Vida Blue, who led Athletics to 3 World Series titles, dies at 73

Vida Blue, a hard-throwing left-hander who became one of baseball's biggest draws in the early 1970s and helped lead the brash Oakland Athletics to three straight World Series titles, has died. He was 73.

The A's said Blue died Saturday but didn't give a cause of death.

"I remember watching a 19-year-old phenom dominate baseball, and at the same time alter my life," Dave Stewart," a four-time 20-game winner for the A's a generation later, wrote on Twitter. "There are no words for what you have meant to me and so many others."

Blue was voted the 1971 American League Cy Young Award winner and most valuable player after going 24-8 with a 1.82 earned-run average and 301 strikeouts with 24 complete games, eight of them shutouts. He was 22 at when he won MVP, the youngest to win the award. He remains among just 11 pitchers to win MVP and Cy Young in the same year.

Blue finished 209-161 with a 3.27 ERA, 2,175 strikeouts, 143 complete games and 37 shutouts over 17 seasons with Oakland (1969-77), San Francisco (1978-81, 85-86) and Kansas City (1982-83).

"Vida Blue has been a Bay Area baseball icon for over 50 years," Giants president Larry Baer said in a statement, "His impact on the Bay Area transcends his 17 years on the diamond with the influence he's had on our community."

A statement from the Oakland A's on the passing of Vida Blue. <a href="https://t.co/fAMIU7MHCO">pic.twitter.com/fAMIU7MHCO</a>

A six-time all-Star and three-time 20-game winner, Blue helped pitch the Swingin' A's, as Charley Finley's colorful, mustachioed team was known, to consecutive World Series titles from 1972-74. Since then, only the 1998-2000 New York Yankees have accomplished the feat.

"There are few players with a more decorated career than Vida