The New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers will meet in the World Series beginning with Game 1 on Friday in Los Angeles. The evening was already scheduled to include a time to mourn.
Fernando Valenzuela, who started and won Game 3 of the 1981 World Series — the last time the Dodgers and Yankees played for a championship — passed away on Tuesday. Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement that Valenzuela's memory would be honored during the World Series.
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According to a report, another participant in the last Dodgers-Yankees World Series has passed away. Author and journalist Jeff Pearlman relayed the sad news about pitcher Rudy May on his TikTok account Wednesday:
May was 80 years old.
Although his cause of death is not known, according to Montreal Expos historian Danny Gallagher, May had been suffering from diabetes.
Saddened to hear about the passing of Rudy May, 80, a pitcher for the #expos in 1978-79.
This news was first reported on TikTok by writer & author Jeff Pearlman.
Rudy told me years ago he had been suffering from diabetes for a long time. We last talked earlier this year.
R.I.P. pic.twitter.com/W1Ro8cLrp0
May won an ERA title and appeared in three World Series games, all in 1981, during his career with the Yankees, California Angels, Baltimore Orioles, and Montreal Expos.
In a 16-year big league career, May went 152-156 with a 3.46 ERA. He led the American League in ERA in 1980.
An Oakland native, May was confronted with the harsh realities of segregation in the South when he reported to his first spring training in Florida with the Minnesota Twins in 1962. He was unaccustomed to the separate clubhouse entrances, separate hotels, and separate drinking fountains for Black and white players enforced at the time.
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Two years later, May was playing for a Chicago White Sox minor league team when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. As he told Pearlman in a 2014 interview: "We were in Kinston, North Carolina, and we were checked out of the black hotel in the middle of the afternoon and walked through the town to the white hotel—we were scared to death!"
May debuted in April 1965 with the Angels, who had acquired him in a trade with the Phillies the previous December. He spent parts of the next 10 seasons in the Angels organization before his contract was sold to the Yankees in June 1974.
With the Yankees, he became the starting pitcher in the first game at the refurbished Yankee Stadium on April 15, 1976. He also pitched three games in the 1981 World Series, which the Dodgers won in six games.
May pitched his final major league game with New York in Sept. 1983.
May enjoyed fishing and diving in his retirement from baseball. He also enjoyed a long career in the convenience store business that began in a single Circle K outside Fresno, California before he ascended the corporate ladder.
According to the Society for American Baseball Research, May ultimately managed three stores and moved up the corporate ladder to a marketing consultancy position. In 1993, he joined British Petroleum as a Franchise Business Consultant and remained there until his 2014 retirement.
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