Claudell Washington had a darn fine major league career, sticking around for 17 seasons, making a couple of All-Star appearances. More notably, he was part of the World Series champion Oakland Athletics in his rookie season, the third title in a row for the mighty A’s. I can only imagine what that does to the psyche. Unfortunately for Washington, that was his only championship ring.
His time as a Yankee accounts for a fraction of his overall career, playing all or part of four seasons in pinstripes.
But in a historical quirk, Washington is a surprisingly significant part of Yankee lore.
Name: Claudell Washington
Born: August 31, 1954 (Los Angeles CA)
Died: June 10, 2020 (Orinda, CA)
Yankees Tenure: 1986-1988, 1990
Washington’s career got off to quite the start. As mentioned, the rookie outfielder won a World Series with Oakland in 1974, having just turned 20 years old that August. For his part, though not an everyday starter in the postseason, Washington rose to the moment. He went 7-for-18 in his first taste of playoff baseball.
The next season was the finest of his career by almost any metric. He earned his first All-Star Game nod and the As made another trip to the playoffs, though they fell three games to one to Boston. That was the last time Washington played October baseball for a while.
After one more season in Oakland, Washington bounced around, playing for Texas, the White Sox, the Mets, and the Braves between 1977 and 1985. Unfortunately for him, he’s perhaps best known during that time for a 1985 arrest for possession of marijuana and cocaine. He did permanently etch his name in baseball lore in 1980, however. Washington notched a three-homer game in 1979 for the White Sox. The next season, he repeated the feat, this time for the Mets. By doing so, he became the third man to accomplish that feat in both leagues, joining Babe Ruth and Johnny Mize.
In June 1986, Atlanta dealt him to the Yankees in a trade that saw Ken Griffey, Sr. head to the Braves. Washington re-signed in the Bronx that offseason and was a productive member of the lineup for the next couple years, batting .296/.340/.433 with 39 doubles, 20 homers, 25 stolen bases, and a 111 OPS+ across 228 games.
At the old Metrodome in Minnesota on April 20, 1988, Washington hit the 10,000th home run in franchise history, making the Yanks the first club to reach that milestone — no small feat considering how much older plenty of the National League teams are in comparison.
That wasn’t his only highlight of the 1988 campaign, either. On September 11th, Washington stepped up to bat against former MVP Willie Hernandez. The Tigers and Yankees endured a marathon in the Bronx, with both sides going scoreless for 10 consecutive innings from the eighth through the 17th. Detroit had finally broken through in the top of the 18th on an RBI single from future Diamondbacks skipper Torey Lovullo.
But Hernandez was tired in his third inning of work and walked Rickey Henderson to lead off the home half. That made Rickey the tying run at first base, always a dangerous proposition. Washington was next up though, and he just ended it right then and there. In terms of innings, it was the latest walk-off homer in Yankees history.
Washington left New York for the Angels after the 1988 season. If Washington was to be believed, the sticking point was $200,000. He told the New York Times:
”I was playing with five or six potential Hall of Famers. That’s rare. All I wanted was a $200,000 buyout for an option year and they wouldn’t agree to it. That’s what it was: $200,000.”
In the end, he returned to New York, albeit more than a year later. In April 1990, the Angels dealt Washington back to the Yanks, who released him that October after 33 unproductive games for the last-place club. It marked the end of his career.
Washington died in June 2020. He had suffered from prostate cancer since 2017.
Claudell Washington’s tenure in New York was brief. But he tallied a couple of the more historic homers in franchise history, too. He was also, according to New York Times reporter Murray Chass, one of the aforementioned Rickey Henderson’s favorite teammates with the Yankees. Happy heavenly birthday, Claudell Washington!
See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.
