{"id":574586,"date":"2026-03-30T17:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T17:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/574586\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T17:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T17:19:07","slug":"yankees-p-ken-clay-on-1977-78-world-championship-teams-dies-at-71","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/574586\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees P Ken Clay, on 1977-78 world championship teams, dies at 71"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ken Clay, who won World Series championships with the New York Yankees<\/a> in 1977-78 to highlight his five-year major league career, has died at the age of 71.<\/p>\n

Dr. Jim Warren, executive medical director for the Centra Heart & Vascular Institute in Lynchburg, Virginia, notified the Yankees on Sunday that Clay died Thursday at home in Lynchburg. Warren said Clay’s cause of death was heart and kidney issues.<\/p>\n

A reliever for most of his career, Clay made his major league debut in June 1977 and appeared in two games in the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a>. In 1978, also against the Dodgers, he gave up a three-run homer to Davey Lopes in Game 1 in his only appearance.<\/p>\n

His best postseason outing came in the opener of the 1978 American League Championship Series against Kansas City. The Yankees led 4-0 when Clay entered with one out and the bases loaded in the sixth inning. Clay pitched 3 2\/3 scoreless innings and earned the save in a 7-1 win.<\/p>\n

Clay was 1-7 in 1979 and finished the season in the minors. He was still in the minors when the Yankees traded him to the Texas Rangers<\/a> for Gaylord Perry the next year. He made eight starts for the Rangers in 1980, going 2-3, and was traded to the Seattle Mariners<\/a> after the season. The Mariners released him in spring training in 1982.<\/p>\n

Clay made 111 appearances in the majors in his career, including 36 starts, and was 10-24 with three saves and a 4.68 ERA.<\/p>\n

As Clay struggled in 1979, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner criticized him for underachieving, famously calling him a “morning glory,” a reference to racehorses that turn in excellent morning workouts but don’t perform well in races.<\/p>\n

Clay also had a run of legal issues. In 1987, he pleaded guilty in Virginia to stealing more than $16,000 from a ring distributor he worked for after his baseball career ended. In 1992, he was sentenced to one year in a Virginia jail for stealing $550 from the car dealership where he worked. In 2001, he pleaded guilty to forgery and other charges in Florida and agreed to repay more than $40,000 to creditors for using an ex-girlfriend’s personal information to defraud three credit card companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ken Clay, who won World Series championships with the New York Yankees in 1977-78 to highlight his five-year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-574586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}