Ken Clay, the right-handed pitcher who earned two World Series rings with the New York Yankees in the late 1970s, died Thursday at his home in Lynchburg, Virginia. He was 71 years old.
Dr. Jim Warner, executive medical director for the Centra Heart & Vascular Institute in Lynchburg, notified the Yankees on Sunday that Clay had passed. Warner said the cause of death was heart and kidney issues, the New York Post reported.
Clay's five-year major league career was brief and uneven, but it carried him through two championship seasons in the Bronx and left behind a complicated legacy that extended well beyond the diamond.
Clay made his major league debut in June 1977 and appeared in two games during that fall's World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Yankees won the title, and Clay was back for more the following year.
His finest moment came on Oct. 3, 1978, in the opener of the American League Championship Series against Kansas City. Clay entered in the sixth inning with one out, the bases loaded, and the Yankees clinging to a 4-0 lead. He threw 3 2/3 scoreless innings and earned the save in a 7-1 victory.
That postseason high didn't last. In Game 1 of the 1978 World Series against the Dodgers, Clay surrendered a three-run homer to Davey Lopes in his only appearance of the series. The Yankees still won the championship, giving Clay his second ring in as many years.
The sudden deaths of professional athletes, across every sport, always remind fans how fragile life is beyond the bright lights of game day.
Clay's 1979 season was a sharp decline. He went 1-7, and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner publicly criticized him for underachieving. AP News reported that Steinbrenner famously called Clay a "morning glory", a player who showed early promise and then faded.
The label stuck. The Yankees traded Clay to the Texas Rangers the following year in exchange for veteran pitcher Gaylord Perry. Clay made eight starts for the Rangers in 1980 and posted a 2-3 record. After that season, the Rangers dealt him to the Seattle Mariners.
The Mariners released Clay in spring training in 1982. His career was over at roughly 28 years old.
Over five seasons, Clay appeared in 111 major league games, making 36 starts. He finished with a 10-24 record, three saves, and a 4.68 ERA. He was a reliever for most of his career, and his modest numbers tell the story of a pitcher who peaked early and couldn't sustain it.
Two World Series rings, though, are two more than most men who ever pulled on a big-league uniform can claim. Whatever came afterward, Clay stood on the mound in October when it counted.
Clay's post-baseball years were marked by a string of legal problems. In 1987, he pleaded guilty in Virginia to stealing more than $16,000 from a ring distributor he worked for after his playing days ended.
Five years later, in 1992, a Virginia court sentenced Clay to one year in jail for stealing $550 from the car dealership where he was employed. The amount was small. The sentence was not.
Then in 2001, Clay pleaded guilty in Florida to forgery and other charges. He had used an ex-girlfriend's personal information to defraud three credit card companies and agreed to repay more than $40,000 to creditors.
The pattern was hard to miss, a man who had stood on baseball's biggest stage, reduced to petty theft and fraud in the years that followed. It is a story that has repeated itself too many times among former professional athletes who struggle to find footing once the game moves on without them.
Ken Clay's story holds both the thrill of championship baseball and the grim reality of what can happen when that chapter closes. He pitched in two World Series before he turned 25. He earned a save in a playoff game that helped send the Yankees to the Fall Classic. He wore pinstripes alongside Reggie Jackson during one of the most storied stretches in franchise history.
And then he fell, hard and repeatedly, into trouble that no amount of October glory could fix.
Clay died quietly at home in Lynchburg, far from the Bronx spotlight. Warner's notification to the Yankees was the first public word of his passing. The cause, heart and kidney issues, carried no drama, just the plain facts of a body giving out at 71.
Two rings, a 4.68 ERA, a jail sentence, and a death at home in Virginia. Not every baseball life wraps up neatly, and Clay's never pretended to.
