” to anyone on that 1974 A’s team, it would almost certainly induce a “no way” and some laughter.
Another thing anyone on that 1974 A’s team would tell you, is that owner Charlie Finley’s grand experiment would never have worked with any other personality besides Washington’s. He wasn’t built like a ballplayer, but oh did he sound like one.
This was supposed to be a story of adversity, and how Washington fought through that. Maybe it still is, in a way, but it definitely took an unexpected turn. When Finley first called Washington in early 1974 to ask him to join his ballclub as a designated pinch-runner, he was really asking him to throw himself — not a baseball-lifer — into an environment full of baseball-lifers. To assimilate into a group of 24 other men who had all earned their roster spots the old-fashioned way — by grinding through the minor leagues — while he had not.
Finley was asking Washington to steal a lot of bases, yes, but he was also asking him to earn respect in a world where respect wasn’t handed over easily. This was especially true of the 1974 A’s. Many of their core players — Rollie Fingers, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi, Blue Moon Odom, Vida Blue — had come up through the minor leagues together. Many of them had weathered the franchise’s move from Kansas City to Oakland together.
And then, all of a sudden, in waltzes Washington — a man known for setting a world record for the 50-yard dash, and the 60-yard dash, but not for anything remotely to do with baseball. He’s in spring training, and he’s been guaranteed a roster spot, on a team that had just won back-to-back World Series titles.
“I think anybody would be skeptical when you bring a guy in and he’s never played baseball before,” former A’s catcher Gene Tenace said in a phone interview last week. “He couldn’t slide like a conventional player; he couldn’t get down on his hip. He was completely raw. He was a world-class runner. He wasn’t a baseball player.”
So, no, the 1974 A’s were not going to make this easy for Washington. But he was fully aware of this going in and preferred to focus on what he could control, anyway. Rudi, the team’s longtime left fielder, still remembers seeing him run the bases, as the speedy Dodgers infielder Maury Wills watched him fly.
Finley paid Wills to work with Washington for 10 days in spring training, the idea being that they would cover everything: Reading different pitchers, learning how to turn while running the bases, learning how to slide, learning how to not take too wide of a route. Washington would run sprints along the warning track during batting practice — from the right-field foul pole, to the left-field foul pole, and back, depending on where the balls were hit.
For most everyone on the team, it was a bizarre thing to behold, and naturally, it led to some good-natured ribbing.
“It was like he was scared of the ball,” Tenace said. “So, we got him a glove. At least you can protect yourself with a glove. He wasn’t going to catch anything, but at least in batting practice, you can bat the ball away from your head.”
Washington sat there and took it. He took it for the first few months. And then, one day, he didn’t.
They were on the team bus. This was where the worst of the ribbing occurred, because, as Tenace puts it, “there was no escape.” Established veterans would sit in the far back — “they called it the shit house,” Washington said — and bark at the soft-spoken rookies sitting in the front. Not just at the rookies, though; anyone who made any sort of blunder on the field, whether it was an error, or a caught stealing, or a hitless game, was bound to hear about it on the ride back to the team hotel.
Of his 48 attempts to steal a base from 1974-75, Washington was caught 17 times. And you better believe he heard about every single one. But then he started doing something that few rookies had done before. He started giving it back.
“Herb, you couldn’t steal your way out of a phone booth,” Tenace said one day.
His retort: “I may not be able to steal my way out of a phone booth, but how many E-2s did you have this year? Who’s the last person you threw out? I could run on you all day.”
Another time, a player made a comment that suggested he didn’t deserve a roster spot.
His retort: “Really? Look at your position. Look at where you rank, in the league. You’re not even in the top 10. In hitting or in fielding. In track, I’m in the top three, no matter what event I’m running.”
Once, during the summer, an outfielder — Washington doesn’t remember who — got on him for getting picked off.
His retort: “The third base coach’s arm is broken from waving ‘em in when you’re in the outfield. Nobody stops. They’re still running. I thought they was running the damn relay the way everyone was running on your arm.”
“The guys on the bus erupted because it was a good comeback,” Bando, the A’s third baseman, said last week. “If you had not been around the ballclub, you would’ve thought Herb Washington had been there forever.”
Of course, it helped that Herb Washington stole 31 bases for his team — some of those, very important bases. It helped that he was getting better; he was learning how to properly steal, and run, and read. But above all, this — the trash-talking — was the way he won over the 1974 A’s.
And it didn’t stop. Over the second half of the season, Odom, one of the A’s All-Star pitchers and faster guys on the team, kept telling Washington that he could beat him in a race.
“Moonie was very fast,” Rudi said over the phone on Saturday. “He was a sprinter in high school. And it gets boring out there for an hour and a half in batting practice, shagging flies and throwing the ball in and everything else. So, we’re all out there, trash-talking each other.
“Finally, Herbie said put up or shut up to Moon. Let’s go.”
They decided to settle it with a race. In the outfield. At the Coliseum. Before a game. In September — in the middle of a World Series run. This not only happened, but got the official sign-off from manager Alvin Dark.
Tenace was coordinating all of it. He decided to make T-shirts for Washington and Moon – “probably with some stupid description on the front of them” – and hired a track coach from Berkeley to officiate the competition. He brought a pistol and racing blocks, and they set them up in left field, marking exactly 100 meters from the left-field line. Coaches and teammates gathered to watch. Trainers stretched them out beforehand.
Washington gave Odom a 10-yard head start. Odom did not hold his lead for very long.
“Herbie caught him around shortstop,” Tenace said. “And then he was talking smack to him as they were running at full speed, and then all sudden, Herbie said, ‘OK, I’ll see you, Moonie,’ and then he put it in another gear, and he just blew by him.
“And I’m standing there yelling at Herbie, ‘If you trip and fall, I’ll kill you!’”
Odom was awfully quiet after that.
What happened next, you probably know by now. The A’s finished the season 90-72, earning a berth in the ALCS. They dropped only one game to the Baltimore Orioles and advanced to the World Series. They lost only one game there, too — the one Washington is best known for, Game 2 in Los Angeles against the Dodgers.
It was top of the ninth inning, and Washington was pinch-running for Rudi. The A’s had just scored two runs, and Washington entered the game to try and tie it up. He was taking what he called a “suicide lead” off first. Mike Marshall, the Dodgers closer, bluffed to first three times to chase him back. On the fourth time, Marshall finally threw over, and that was it. Washington was out.
He slapped the dirt in frustration.
“When that happened, I was like, that’s a balk,” he said. “That’s a balk move. I’m thinking, World Series? Really? Wow. I’d rather be thrown out than be picked off.”
“He had a very, very good deceptive move,” Rudi said of Marshall. “It might’ve been a slightly balk-type move but they didn’t call it. The other problem was that Herbie had never seen this guy. Marshall had a great move, but Herbie had never seen him, and that was a problem he had to deal with a lot.”
The A’s wouldn’t lose another game in 1974. They’d be crowned World Series champions for the third straight year a few days later, the first team to do so since the 1949-53 Yankees.
Washington would only play in 13 games in 1975. He was released by the A’s on May 5. No at-bats had been taken, no defense had been played, an abundance of trash had been talked, and a legend had been born.
When Finley told Washington he’d been released, the speedster wasn’t too torn up about it. For a while, Finley had been trying to convince him to spend some time in the minor leagues, to work on his base-stealing skills.
Washington wasn’t a fan of that idea.
“It was time for me to move on with my life,” he said. “And, I had six figures put away. I liked my chances.”
Washington went back to Michigan. He got a job at Michigan State, and then at a telephone company, and put his money — his salary, his bonus and his World Series share — away.
“My baseball career gave me a financial boost that would have taken an extremely long amount of time for me to accumulate,” he said. “That was really the foundation for me, financially, to be able to buy my first McDonald’s. And that certainly impacted everything else, you know, from a financial standpoint. I wouldn’t have made that kind of money in a year, otherwise. There’s just no way.”
Washington founded a company — aptly named H.L.W. Fast Track, Inc., — which ended up becoming one of the largest African-American McDonald’s franchisees in the United States. A few years ago, he was named a board member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Those are things that are on his résumé. You know what else is on his résumé, right smack in the middle?
“Played professional baseball for the World Champion Oakland A’s”
And Washington didn’t just play; he fit in. He was one of them. Even Fingers, the biggest trash-talker of them all, felt he had met his match.
So with every passing year, Washington will continue to be known as the definitive baseball specialist. He’ll continue to be known as a man who was once one of the world’s fastest. But for 24 ballplayers who donned the kelly green and gold in 1974, he’ll forever be known as Herbie, the rook who could always give it back.