Vida Blow

New zip in the old game indeed. Shit is called cocaine, yo.

On this day 21 years ago, baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn announced that pitcher Vida Blue would be suspended for the remainder of the season due to his conviction on cocaine charges from the previous November. Blue had missed the season to that point serving a jail term.

Vida Blue was Doc Gooden long before Doc hit the stage. As a 22-year-old phenom in 1971, Blue won both the A.L. Cy Young and MVP awards, going 24-8 for the A's with a 1.82 ERA. He won 20 games in two more seasons, but he also lost 19 one year, and though he did not plummet with quite the trajectory of Gooden and the Straw, it was close. What once seemed like a certain Hall of Fame career was ravaged by blow.

Like Gooden and Strawberry, Vida's problems with the high life have plagued him long past his baseball career. His most recent stint at rehab was in 2005, after violating his parole from a 2004 DUI conviction.