Herb Washington: Baseball's Pinch Running Specialist

On March sixteenth, nineteen seventy four, the Oakland Athletics did something no one had ever done before. They signed a pinch runner, Herb Washington, who was a sprinter and hadn't played baseball since his sophomore year in high school. Here's a story behind this new concept on daily sports history. Welcome to daily sports History, I mean fan Rees, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day now. Back in the nineteen seventies, the Oakland Athletics were really a part of a dynasty. Between nineteen seventy two and nineteen seventy four, they won the World Series three times in a row, only the second team to ever do that besides the Yankees, with Hall of famers and superstars on their team Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunt. But in seventy three, American League decided to add the designated hitter position, giving more flexibility and more scoring power to the league. But that wasn't the position the Oakland A's were focused on. They wanted to focus on a position rarely used, the pinch runner. In baseball, a pinch runner is when a player is substituted for a player that has got on base. Now, this would mean the player that made the hits would be out of the game, so it's normally done towards the end of the game when runs were needed, but it gave a skilled runner or a faster runner the chance to steal bases or score a run better than This was something that the owner of the Oakland A's, Charlie Finley, thought was a great opportunity to fill his last roster spot with a player that could outrun anyone else and give them the best chance to score a run or two. He thought, if you had a good runner, this winning over ten games in a year, as most Major League Baseball games are relatively close, so that littleton edge could give you the knot. And before nineteen seventy four he had great success with a player named Alan Lewis, who appeared in one hundred and fifty six games for the A's but only played in the field ten times and was really focused on being a pinch runner. But Lewis was getting older as he just turned thirty two, and Finley was looking for someone with even more speed, and that's when he came across a sprinter named Herb Washington. Now Herb had actually played baseball in high school, but his main focus was track and field, and in high school he ran one hundred yard dash in nine point four seconds, which attracted numerous scholarship offers, and he chose to go to Michigan State, where he became a four time All American and won an NCAA title, and while there, set the world record for the fifty and sixty yard dash. After college, though, he tried to make a chance to go to the NFL and was drafted in the thirteenth round by the Baltimore Colts, but he never played for them as he was trying to keep his amateurism for the nineteen seventy two Summer Olympics, but unfortunately, he did not qualify for those Olympics, and after that he was looking for other opportunities, and that's when he got a call from Charlie Finley of the Oakland A's, who told him he didn't want him to actually play in the field, he just wanted him to be a pinch runner. Herbert greed as long as he got a no cut contract, which means at no point could he be cut from the team without getting full payment, which is something at the time was not common and was only given to the superstar athletes such as their Hall of famers Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson. But Herb knew that they could cut him at any time, especially since he didn't play a position every day, so they ended up negotiating a contract giving him a one year deal for forty five thousand dollars with a twenty thousand dollars signing bonus, which is roughly two hundred and seventy thousand dollars a day. And Herb was so specialized that his baseball card actually said Hinch runner during that season, where he participated in ninety two games, stealing twenty nine runs in twenty nine bases, which was good enough for seventh in the league, which is pretty good considering he didn't play all the games and was only would only get a chance to run about one time a game. But of course he did get caught stealing sixteen times as well, which only three other players in the league had done that year, but it always gave pitchers and catchers a thought when he was there to keep an eye on him, as this was speed they hadn't seen. But the A's had a good season that year and made it to the playoffs and then the Alcs. Unfortunately he got in the game and got picked off, but they were able to make the World Series, where he appeared in two games and got a ring when they won the World Series. He appeared in a few more games the year after, but was cut as they wanted someone who would play the field. Because he was the first player that is not a pitcher, to play over one hundred games in Major League Baseball and never attempt one at bat. This experiment has not really been done since, but it wouldn't surprise me in this day and age of analytics if it were making a comeback. Thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please follow us on our socials were Daily Sports History at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and you and threads trying to get everywhere for you. We we have great little videos for every story so you can see pictures and videos of the topic. 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