Former Pirate pitched no-hitter in 1968

He once retired Willie Mays and Willie McCovey in back-to-back at-bats to become a part of Major League Baseball lore. His list of teammates during a major league career that spanned 10 seasons includes Hall of Famers Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Roger Maris, Johnny Bench, Steve Carlton, Lou Brock and Orlando Cepeda.

He pitched in three World Series, helping the St. Louis Cardinals to one of their 10 titles back in 1968.

Yet many of Ray Washburn’s most precious baseball memories took place during his three-year stay at Whitworth College, where he pitched the Pirates to an NAIA championship in 1960.

“That was a long time ago,” admitted the 70-year-old Washburn, who lives with his wife, Beverly, just outside of Woodinville, Wash., and still teaches two recreational activity classes at Bellevue Community College each week. “But I still see quite a few of my old Whitworth teammates quite regularly.

“We were all kind of the same back then. We all had part-time jobs on campus and had a lot of the same classes. It was a pretty close-knit group.”

They were relatively unknown, as well, when, as part of a long-running budget crunch at Whitworth, they were forced to drive their own personal vehicles to Sioux City, Iowa, to compete in the NAIA national championships.

The Pirates earned their berth in the 1960 NAIA finals by winning their NAIA district tournament and took a 16-7 record back to the Midwest. The previous year, they had also qualified for nationals by beating Western Washington University in the district title game, but the Pirates did not go because of a lack of funding.

“We had believed in ourselves all along, and always thought we had a chance to win going into any game we played,” recalled Washburn, who was 5-3 during the regular season in 1960. “But nobody had heard of us back there in the Midwest, and nobody else expected us to do what we did.”

What the Pirates did was win four of the five games they played back in Sioux City, capturing the national championship with a 4-0 win over Georgia Southern, a team that boasted one of the tournament’s toughest outs in center fielder Lou Brock.

Washburn won three games for the Bucs and was credited with the victory in the title game, despite pitching only two innings before a rain storm halted played for almost 90 minutes.

“I didn’t pitch any more after the rain delay,” he recalled.

Still, what he had accomplished prior to his abbreviated appearance in the title game was enough to earn Washburn the tournament’s most valuable player award – a thrill, he insists, that ranks second only to striking Brock out all three times he faced him.

“That’s something I never let Lou forget,” Washburn said, chuckling.

Washburn, who was born in Pasco, was a multisport standout at Columbia-Burbank High School prior to enrolling at Whitworth in the fall of 1956. He lettered in both basketball and baseball for the Pirates as a freshman, but transferred the following year to Columbia Basin College in Pasco, where he led the Hawks’ basketball team to a Northwest Junior College championship.

He returned to Whitworth for his final two seasons and lettered two more times in basketball and baseball.

Following graduation in 1960, the St. Louis Cardinals flew Washburn to Pittsburgh – where they were playing the Pirates – for a tryout. He signed a contract following his workout and was immediately shipped to the Cardinals’ Triple A minor league team in Rochester, N.Y.

The following year, St. Louis moved its Triple A franchise to Charleston, W.Va., where Washburn led the International League in win-loss percentage and earned run average before being called up to the parent club near the end of the season and going 1-1 with a 1.77 ERA.

In the spring of 1962, Washburn made the Cardinals’ roster, signed a contract that paid him $6,500 for the entire season and officially launched a professional career in which he went on to post a 72-64 record and a 3.53 ERA. His best season came in 1968 when he went 14-8 with a 2.26 ERA and worked a career-high 215 innings.

It was that same year that Washburn made baseball history by tossing a no-hitter against San Francisco, the night after the Giants’ Gaylord Perry had no-hit the Cardinals. It was the first time in the history of the Major Leagues that back-to-back no-hitters had been pitched in the same series.

Wherever Washburn travels these days – whether it’s to a card show, a gathering of former Cardinals teammates or Whitworth’s annual homecoming – he is asked about his no-hitter in which he retired Mays and McCovey to get the final two outs.

He got Mays on a groundout to third and then retired McCovey on a fly ball to center field.

“I knew when it went up the air it wasn’t going out,” Washburn said of the ball McCovey hit. “And I knew Curt Flood was going to be standing under it when it came down.”

One of the most-asked questions Washburn gets is whether anyone in the dugout talked about his no-hit effort during the game.

“And, of course, no one did,” he said. “That’s just the standard. On the bench, nobody says anything when you’ve got a no-hitter going.”

Washburn is quick to challenge anyone who claims to have taken a no-hitter into the seventh or eighth inning without realizing it.

“I’ve heard pitchers say they didn’t know they hadn’t given up a hit,” he said, “but I don’t believe that. You always know if you’ve given up a hit or not – especially when you get down to that seventh or eighth inning.”

Despite all he accomplished in 1968, Washburn was relegated to the role of a spot starter the following year and finished 3-8 with a 3.06 ERA. In 1970, he was traded to Cincinnati, where he went 4-4 with a 6.92 ERA. He was released by the Reds at the end of the season.

He went to spring training as a free agent with the California Angels in the spring of 1972 but did not make the team. That was how his Major League career ended – without much fanfare.

After shaking off the disappointment of not making the Angels’ roster, Washburn was hired as an assistant baseball coach at Bellevue Community College. BCC was just a short distance from the home he and his wife had purchased in Kirkland in 1964 and raised their three children, Tracey, Allison and Ken.

He was eventually promoted to head coach and spent 11 years in that capacity, along with serving as the school’s director of athletics.

Today, he considers himself semi-retired and detached from baseball – although he returns to St. Louis on a regular basis to hook up with some of his former teammates to take part in Cardinals Care, a nonprofit fundraising organization that benefits the community.

And he and Beverly, who is also a Whitworth graduate, make regular trips back to Spokane to celebrate the Pirates’ homecoming and swap memories of his days as a Buc.

“We both look forward to getting back there,” Washburn said. “I love the campus, and I still think the Pine Bowl is one of the best places in the country to watch college football.”