Despite winning 24 games in the regular season, the Cuban-born pitcher had lasted only 4⅓ innings in the opening game of the American League Championship Series. He was knocked off the mound after just 2⅓ innings of the second game of the World Series. Another short outing seemed in the works.

The battery huddled in the runway behind the home dugout at Memorial Stadium, where they were joined by pitching coach George Bamberger. Two of the hits, by Johnny Bench and Hal McRae, had come off screwballs high in the strike zone. A decision was made — no more scroogies, a lot more curves.

Cuellar retired the next 10 Reds, issued a walk, then stymied six more batters in a row. He gave up a pair of singles in the seventh, but got out of the inning to complete the game, sewing up the World Series in dominating fashion.

Bamberger, a quiet man with some unorthodox ideas about handling hurlers, flourished as pitching coach of the Orioles from 1968 to 1977. A 20-win season is a standard of excellence for a starting pitcher. Bamberger had 18 pitchers reach that mark, four of them — Cuellar, Jim Palmer, Pat Dobson, and Dave McNally — doing so in 1971, the third consecutive year in which the O’s won the pennant.

“He’s one of the game’s greatest teachers,” longtime Orioles manager Earl Weaver once said. “ ‘Throw strikes,’ he would say. There is nothing complicated about baseball. Maybe that’s what makes George so good — there’s nothing complicated about George.”2 Shortly before Bamberger’s death in 2004, Weaver said, “If there was a Hall of Fame for pitching coaches, he should be there without a doubt.”3 Frank Cashen, the Orioles President during Bamberger’s years in Baltimore, said, simply, “He was the best pitching coach I ever saw.”4

Where Weaver was flamboyant and volatile, Bamberger was calm, unflappable, a pitcher’s friend. He was also nearly deaf in his right ear, so he made a point of sitting on Weaver’s left in the dugout.

Bamberger’s own major-league career was brief and undistinguished. In 18 seasons in the minors, he transformed himself from a wild thrower into a control pitcher who set a mark for consecutive innings pitched without issuing a walk. After his time coaching for the Orioles, he had two stints managing the Milwaukee Brewers, who were known as Bambi’s Bombers, with an unsuccessful spell as skipper of the New York Mets sandwiched in between the Milwaukee stints.

George Irvin Bamberger was born on Aug. 1, 1923, in Staten Island, New York. He attended McKee High before entering the US Army in 1943. The 5-foot-11½, 180-pound right-hander signed with the New York Giants as an amateur free agent in 1946, about the time two years were shaved from his age. The official guides always listed his birth year as 1925. He debuted in 1946 with the Class C Erie (Pennsylvania) Sailors of the Middle Atlantic League, going 13-3 with a league-leading earned-run average of 1.35. He was then promoted to the Class B Manchester (New Hampshire) Giants and, in 1948, to the Triple-A Jersey City Giants. He led the International League in wild pitches in 1949 with 11, though he also tied for the league lead in shutouts with five. Pitching for the Oakland Oaks the following season, he led the Pacific Coast League in wild pitches with 13.

During the 1950 season Bamberger married Wilma Morrison of New Jersey at First Presbyterian Church in Oakland. The best man was Oaks second baseman Bobby Hofman. The entire ballclub, including president Brick Laws and manager Charlie Dressen, joined the couple afterwards for a cocktail hour followed by a buffet dinner.

Bamberger made his major-league debut with the Giants on April 19, 1951, during the second game of a doubleheader at Boston against the Braves. In two innings, he gave up two runs on a walk and three hits, including a home run by Sam Jethroe. In his only other appearance with the Giants that season, he failed to register an out while surrendering two more runs.

Bamberger was soon demoted to play for the Ottawa Giants in the International League. On Father’s Day he pitched a no-hitter in a 1-0 victory over the Maple Leafs at Toronto. Not only did Bamberger hold Toronto hitless, but he was responsible for the game’s only run, coaxing a bases-loaded walk on four pitches from mound rival Russ Bauers in the second inning. After the game Bamberger lit a fat cigar, in celebration not of his no-hitter but of the birth of daughter Judy in New York the night before.

In 1952 Bamberger started the season with the Giants again, appearing in five games and allowing four runs in four innings. In June he was traded back to the Triple-A Oakland Oaks in exchange for pitcher Hal Gregg.

He spent four seasons as a starting pitcher for the Oaks, compiling a 52-44 record. The Oaks moved to Vancouver (and joined the Baltimore system) for the 1956 Pacific Coast League season, and Bamberger went along, spending seven seasons with the Mounties. He went 9-14 his first season in British Columbia, complaining of a sore arm that cost him his fastball. In 1957 new manager Charlie Metro convinced him the only way to recover was to “throw, throw and throw.”5 It worked. Bamby’s exploits at Capilano (now Nat Bailey) Stadium made him a perennial fan favorite. Bamberger carried himself like someone who knew he belonged in The Show and had been left behind by an oversight that would surely soon be corrected.

“Bamberger was a chesty guy with thinning hair,” Denny Boyd of the Vancouver Sun once wrote, “a nose the size of a wedge of pie and a dimple in which you could catch thrown balls.” Boyd dubbed him the Staten Island Stopper. The pitcher’s limited repertoire — a so-so fastball, a deceptive changeup, a wicked curve that dipped like the new roller-coaster at the city’s exhibition grounds — was enhanced by the occasional use of a spitball, an illegal pitch and a scofflaw’s best hope. “We all knew he used it,” Boyd wrote, “but we could never get him to admit to throwing the wet one.”6 Bamby acknowledged that he had a special pitch that he called the Staten Island Sinker. It certainly was wet like a sink.

In 1958 Bamberger established a league record by pitching 68⅔ consecutive innings — the equivalent of more than seven complete games — without allowing a base on balls. The old mark of 64 innings had been set by Julio Bonetti in 1939. Bamberger’s record stood for more than four decades. The streak began on July 10, after he walked a batter in San Diego in the fourth inning. He recorded his 100th PCL victory in his next start, for which the Mounties held a George Bamberger Day on August 1. The club gave him 100 Canadian silver dollars. In return, Bamby beat Seattle 6-3, again without walking any batters.

“When you come right down to it, there is no excuse for walking a batter,” Bamberger told Boyd in 1958. “It’s accepted as normal, but it isn’t normal; it’s a mistake. If you throw four bad pitches, you have made four mistakes. There is no other sport where you can survive making that many mistakes.”7

The streak ended on Aug. 14, when a Phoenix pinch-hitter walked on four pitches. The record remained unchallenged until bettered by Nashville’s Brian Meadows in 2003.

Bamberger’s final cup of coffee in the bigs came courtesy of the Orioles, who used him three times in April 1959. His entire major-league career involved pitching just 14⅓ innings for two teams over three seasons separated by eight years. He had no wins or losses and one save in relief, and carries into eternity an inflated ERA of 9.42. He returned to Vancouver and kept pitching.

In a 1962 game in Vancouver, Bamberger took part in a wacky episode. He was outfitted with a radio receiver sewn into an inside pocket of his uniform. It looked as though he had a cardboard pack of cigarettes in his undershirt. Unseen in the Vancouver dugout, manager Jack McKeon barked commands into a transmitter. The skulduggery failed to catch out any opposing baserunners, although it did bamboozle fans and the first baseman, who took one unexpected pickoff throw in the chest. Before long, baseball banned the use of radios on the field.

Bamberger added coaching duties to his responsibilities in 1960 while still pitching for the Mounties. After retiring as a player at the end of the 1963 season, which he spent at Dallas-Fort Worth, Bamberger worked for the Orioles as a minor-league pitching instructor. He was hired as the parent club’s pitching coach in 1968, replacing Harry Brecheen, who had held the post for 14 seasons. Manager Hank Bauer announced in spring training that he was tired of having pitchers with sore arms on his roster. Bauer would not last the season, but the Orioles found a solution to the problem in their new pitching coach.

Bamberger’s theory was that sore arms and elbows resulted from underwork, not overwork. He insisted that his pitchers run every day, even if tired, even on the road, so he ordered 35 minutes of sprints from foul pole to foul pole. “When you pitch, and your legs get tired from lifting them up on every windup, you can lose coordination,” he said. A shift in the mechanics could lead to loss of control, which could lead to wildness and sore arms.8

He also had his pitchers play catch for 15 minutes between starts, with 20 minutes of hard throwing the prescription two days after every start. He believed in pitchers throwing many innings and completing as many starts as they could. In 1970, Palmer threw 305 innings, Cuellar 297⅔, and McNally 296.

“My whole idea is to throw the ball over the plate,” Bamberger told Dave Anderson of the New York Times in 1979. “The most important pitch is a strike. But the trick is to change speeds. Trying to pinpoint a pitch is crazy. Throw the ball down the middle, but don’t throw the same pitch twice. Change the speed.”9

Though regarded by many as solely a pitching specialist, in 1978 Bamberger was hired to manage the Milwaukee Brewers, who had yet to post a winning season in their eight year history. Remarkably, he turned the perennial also-ran into contenders as Bambi’s Bombers posted 93 wins in 1978 and 95 in 1979. An amiable, happy man, the manager was known to join fans in the parking lot of County Stadium for postgame tailgate parties. After suffering a heart attack during spring training in 1980, he underwent a quintuple bypass. He returned in June, but did not last the season.

Two years later, in 1982, Bamberger became the skipper of the New York Mets. The 58-year-old florid and balding manager was greeted by a memorable description in New York magazine. “Bamberger resembles George Kennedy,” wrote Vic Ziegel, “but the voice is Art Carney’s Ed Norton.”10 The Mets were woeful, and could finish only 65-97 during Bamberger’s one complete season. “I don’t want to suffer anymore,” he said after resigning with a 16-30 record early in the 1983 season.11

Bamberger returned to manage the Brewers in 1985, but the team was not what it had been. After one poor season and most of a second, he was fired in September 1987 and retired for good.

After baseball Bamberger settled into a life of painting and golf in North Redington Beach, Florida. He died at his home there, after battling colon cancer, on April 4, 2004. He left Wilma, his wife of 53 years; three adult daughters; five grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and a brother.

Sports Illustrated asked Jim Palmer, who won 20 games in seven seasons under Bamberger’s tutelage, for his memories: “George had flawless mechanics. If I ever got out of sync, I used to visualize him throwing batting practice. But with us — his ‘boys’ — he didn’t preach mechanics. He had a sixth sense of what a pitcher needed to be better, and he knew it could be different for each guy. There were a few hard rules, but everybody was unique, and he understood that. George’s great strength was he didn’t overcoach. There’s no place for panic on the mound.”12

This biography appears in “The Team That Time Won’t Forget: The 1951 New York Giants” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and C. Paul Rogers III.

Sources

Bob Chick, “Bamberger’s pitching theory was simple but quite effective,” The Tampa Tribune, March 4, 2000.

Clancy Loranger, “Mountie Bamberger steps out as ERA leader — 2.36,” The Sporting News, Sept. 3, 1958.

Tom Hawthorn, “Recalling the Mounties’ major minor legend,” The Tyee, April 26, 2004.

Notes

Don Baylor was a hustling player who ran the bases aggressively and stood fearlessly close to home plate as if he were daring the pitcher to hit him. Quite often they did, as Baylor was plunked by more pitches (267) than any other player in the 20th century, leading the American League eight times in that department and retiring as the category’s modern record-holder (though he’s since been passed by Craig Biggio). Notoriously tough, Baylor wouldn’t even acknowledge the pain of being hit, refusing to rub his bruises when he took his base. “Getting hit is my way of saying I’m not going to back off,” he explained. “My first goal when I go to the plate is to get a hit. My second goal is to get hit.”1

Baylor played for seven first-place teams in his 19 seasons and was a respected clubhouse leader, earning Manager-of-the-Year recognition in his post-playing career. The powerfully built 6-foot-1, 195-pounder hit 338 home runs and drove in 1,276 runs, and clicked on all cylinders when he claimed the AL Most Valuable Player award in 1979. Not only did he lead the California Angels to their first-ever playoff appearance by pacing both leagues in both runs scored and RBIs, he proved unafraid to kick 30 or so reporters out of the clubhouse. After a critical loss in Kansas City late in that season’s pennant race, the press corps made the mistake of asking losing pitcher Chris Knapp about a “choke” within earshot of Baylor, who promptly ordered them to leave.

Baylor broke into the majors with the Baltimore Orioles when the Birds were in the midst of winning three straight pennants. The Baltimore players policed their own clubhouse with a “kangaroo court” that handed down a stinging but good-natured brand of justice for a variety of on- and off-field infractions. Before he’d even played in the majors, a 20-year-old Baylor ran afoul of the court by predicting — even though the Orioles had a trio of All-Star outfielders plus skilled reserve Merv Rettenmund — “If I get into my groove, I’m gonna play every day.” Court leader Frank Robinson read the quote aloud in the Baltimore clubhouse, and shortstop Mark Belanger warned Baylor, “That’s going to stick for a long time.” Indeed, Baylor was known as Groove in baseball circles even after he retired.2

Don Edward Baylor was born on June 28, 1949, in the Clarksville section of Austin, Texas. His father, George Baylor, worked as a baggage handler for the Missouri Pacific Railroad for 25 years, and his mother, Lillian, was a pastry cook at a local white high school. Don had two siblings, Doug and Connie, and going to church on Sundays was a must in the Baylor family.

Baylor was one of just three African-American students enrolled at O. Henry Junior High School when Austin’s public schools integrated in 1962. One of the friends he made was Sharon Connally, the daughter of Governor John Connally, and Baylor would never forget hearing her screams from two classrooms away when Sharon learned over the school’s public-address system that her father had been shot along with President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

At Stephen F. Austin High School, Baylor had to ask the football coach three times for a tryout, but by his senior year he had made honorable mention all-state and got a half-dozen scholarship offers, including ones from powerhouses like Texas and Oklahoma. Baylor also played baseball, as a sophomore becoming the first African-American to wear the school’s uniform, and being named team captain for his senior season. After a tough first year under a coach who wasn’t accustomed to dealing with blacks, Baylor benefited when a strict disciplinarian named Frank Seale, who believed in playing the game the right way, took over the program for his last two seasons. “Frank was not only my coach, but my friend,” said Baylor. “He looked after me and made me feel like I was part of his family.”3 When Baylor finally got to the World Series two decades later, Frank Seale was there.

After suffering a shoulder injury serious enough to inhibit his throwing for the rest of his career, Baylor decided to spurn the gridiron scholarship offers and pursue a career in professional baseball. Some teams, like the Houston Astros (who opted to draft John Mayberry instead), were scared off by Baylor’s bum shoulder, but the Baltimore Orioles selected him with their second choice in the 1967 amateur draft. Scout Dee Phillips signed Baylor for $7,500.

Baylor reported immediately to Bluefield, West Virginia, where he wasted no time earning Appalachian League player-of-the-year honors after leading the circuit in hitting (.346), runs, stolen bases, and triples under manager Joe Altobelli. “Alto taught me the importance of good work habits,” Baylor recalled. “He was a tireless worker himself, serving as manager, batting-practice pitcher, third-base coach, and, when you got right down to it, a baby sitter.”4

The 1968 season started with a lot of promise. In 68 games for the Class-A Stockton Ports, Baylor smashed California League pitching at a .346 clip to earn a promotion to the Double-A Elmira Pioneers of the Eastern League. He stayed there only six games, batting .333, before moving up to the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings. In 15 games against International League pitchers, Baylor batted only .217 and was benched for the first time in his life by manager Billy DeMars. “I felt frustration for the first time in my career,” Baylor admitted. “Maybe DeMars hated young players, period. I also noticed that his favorite targets were blacks like Chet Trail, Mickey McGuire, and a guy from Puerto Rico named Rick Delgado. I felt that DeMars did not have my best interests at heart. I was trying very hard to learn, but I got nothing from him.”5

Nonetheless, the Orioles invited Baylor to his first big-league spring training in 1969, and he got to meet his role model, Frank Robinson. Soon, Baylor was even using the same R161 bat (taking its model number from Robinson’s first MVP season in 1961) that the Orioles right fielder did so much damage with. With it, Baylor began the season by hitting .375 in 17 games for the Class A Florida Marlins of the Florida State League. He spent the bulk of the year with the Double-A Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs, hitting .300 in 109 games to earn a Texas League All-Star selection.

After a strong spring training with the Orioles in 1970, Baylor returned to Rochester to bat third and play center field every day. Midway through the season, he reluctantly moved to left field because manager Cal Ripken believed Baylor’s weak arm would prevent him from handling center in the majors. Baltimore’s Merv Rettenmund insisted that Baylor remained a triple threat. “He can hit, run, and lob,” quipped the Orioles outfielder.6 Pretty much everything else that happened that season, however, couldn’t have been scripted more perfectly for Baylor. He was married before a summer doubleheader, and tore through the International League by leading all players in runs, doubles, triples, and total bases. The Sporting News recognized Baylor as its Minor League Player of the Year. He batted .327 with 22 home runs and 107 RBIs, and was called up to the Orioles on September 8. Ten days later, Baylor made his major-league debut at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, batting fifth and playing center field against the Cleveland Indians. The bases were loaded for his first at-bat, against right-hander Steve Hargan, and Baylor admitted feeling “scared to death.”7 He didn’t show it, though, driving the first pitch into right field for a two-run single. In 17 at-bats over eight games, Baylor batted .235.

After the 1970 season Baylor went to Puerto Rico to play for the Santurce Crabbers in the winter league. The manager was Frank Robinson. “There I would get to know Frank even better because he was my manager and hitting guru,” Baylor remembered. “Mostly he taught me to think while hitting. He would say, ‘A guy pitches inside, hit that ball right down the line. Look for certain pitches on certain counts.’ Frank also wanted me to start using my strength more. Frank knew there was a pull hitter buried somewhere inside me and fought to develop that power. In Santurce, Frank worked with me to strengthen my defense and throwing. I wound up hitting .290.”8

With nothing left to prove in Triple-A but no room on the star-studded Orioles roster, Baylor returned to Rochester in 1971 and made another International League All-Star team. He put up strong all-around numbers, hitting .313 with 31 doubles, 10 triples, 20 homers, 95 RBIs, 104 runs scored, 79 walks, and 25 steals as the Red Wings won the Little World Series. The Triple-A playoffs went on so long that Baylor got into just one major-league game after they finished.

He returned to Santurce with the island still celebrating Roberto Clemente’s MVP performance in the 1971 World Series, in which he helped the Pittsburgh Pirates dethrone the Orioles. “When Roberto played in Puerto Rico that winter I got a chance to witness up close what a great player he was,” Baylor recalled. “In a game against Roberto’s San Juan team, I tried to score from second base on a hit to right. I know I had the play beat. I ran the bases the right way; made the proper turn, cut the corner well. But by the time I started my fadeaway slide catcher Manny Sanguillén had the ball. I couldn’t believe it. I was out.”9

Baylor wound up hitting .329 to win the Puerto Rican League batting title. He was confident that he’d be on some team’s major-league roster in 1972, but was shocked when the Orioles cleared a spot for him by dealing away Frank Robinson before Baylor returned from Latin America. The Orioles effectively had four regular outfielders in 1971 (Robinson, Merv Rettenmund, Paul Blair, and Don Buford), so Baylor still had some competition in front of him.

Baylor got into 102 games with an Orioles team that missed the playoffs for the first time in four years. By hitting .253 with 11 home runs and 24 steals, he was named to the Topps Rookie Major League All-Star Team. He became a father when Don Jr. was born shortly after the season ended. Baylor came back from Puerto Rico to get his son, before the family returned to the island together to help him get ready for the next season.

Much like the Orioles, Baylor started slowly in 1973, but heated up when it mattered most. Baltimore was in third place in mid-July, and Baylor was batting just .219 with four homers in 219 at-bats. Starting on July 17, though, he mashed at a .366 clip the rest of the way, contributing seven home runs and 30 RBIs as the Orioles played .658 ball and won the American League East title going away. Baylor batted .273 in his first taste of playoff action before sitting out a shutout loss to Catfish Hunter in the Series’ decisive Game Five.

He played enough to qualify for the batting title for the first time in 1974, batting a solid .272 when the average American Leaguer hit 14 points less. The Orioles were eight games out on August 28, in fourth place, when Baylor and the team caught fire again for another furious finish. Baylor batted .381 as the Birds went 28-6 to finish two games ahead of the Yankees before losing in four games to the Oakland A’s in the American League Championship Series.

Baylor joined the Venezuelan League Magallanes Navigators that winter, displaying good patience and power with seven homers, 32 RBIs, and 29 walks in 56 games while batting .271. When major-league action got underway in 1975, Baylor’s talents continued to blossom. He hammered three home runs in a game at Detroit on July 2, and smacked 25 overall. That made the league’s top 10, and his .489 slugging percentage was also among the leaders. With 32 stolen bases, Baylor cracked the AL leader board for the fourth of what would eventually be six consecutive seasons. Though the Orioles finished second to the Red Sox, Baylor’s name appeared towards the bottom of some writers’ MVP ballots. He was only 26 and going places, just not where he imagined.

Just a week before Opening Day in 1976, Orioles manager Earl Weaver pulled Baylor out of an exhibition game unexpectedly. “When he told me to sit beside him I knew something was wrong, Baylor recalled. ‘I hate to tell you this,’ Earl said quietly, ‘but we just traded you to Oakland for Reggie Jackson.’ I looked at Earl but he couldn’t look at me. I was stunned. I started to cry right there on the bench. ‘Earl,’ I sobbed. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’”10 Weaver believed Groove would one day be an MVP, but the Orioles sent him packing in a six-player deal to land a guy who’d already won the trophy. Other than a career-high four stolen bases on May 17, and his best season overall for swipes with 52, the highlights were few and far between for Baylor in 1976. He didn’t hit well at the Oakland Coliseum, and batted just .247 with 15 homers overall. On November 1, Baylor became part of the first class of free agents after the arbitrator’s landmark decision invalidated baseball’s reserve clause.

Just over two weeks later, Baylor signed a six-year, $1.6 million deal with the California Angels, but he struggled to justify his salary for the first half of 1977. When manager Norm Sherry got the axe midway through the season, Baylor was hitting a paltry .223 with nine home runs and 30 RBIs. Dave Garcia took over as skipper, and hired Baylor’s ex-teammate Frank Robinson as his hitting instructor. Under the Hall of Famer’s tutelage, Baylor broke out to bat .281 with 16 homers and 75 RBIs the rest of the way. He never looked back.

Baylor finished seventh in American League MVP voting in 1978 after a breakout season that saw him smash 34 home runs, drive in 99 runs, and score 103. The surprising Angels logged their first winning season in eight years and remained in the West Division hunt until the final week, but Baylor will always remember that September for one of his saddest days as a ballplayer. Teammate Lyman Bostock made the last out of a critical one-run loss on September 23 in Chicago, then stormed by Baylor ranting and raving before exiting the clubhouse after a fast shower. “Veterans know enough to leave other veterans alone,” Baylor said. “So when Lyman walked by, I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t know there would be no next time for him.”11 Bostock was shot to death that night in Gary, Indiana. The career .311 hitter was only 27.

Baylor propelled the Angels to their first playoff appearance in franchise history in 1979, batting cleanup in all 162 games and earning 20 of a possible 28 first-place votes to claim MVP honors. His totals of 139 RBIs and 120 runs scored led the major leagues, and he added career bests in home runs (36), on-base percentage (.371), slugging percentage (.530), and walks (71) while striking out just 51 times. He batted .330 with runners in scoring position. Baylor struggled while battling tendinitis in his left wrist in June, but sandwiched that down spell with player-of-the-month performances in May and July. He earned his only All-Star selection, starting in left field, batting third, and getting two hits with a pair of runs scored. In his first at-bat, he pulled a run-scoring double off Phillies southpaw Steve Carlton. On August 25 at Toronto, Baylor logged a personal-best eight RBIs in one game as the Angels romped, 24-2.

In the 1979 playoffs, Baylor and the Angels met the same Baltimore Orioles club that developed him, but a storybook ending was not in the cards. Though Baylor went deep against Dennis Martinez in California’s Game Three victory, he batted just .188 as the Angels lost three games to one.

As wonderful as 1979 played out, the 1980 season was a nightmare. The Angels started slowly, and were buried by a 12-28 stretch during which Baylor missed nearly seven weeks with an injured left wrist. He struggled mightily when he returned, batted just .250 with five homers in 90 games, and missed most of the last month with an injured right foot. The Angels went from division champions to losers of 95 games. The next season, 1981, Baylor became almost exclusively a designated hitter, and remained one for the balance of his career. Though he batted a career low (to that point) .239, his totals of 17 homers and 66 RBIs each cracked the American League’s top 10 in the strike-shortened season.

In 1982 Baylor homered 24 times and drove in 93 runs as the Angels made their second postseason appearance in what proved to be his last season with California. After beating the Brewers in the first two games of the best-of-five Championship Series, the Angels dropped three straight and were eliminated. It certainly wasn’t Baylor’s fault; he batted .294 and knocked in 10 runs in the series.

Baylor became a free agent for the second time in November 1982, and signed a lucrative deal to join the New York Yankees. In three seasons with the Bronx Bombers, he was twice named the designated hitter on The Sporting News’ Silver Slugger team (1983 and 1985), and averaged 24 home runs and 88 RBIs. His batting average declined from a career-best .303 to .262 to .231, however, and they were not particularly happy years as Baylor feuded with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. In 1985 Baylor was selected as the winner of the prestigious Roberto Clemente Award, presented annually to a major leaguer of exceptional character who contributes a lot to his community. He was recognized for his work with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the 65 Roses (so-named for the way one child pronounced Cystic Fibrosis) club.

The Yankees traded Baylor to the Boston Red Sox shortly before Opening Day in 1986 for left-handed-hitting designated hitter Mike Easler. Though Baylor struck out a career-high 111 times and managed to bat just .238 in ’86, his 31 home runs and 94 RBIs were his best since his MVP year. He also established a single-season record by getting hit by pitches 35 times. The Red Sox won 95 games to beat out the New York for the American League East title, with Baylor operating a kangaroo court as his mentor Frank Robinson had done in Baltimore. On the night Roger Clemens set a major-league record by striking out 20 Seattle Mariners, Baylor fined him $5 for giving up a single to light-hitting Spike Owen on an 0-2 pitch. In the American League Championship Series, against the Angels, Boston was two outs from elimination in Game Five when Baylor smashed a game-tying, two-run home run off 18-game winner Mike Witt to spark an amazing comeback. Baylor batted .346 in the seven ALCS games, but started only three of seven World Series contests against the New York Mets as designated hitters were not used in the National League ballpark. This time the Red Sox let a Series clincher slip away, losing to New York in seven games.

Baylor turned 38 in 1987, and he posted the lowest power totals since his injury-plagued 1980 campaign, declining to 16 homers and 63 RBIs. He did reach a milestone on June 28, his 38th birthday, when he was hit by a pitch for a record 244th time. “Change-ups and slow curves feel like a butterfly, a light sting,” he said. “Fastballs and sliders feel like piercing bullets, like they’re going to come out the other side.”12 He added that getting hit in the wrist by a Nolan Ryan heater in 1973 was the worst feeling of all.

The Minnesota Twins, making a surprising playoff run, craved Baylor’s right-handed bat and presence and acquired him from the Red Sox for the final month of the 1987 season. Baylor batted .286 to help Minnesota reach the postseason for the first time in 17 years, and his eighth-inning pinch-hit single drove in the go-ahead run in Game One of the ALCS against the Tigers. Baylor batted .385 in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, including a game-tying two-run homer off John Tudor in Game Six, helping the Twins to a comeback victory en route to the title.

Baylor wrapped up his playing career with a return to the Oakland Athletics in 1988. Though he batted just .220 in 92 games, the club won 104 regular-season contests and became the third American League pennant winner in a row to feature Baylor on its roster. Oakland defeated the Red Sox in the ALCS but lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers in an upset, and Baylor struck out against National League Cy Young winner Orel Hershiser in his only at-bat. In the offseason Baylor called it a career after 2,135 hits with a .260 batting average, 338 home runs, and 1,276 RBIs. He stole 285 bases and was hit by a pitch 267 times.

Baylor returned to the big leagues for a two-year stint as the Milwaukee Brewers’ hitting coach beginning in 1990, and spent 1992 in the same role with the Cardinals. In 1993 he was named the inaugural manager of the expansion Colorado Rockies, and earned Manager-of-the-Year honors in 1995 when he led the third-year club to a playoff berth faster than any previous expansion club. Pitching coach Larry Bearnarth observed, “He doesn’t lose his cool very often. On the other hand, he can be intolerant sometimes of people who don’t give their best. He is very direct and he never varies from that, so players are never surprised. If he has something to say, he just says it like he’s still a player, like players used to do to each other.”13

Baylor’s Rockies played winning baseball for two more years, but he was fired after the club fell under .500 and slipped to fourth place in the five-team division in 1998. He turned down an offer to become a club vice president, instead opting to become a hitting coach again with the Atlanta Braves. After earning rave reviews for helping Chipper Jones develop into an MVP candidate, Baylor got another chance to manage in 2000 with the Chicago Cubs. Despite 88 wins and a surprising third-place finish in his second year in Chicago, Baylor was fired after a Fourth of July loss in 2002 with a disappointing, highly-paid club sputtering in fifth place. Overall, he went 627-689 as a major-league manager.

Baylor resurfaced with the Mets the next two seasons, serving as a bench coach and hitting instructor under Art Howe, while battling a diagnosis of multiple myeloma. When the Mets changed managers, Baylor moved to Seattle in 2005 to work with Mariners batters. In 2007 he worked part time as an analyst on Washington Nationals telecasts. After three years out of a major-league uniform, Baylor returned to the Rockies in 2009 as their hitting coach, before moving on to hold the same role with the Arizona Diamondbacks (2011-12).

The Angels brought him back in 2014, but he suffered a freak fracture of his right femur on Opening Day catching the ceremonial first pitch from Vladimir Guerrero, at the time the only other Angels player to win a MVP award.  Baylor came back to serve through the end of the 2015 season before settling into retirement with his second wife, Becky, who he’d married in 1987.

On August 7, 2017, Baylor died from complications in his 14-year battle with multiple myeloma. He was 68. Frank Robinson, Bobby Grich and writer Tracy Ringolsby spoke at his funeral before he was laid to rest at Texas State Cemetery in Austin. 

This biography originally appeared in “Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers: The 1970 Baltimore Orioles” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), edited by Mark Armour and Malcolm Allen. An updated version appears in “The 1986 Boston Red Sox: There Was More Than Game Six” (SABR, 2016), edited by Bill Nowlin and Leslie Heaphy, and “Major League Baseball A Mile High: The First Quarter Century of the Colorado Rockies” (SABR, 2018), edited by Bill Nowlin and Paul T. Parker.

Last revised: October 3, 2022 (zp)

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

Daniel Gutiérrez, Efraim Alvarez, and Daniel Gutiérrez hijo, La Enciclopedia del Béisbol en Venezuela (Caracas, 2006).

Craig Neff, “His Honor, Don Baylor,” Sports Illustrated, June 16, 1986.

Notes

1 Jack Friedman, “For Don Baylor, Baseball Is a Hit or Be Hit Proposition,” People, August 24, 1987. 

2 Don Baylor, Nothing But The Truth: A Baseball Life (New York: St. Martins Press, 1990), 47.

3 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 32.

4 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 38-39.

5 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 44-45.

6 Detroit Free Press, March 4, 1980: 42.

7 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 52.

8 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 60.

9 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 68.

10 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 80.

11 Baylor, Nothing But The Truth, 125.

12 Friedman, “For Don Baylor.”

13 Howard Blatt, “Ultimate Player’s Manager Baylor is Tough But Fair With Rockies,” New York Daily News, July 15, 1995.

“I was small and I had to battle all those perceptions about my size,” said Beene. “I always heard that I was too little to pitch in the big leagues. I did have talent, but because of my size, I couldn’t be lacking in other areas. Having perseverance and not giving up helped me get to the big leagues. What my dad taught me and having pride in what I did helped me to become a major-league pitcher.”1

Freddy Ray Beene was born on November 24, 1942, in Angleton, Texas, about 50 miles south of Houston near the Gulf of Mexico, to William Andrew Beene and the former Inez Fay Steadman. Fred had one sister, Lena, who was three years his junior. “My dad was my biggest influence,” Beene said in an interview in 2005. He never pitched an inning anywhere except in a cow pasture. He was a farmboy who just loved baseball. He taught me about pitching inside and changing speeds and location. That’s what pitching is all about and he preached that to me. I threw a perfect game when I was 10 years old. I didn’t walk a guy and I struck out all 18 hitters.”2

After high school Beene played collegiate baseball for Sam Houston State, where he helped propel his team to victory in the 1963 NAIA title game. Former major-league pitcher Burleigh Grimes and Dee Phillips were responsible for signing Beene to his first pro contract with the Baltimore Orioles. “Burleigh was in the room when I signed at a Holiday Inn in Joplin, Missouri, after the national tournament,” Beene recalled. “Burleigh said if I were bigger, I could get more money. That talk was already starting. But Dee knew me and he scouted me. He knew what kind of athlete and competitor I was. He wanted me pretty bad. And Burleigh told me a lot of good things that day.”3

Beene began his professional career in 1964 with Fox Cities in Appleton (Wisconsin) of the Single-A Midwest League. There, the diminutive righty forged an impressive 11-5 record in his pro debut along with a sparkling 2.22 earned-run average and 102 strikeouts in just 77 innings of work. In 1965 Beene continued to excel, at the Double-A level. He fashioned a 7-7 record for Elmira (New York) of the Eastern League along with a 2.25 ERA and 99 whiffs in 132 innings. He worked a league-leading 62 games for manager Earl Weaver that campaign – none more grueling and demanding than on May 8 against Springfield in front of just 386 fans. Beene entered the scoreless game in the top of the 16th, and pitched 12 innings to pick up the 2-1 victory. He allowed a run in the 26th, but Elmira tied it up in the bottom of the inning and won it in the following inning. At the time this was the longest game in professional baseball history.

In 1966 Beene returned to Elmira and finished 10-12 with a 2.16 ERA and 129 strikeouts in 150 innings. Late that season he advanced to Triple-A Rochester, where he went 2-1 in four contests with a 2.57 ERA. In 1967 Beene finished 2-1 in 12 games for Elmira, with a minuscule 1.67 ERA before again advancing to Rochester, where he was 5-1 with a 2.95 ERA in 22 outings. The Orioles system was filled with young pitching prospects, and Beene was having difficulty standing out despite his success.

In 1968 he returned to Rochester and put up an 8-7 record with a 2.68 ERA in 48 games at Rochester. On September 18 the 25-year-old finally made his major-league debut in the Orioles’ 4-0 loss to the Boston Red Sox. Beene surrendered two hits, one walk, and one earned run while striking out one. It was his only inning of big-league action that season. Red Sox third baseman Joe Foy was Beene’s first major-league strikeout victim.

In 1969 Beene joined Rochester for the fourth time, fashioning an impressive 15-7 record with a 2.98 ERA and 132 strikeouts in a league-leading 193 innings. He walked just 47 hitters. At the end of the minor-league campaign, Beene was again called up to Baltimore. In two contests, against Boston and Cleveland, Beene didn’t allow an earned run. As a late call-up, Beene was not on the Baltimore roster for the World Series, which the Orioles took from the Cincinnati Reds in five games. After an off-season in Puerto Rico in which he threw a no-hitter for Santurce, Beene went back to Rochester in 1970 and finished 9-3 with a 3.20 ERA in 13 games. He got more late-season action with the Orioles, getting into four games. Beene was certainly one of Baltimore’s best pitching prospects.

Beene was in a professional bind. Though he had dominated minor-league hitters for several years, he was pitching in an organization with a historically strong pitching staff. The Orioles won three straight pennants beginning in 1969, and had three 20-game winners in 1971 while using a four-man rotation. The Orioles had little use for Beene’s talents. “I was with the Baltimore organization for eight years,” Beene said. “I was one of their top guys to be called up but there weren’t many chances for me. Earl Weaver liked the older, veteran players. The Orioles were a good team and they dominated during that time. There just wasn’t room for me.”4

“[General manager] Harry Dalton was a good guy. He called me into his office after the [1970] season and said he would trade me if they could get a good deal for me. He realized I had a tough fight and probably deserved to be in the big leagues. It just wasn’t happening for me in Baltimore. He said if they could trade me to another club, they were going to do it.”5 True to Dalton’s word, in December Baltimore sent Beene, fellow pitchers Tom Phoebus and Al Severinsen, and shortstop Enzo Hernandez to the San Diego Padres for pitchers Pat Dobson and Tom Dukes.

Just before the trade, Beene had gone back to Puerto Rico to play winter ball. “On Opening Night, I blew out my elbow,” he said. “I threw a slider to Ken Singleton and I thought I had (broken) my arm. Something snapped and the doctor in Puerto Rico said I might not pitch again. But I went to Baltimore and got an American doctor to look at me. The day I went to Baltimore to have my arm examined, they made the trade.”6 When Beene’s arm did not improve after a short stint with San Diego’s Pacific Coast League farm team in Honolulu, the Padres sent him back to Baltimore on May 16, 1971. He returned to pitch for Dallas-Fort Worth in the Texas League and went 2-2 with a 2.06 ERA in five games. He later returned to Rochester, where he was 7-1 with a 4.44 ERA. Beene showed he still had command of the strike zone, walking just 35 batters in 108 innings for the two teams while surrendering 107 hits.

“I went to Rochester to heal up,” Beene said, “and I finally got some good news.” On January 19, 1972, the Orioles traded Beene for the second time, to the New York Yankees for minor leaguer Dale Spier. “Pete Ward was a coach at Rochester at the time,” Beene said. “He recommended to the Yankees that they trade for me – on the sly, of course, since he was still working for the Orioles. I was very happy they traded me because I thought that I might be through at that point.”7

That spring Beene was intent on making the major-league roster, and wowed the Yankee organization. “When I got to spring training,” he recalled, “they had about five sore-armed pitchers. I had been pitching in Puerto Rico over the winter and I was in pretty good shape. I got into the first exhibition game that spring and I was mowing them down pretty good for about six outings with the Yankees. (Manager) Ralph Houk called me into his office and said I had made the club. … I was finally one of the main 25 guys out of spring (training). I wasn’t just waiting to be called up later in September. What a feeling it was!”8

Beene had a fine rookie season, finishing 1-3 with a 2.34 ERA and three saves in 29 games. In 1973 he did even better – he fashioned a perfect 6-0 record along with a microscopic 1.68 ERA in 19 games. He walked just 27 and yielded only 67 hits in 91 innings while striking out 49. Opposing batters hit just .209 against Beene, who helped anchor a solid bullpen that also featured Lindy McDaniel (12-6, 2.86 ERA) and closer Sparky Lyle (27 saves, 2.51 ERA). “I thought the DH would ruin me in 1973 since you don’t need as many pitchers on a team,” said Beene, referring to the introduction of the designated hitter in the American League that season. “But it actually worked to my benefit because I became one of the first long relievers in the game. It was a new niche for a lot of pitchers.”9

Just when Beene thought he had finally established himself, he received a professional setback. On April 26, 1974, the Yankees, who were in their fallow period
between dynasties and had just been taken over by George Steinbrenner the year before, dealt four pitchers—Beene, Tom Buskey, Steve Kline, and Fritz Peterson—to the Cleveland Indians for first baseman Chris Chambliss and pitchers Dick Tidrow and Cecil Upshaw. “To say the least, the clubhouse was in an uproar,” Beene said. “They traded four good ol’ boys from the club and broke up the party. Guys were upset and didn’t leave the clubhouse until well after midnight.”10

“You don’t trade four pitchers,” veteran pitcher Mel Stottlemyre said at the time. “You just don’t.” Catcher Thurman Munson said, “You’ve got to be kidding.” The trade shocked and angered players and fans alike. Former catcher and Yankee coach Elston Howard was especially vociferous in his opinion of the deal.11

For Beene, the trade was particularly traumatic. “I was leaving a place where my role had been established,” he said. “I had a spot and I felt secure with the Yankees. It had taken me a long and trying time to finally make it to the big leagues. I felt like I was a very important part of that Yankee pitching staff. One of the keys to being successful in the major leagues is to function in the role that you are best suited for. I had established that with the Yankees.”12

Before the trade, Beene had appeared in six games for New York with one save and a 2.70 ERA. After going to Cleveland, he was 4-4 with two saves and a 4.93 ERA in 32 games. In 1975 Beene’s pitching arm bothered him again, leading to 62 days on the disabled list and just a 1-0 record with a 6.94 ERA in 19 games.

As it turned out, 1975 was the last time he pitched in the majors. He spent a year and a half with Cleveland’s Triple-A affiliate in Toledo, finishing 7-9 and 5-10 as a starting pitcher. In July 1977 he was sold to Philadelphia, and he spent the rest of that year and all of the next two seasons with the Phillies’ Oklahoma City club, finishing 2-2, 12-5, and 10-5. The 1979 club won the American Association pennant, after which Beene chose to retire.

“That last game in Oklahoma City against Evansville was my last game as a pitcher,” Beene said. “I remember that pretty well. I went about four innings and didn’t pitch too good. I knew those last three or four years in the minors that I was possibly a game away from being done for good. I had so many physical problems. I really wanted to pitch well, but I struggled and I was defensive out there on the mound. So I hung it up.”13

After retiring as a player, Beene became the pitching coach for the Tidewater Tides in the International League, the top minor-league franchise of the New York Mets. After that he scouted for the Milwaukee Brewers before finally retiring from baseball in 2001. “After scouting for 20 years,” Beene said, “I determined the biggest factors in a prospect are his ability to adapt and his perseverance. It’s not always the talent.” 14

In 1982 Beene signed a 6-foot-3, 215-pound pitcher from Brownwood, Texas, who played for Ranger Junior College. By the age of 25, that prospect had hurt his arm and was out of pro ball, opting instead to settle down, raise a family, and coach high-school baseball near his home in Big Lake, Texas. Ten years later, on September 18, 1999, Jim Morris made his major-league debut with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a story Morris later turned into a book and a movie.

Though Beene spent 16 years playing professional baseball, he remembers most fondly the two years and one month he pitched for the Yankees—years that resulted in a 7-3 record and 1.99 ERA in 158 innings. He often sees Fritz Peterson, Sparky Lyle, Mel Stottlemyre, and others at autograph shows or reunions. His days in the minors also evoke positive memories for Beene. “Rochester is king of minor-league cities,” he said. “They put me in their Hall of Fame. That’s one of the biggest honors I ever received. They thought of me as the little guy and their battle hero. I really liked it there in Rochester and I appreciate that recognition because I did give my heart and soul to that city while trying to make it to Baltimore.”15 Beene won 46 games for Rochester over parts of six seasons.

Beene and his wife, Carolyn, raised two children, Darrell and Monica, and retired to a two-acre place about 15 miles east of Huntsville, Texas. “My wife is the church secretary,” Beene said, “and we travel a great deal with them. We’ve been on about 10 cruises the last couple of years. We’ve been to Europe, Australia, and everywhere just about.”16 Beene also enjoyed deep-sea fishing in the nearby Gulf of Mexico. He and his son, Darrell, also operate several retail warehouses that sell fireworks.

Fred Beene had two obstacles to overcome to make it as a professional pitcher: his height and the wealth of fellow pitchers in the Baltimore organization. He overcame both to pitch 112 games in the major leagues and pick up a lifetime’s worth of memories.

Author’s note

This article is largely based on a short biography, titled “Beeney!”, that Todd Newville wrote at http://www.baseballtoddsdugout.com/fredbeene2.html. That story was based on a series of interviews Todd conducted with Beene in 2005.

Notes

Belanger used two tiny black gloves per season and broke them in with spit and coffee. He got upset if anybody touched them. Watching him have a catch with a teammate on the sidelines was striking. He never seemed to actually catch a ball; rather he redirected them into his throwing hand. Sports Illustrated once wrote: “Belanger would glide effortlessly after a grounder and welcome it into loving arms; scooping the ball up with a single easy motion, and bringing it to his chest for a moment’s caress before making his throw.”1

Belanger’s fielding prowess was due to the start-and-stop speed of an All-American high school basketball star, his lightning-quick hands, and what scouts called Belanger’s First Step. A student of pitch counts, locations, and batter tendencies, Belanger sprinted at odd angles for the big hop and is best appreciated in slow-motion video. His small glove transferred the ball to his right hand – the seams of the ball always aligned the same way – enabling him to uncoil a strong throw on his next left step. In 18 years, he never dove for a ball, insisting that an all-out sprint was faster and maintained the mechanics of the play. And he was supremely confident: He never wore a protective cup.

Belanger’s father, Edward, was of French-Canadian descent and worked as a maintenance man in Cheshire, a town in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. His mother, Marie, was a first- generation Italian-American. Mark, the third of four children (he had an older brother, Al, and two sisters, Jeanne and Linda), learned how to field playing with his siblings on a cow pasture. Born on June 8, 1944, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he played basketball and baseball at Pittsfield High School. On the hardwood, he was a 6-foot-2 forward who jumped center, compiling 1,455 points in three years a school record until 2003. In baseball, he starred for both the high school squad and the local American Legion Post 68 team. On August 24, 1960, Belanger ripped a 14th-inning 340-foot game-winning double off the left-field fence at Alumni Field in Keene, New Hampshire, to earn Pittsfield Post a trip to Hastings, Nebraska, for the American Legion national championship. Scouts for the Orioles noted that Belanger “looks like he’s playing on roller skates to the accompaniment of music.”2 Based on scout Joe Cusick’s reports, after Belanger graduated from high school Baltimore offered him $35,000 to sign a contract. Belanger signed on June 19. That summer he played in 47 games for the Bluefield Orioles in the short-season Appalachian League and eight games with the Single-A Elmira Pioneers of the Eastern League. He hit .298 for Bluefield but was just 1-for-22 at Elmira.

Belanger went to spring training with the Orioles in 1963. Ron Hansen, whom the Orioles had just traded to the Chicago White Sox, approached the rookie with this advice: “Learn to rock forward as the pitcher delivers the ball instead of starting from zero.”3 Belanger took it to heart. Over the years he not only leaned forward but anticipated left or right based on batter tendencies and pitch location. Sometimes Belanger would break right and then correct himself and break left – all before the crack of the bat on the ball. Before the 1963 season began, Belanger entered the US Air National Guard for a year of active duty, completing his basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and playing on the camp baseball squad. Returning the next season with the Northern League’s Aberdeen (South Dakota) Pheasants, he hit just .226 but one scouting report enthused about his fielding: “Belanger could be a major-league shortstop if he never got another hit in his life.”4 He was far from perfect on the field, having made 20 errors in 44 games with Bluefield in 1962 and 23 errors with Aberdeen in 117 games in 1964, but talent evaluators had no doubt as to the shortstop’s potential.

Belanger played for Earl Weaver at three levels along the way, and Weaver told him, “You’re my shortstop if you hit .0001.”5 In midseason 1965, Belanger’s year at Elmira was interrupted by his first call-up to the majors when Luis Aparicio caught the mumps. In Kansas City, a gaggle of sportswriters converged on batting practice to find out who Belanger was. A’s coach Whitey Herzog said: “I saw him play in the Northern League. During the seven games I watched him, Belanger was the best shortstop I ever saw in my life.”6

Belanger debuted as a pinch-runner on August 7. In Fenway Park on August 10 he fielded his first ground ball. It came off the bat of Felix Mantilla, and Belanger started a double play with the graceful second baseman Jerry Adair. Belanger appeared in 11 games, but had only three at-bats, with one hit, a single off Kansas City’s Don Mossi on September 10.

Listed as “needs hitting experience” in the spring of 19667, Belanger was one of five Elmira regulars who followed Earl Weaver to Triple-A Rochester. Belanger did not hit well in the first half and, feeling the pressure to succeed, began smoking cigarettes. Belanger asked Weaver to bench him but Weaver refused and Belanger responded by out-hitting league MVP Mike Epstein the second half, finishing at .262 for the season. The Rochester press called him Remarkable Mark. Called up at the end of the year, he appeared in just eight more games, but was there to join in the wild celebration when Baltimore clinched the pennant on September 22.

Called “the greatest shortstop prospect in baseball history,”8 Belanger drew offers from many clubs but General Manager Harry Dalton was adamant: “I will never trade Belanger.”9 Playing behind Aparicio, a seven-time All-Star and seven-time Gold Glove winner in his career thus far, Belanger showed uneven play in his rookie year of 1967. On April 30 he dropped Aparicio’s feed as a second baseman and allowed an unearned run to score to give Steve Barber a loss in what ended as a no-hit game. (Barber threw 8 2/3 no-hit innings and Stu Miller 1/3 in the loss.) The Orioles’ manager, Hank Bauer, still said Belanger “sparkled”10 and Bauer liked the fact that Belanger hit well when given consecutive starts. Aparicio had an off-year and Belanger became his late-inning replacement. In the same May 14 game in which Mickey Mantle hit his 500th home run, Belanger hit one off Yankee Stadium’s left-field pole, victimizing the Yankees’ Mel Stottlemyre.

Belanger married the former Daryl Apple on November 25, 1967, and the couple honeymooned at Mount Airy Lodge in the Poconos. On their fourth night together, Belanger heard the news that Baltimore had traded Aparicio to the White Sox, opening up the shortstop job. Back home in Pittsfield, Belanger was employed selling sporting goods in the Besse-Clarke department store. To get ready for the season, he squeezed lacrosse balls to build up his wrists.

Belanger almost saw his season derailed when the Air National Guard ordered him to report to the 175th Fighter Group at Middle River, Maryland, just before the season. He missed Baltimore’s Opening Day, but joined the squad in time for the first Opening Day ever in Oakland, California, to which the Athletics had moved from Kansas City. California Governor Ronald Reagan threw out the first pitch in front of 50,000 fans and Belanger hit his second career home run. On July 10, Hank Bauer was deposed as O’s manager in favor of first-base coach Earl Weaver, who said, “Mark can be a star. A fifty-thousand-dollar player.”11 Perhaps, but he hit just .208 in his first year as a starting player.

The next spring bullpen coach Charlie Lau approached Belanger to offer batting tips. Lau kept track of every pitch Belanger saw that year, sending him up to bat with instructions to take and swing on specific counts, and encouraging him to expect certain pitches in certain spots based on previous batter-pitcher matchups. Belanger responded with his best batting season ever, won his first of eight Gold Gloves, and earned the nickname Blade for his silhouette as Baltimore rolled to a team record 109 wins. He hit for a .287 average with 50 RBIs.

Belanger became a respected member of the team, offering an articulate clubhouse interview and buffering Earl Weaver’s rants. Between the foul lines he was no-joke, all business, directing fielders to shade right or left and approaching rookies and new players with the abrupt “We don’t do it that way” – a line he even used on Jim Palmer in 1978.12 Backed by veterans Brooks Robinson and Frank Robinson, Belanger became a leader on the team, replacing Davey Johnson as assistant player representative. Even in the loose clubhouse atmosphere after wins, Belanger elevated small talk into something relevant without being called a clubhouse lawyer. Late after games, Belanger was still in his canvas chair by his locker talking baseball through a haze of Marlboro cigarette smoke and sips of National Bohemian beer. When the team’s mock “Kangaroo Court” was in session, Belanger was often fined one dollar for ludicrous imperfections, to which he would exclaim: “I appeal!”

Detroit manager Mayo Smith declared that trying to get a hit through the left side of the Baltimore infield was like “trying to throw a hamburger through a brick wall.”13 But in the 1969 World Series the New York Mets did just that, rolling seeing-eye hits between Mark and Brooks – back-to-back no less – in the top of the ninth inning of Game Two en route to a five-game upset. When left fielder Don Buford lost Jerry Grote’s double in the sun in the 10th inning of Game Four, and Belanger almost caught the ball, color commentator Lou Boudreau said he “never saw a shortstop go that far.”14 Broadcaster Tony Kubek called him a fourth outfielder.15

In 1970 Charlie Lau signed with Oakland, and Belanger jammed his thumb in March. He was described as lost at the plate, batting “all-arm”16 without a clue. He developed “projection room eyes”17 from looking at so much film, but all he got for it was a .218 average and a mountain of broken bats. He did hit .333 in the American League Championship Series – in the opener against Minnesota, Belanger’s soft liner off pitcher Jim Perry’s glove was called the turning point, loading the bases for Mike Cuellar’s fourth-inning grand slam. Belanger hit just .105 in the World Series, but celebrated the Orioles’ victory anyway. The next year he rebounded to a more respectable .266 and captured his second Gold Glove.

In 1972 Weaver gave a lot of middle-infield at bats to newcomer Bobby Grich, causing Belanger’s playing time to be cut in half (he hit just .186) and Baltimore suffered its worst record during Belanger’s career. After the season the Orioles traded away second baseman Davey Johnson and installed Grich there, giving Belanger his full-time job back. The next two seasons were remarkably similar for Belanger and the Orioles. He hit .226 and .225 and captured a Gold Glove award after each season. The Orioles had second-half surges each season to come from behind to win the division title, before dropping the League Championship Series to the Athletics each season.

The tradeoff between Belanger’s lousy offense and great defense was usually one Weaver was willing to make, but he was not above trying to gain an edge. In September of 1975, Weaver often used Royle Stillman as the shortstop high in the starting lineup in road games, allowing rookie Stillman to bat in the first inning and Belanger to replace him in the bottom of the first. Stillman was an outfielder, and never played an inning of shortstop in his career, despite his six “starts” there in 1975. He hit 3-for-6 in these games.

Belanger holds the American League career record for being pinch-hit for – 333 times. And if he wasn’t being pinch-hit for, he was sacrificing; his league-leading 23 sacrifices in 1975 were an Oriole record at least through 2009. In 1976, Belanger carried a .300 average into June and earned over a million votes in the All-Star balloting, making the team as a backup. When Peter Gammons wrote, “Belanger could be the first 140 lb. weakling to win the MVP award,”18 Belanger sought him out at Fenway Park and confronted him: “I’m 170 pounds, and I’m not a weakling.”19 The next year, writing for Sports Illustrated, Gammons called Belanger “the leader of the club.”20 One of the last players to represent himself and not use an agent, Belanger signed after 1976 for $60,000, a contract that was later extended through the end of the 1981 season.

On July 28, 1977, even though he was going for his 50th consecutive errorless game, he was benched by Weaver and watched his replacement, Kiko Garcia, drop a first-inning pop-up that led to a big loss. Belanger’s streak ended on August 20 at 62 games, 48 of them starts. When the team contended in late September, the Baltimore Sun called Belanger the “blood and guts of the team.”21 But Belanger went beyond the established bounds of team leadership. He and his wife, Daryl “Dee” Belanger, hosted teammates for baseball talk and home cooking at his Timonium, Maryland, and Key Biscayne, Florida, residences. Pitcher Steve Stone credited one such evening with making him feel welcome with the team and for his subsequent 1979 success. In 1975 Mark and Dee even suggested that the Orioles play John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” during the seventh-inning stretch, the start of a tradition that has spread today to many sports in many cities.

Belanger spent countless hours tutoring young infielders Doug DeCinces, Rich Dauer, Kiko Garcia, and Billy Smith, and the rookies helped him set the Baltimore record for double plays in 1977. When second baseman Dauer set a record by playing in 74 consecutive games without an error, he thanked Belanger. “He taught me how to play every hitter … and taught me our pitching staff,” Dauer said.22 Belanger tapped his heart, as he did for so many players he liked: “He’s got it here,” he said.23

In 1980, a two-error game in July was noted to be his first in six years, and major-league shortstops surveyed by Sport magazine voted Belanger the best at the position. On September 4, 1981, Weaver benched Belanger, batting .165, for Lenny Sakata amid a team batting slump. Belanger, complaining about a sore shoulder, never started again. Sakata popped a grand slam two days later, coming out twice for curtain calls, and Weaver chortled, “He’s been keeping rallies going for us since he’s been in there,”24 a remark poignant for the punchless Belanger, who wasn’t even subbing in the late innings any more. Belanger’s last game with the Orioles was on October 4, but he asked Weaver not to play him, saying, “I haven’t been playing, and I’m not sharp.”25 Public-address announcer Rex Barney thanked Belanger in the top of the eighth inning for the privilege of watching him play. Applause built until Belanger appeared on the top step of the dugout and tipped his cap, an act that only made the stadium roar, delaying the game. Belanger added criticisms of Weaver that forced the Orioles’ hand in releasing him on November 13. Reflecting on the Orioles without Belanger, catcher Rick Dempsey said, “I feel like we lost half the club.”26

Belanger signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers for $250,000 on December 11, 1981, to play one last season. Along with his utility-infielder duties, he handed lineup cards to umpires and pitched batting practice. Walking by manager Tommy Lasorda’s office in March, Belanger cringed when Lasorda yelled out: “Belanger!” Expecting Weaver-like browbeating, Belanger entered the office only to be told Lasorda wanted a hug.27 He got a key hit in a Dodgers win on July 31, and walked twice in a final start against fireballer Nolan Ryan. The last grounder he fielded was from Tony Gwynn on September 21.

For many, the close of Mark Belanger’s playing days only heralded the beginnings of his real contributions to baseball. The assistant player representative for Baltimore since 1971, Belanger rose to player representative in 1977 when Brooks Robinson retired and took pains to make sure Donald Fehr, then the chief counsel of the Major League Players Association, understood the rank-and-file’s concerns. Belanger was tested as the players’ front man in the 50-day strike of 1981 and fought for bargaining benefits that he himself would probably never collect. Belanger’s pro-union stance contrasted with that of big earners like Reggie Jackson, who seemed ready to cave in

Upon Belanger’s retirement, player reps demanded that a spot be created for him right under Ken Moffett, the executive director of the players union. Belanger turned down a lucrative offer from Personal Management Associates, a Baltimore player agency headed by Ron Shapiro, and became a tireless “special assistant” to Moffett and later Don Fehr

The partnership with Fehr was fruitful. Belanger brought credibility to executive-board sessions, and acted as Fehr’s personal bellwether for player opinion. Fehr himself claimed he didn’t feel comfortable in the job until 1986. Until then Belanger stood behind him at nearly every public appearance: arms folded, repeating key words, and interrupting Fehr’s legalese at least once with: “Don. You lost them.”28 Eventually Belanger’s own earnings topped $400,000 annually, yet he still took a personal interest in nearly every player grievance that came across his desk, helping the union move to Midtown Manhattan and to computerize member data. Still making time to play golf with his brother, Al, at the Berkshire Hills Country Club on Saturday mornings, Belanger saw the median major-league salary top $1,000,000 in 1992.

A skiing accident at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, early in January 1997 led to lingering discomfort and a diagnosis of lung cancer that April. Belanger, who had quit smoking in 1991, took the challenge in an upbeat, optimistic mood. He married his second wife, Virginia French, three months later, and worked for the MLPA while an outpatient until he died shortly after the 1998 regular season ended, on October 6, at the age of 54. Besides his wife, he was survived by two sons, Richard and Robert.

Sources

Ken Nigro, Baltimore Sun beat writer, 1969-1978, and TSN correspondent 1977-1979, interview.

Jim Henneman, TSN Baltimore correspondent, 1976-1978, interview.

Ed Belanger, brother, interview.

Notes

Paul L. D. Blair was born February 1, 1944, in Cushing, Oklahoma, but his family moved to Los Angeles when Paul was young. He grew up a Dodgers fan, once remarking, “I was always a Dodger fan, back when they were in Brooklyn. I was a Dodger fan, mainly because of Jackie Robinson, but [Duke] Snider and [Carl] Furillo, too.”¹ Paul graduated from Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles in 1961, where he lettered in baseball, track, and basketball. His baseball team finished dead last in 1960 but jumped to first in 1961. At the age of 17, Blair got a tryout from the Dodgers, but he was rejected. The Dodgers’ scouts thought the six-foot, one-inch ballplayer was too small to make it to the majors. The Mets’ scouts disagreed.

Paul was signed by the New York Mets on July 20, 1961, as an amateur free agent, at the position of shortstop. Floyd “Babe” Herman signed him to his first contract for $2000. “The first day the coach told us to run out to our positions,” Paul once told a reporter. “Well, seven players went to shortstop and six went to second but only one went to right. And I knew I could throw better than him and run better than him. So I ran out to right and played there. Then the center fielder got hurt and I moved to center.” ² The Mets had assigned the new outfielder to Santa Barbara of the California League in 1962, where he batted .228 with 147 strikeouts. He was then sent in October to the Florida Instructional League and hit extremely well. He also met and became good friends with fellow outfielder Cleon Jones. The Mets had left Blair unprotected after a season with Santa Barbara, and the Orioles drafted him in the 1962 first-year draft. When Jones and Blair would meet after that, Cleon the Met would say, “You got your break when you got drafted,” and Paul the Oriole would reply, “You got your break when I was drafted.”³ The Orioles sent Blair to Elmira, New York, in 1964. Paul appeared as a pinch-runner in his major league debut on September 9, a 4-3 loss to the Washington Senators, but he did not bat or play in the field. In 1964, he appeared in a total of eight games, but he only batted in the final game.

It was in Elmira that Paul Blair met Evelyn Cohen. He was playing in the Eastern League and they became engaged. Paul and Evelyn waited until the 1965 American League season started to exchange their wedding vows. The happy couple was wed on the baseball diamond in Elmira on April 15. They would have two children: Terry was born on September 23, 1965, and Paula was born on May 29, 1968.

Before the 1965 season, Blair completed a six-month tour of duty with the Army Reserve at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, as a communications specialist. He opened the 1965 season in center field for the Orioles, despite not being mentioned as a starting player during spring training. Manager Hank Bauer said that Blair would hold that position “until he plays himself out of it.”⁴ His intuition and speed allowed him to play shallow and run balls down. Earl Weaver, Blair’s second manager in Baltimore, believed that saving a run is just as good as scoring a run. And Paul Blair saved many runs by patrolling the center of the Orioles’ outfield. His amazing quickness allowed him to track down balls that should have dropped in for hits. Paul would often say, “In the outfield I felt there was no ball I couldn’t get to. I played the shallowest center field of anyone.”⁵

In an interview in 1997 in USA Today Baseball Weekly, Blair explained his defensive approach to the game. “I was taught to play defense. Back in our day it was pitching and defense. Our philosophy (the Oriole way) was don’t make the little mistakes that cost you ballgames. That is the way we won over such a long period of time.”⁶

In Game Three of the 1966 World Series, Blair hit a solo home run against Claude Osteen and the Dodgers, giving Wally Bunker all the run support he needed for a 1-0 victory. In Game Four, his acrobatic leaping catch off the bat of Jim Lefebvre saved a home run and preserved a 1-0 win for Dave McNally, as part of the Orioles’ stunning four-game sweep of Los Angeles. After the 1966 season, to continue to improve his hitting skills, he played winter ball with the Santurce club in the Puerto Rican League.

On May 17, 1967, the Baltimore Orioles became only the eighth team in the history of the American League to hit four home runs in the same inning (Andy Etchebarren, Sam Bowens, Boog Powell, and Dave Johnson connected in a 9-run seventh inning). Paul Blair, Frank Robinson, and Brooks Robinson also homered in that game, marking the only time in history that seven different teammates each hit a round-tripper in the same game. Blair’s 12 triples in 1967 led the American League and remain the Orioles season record. He was also a great bunter and fundamentals player. He recorded at least ten sacrifice hits four times in his career, including having 13 in 1969 (which led the league) and 17 during the 1975 season.

In 1967, Blair hit .293 with an on-base percentage of .353, and a slugging percentage of .446. That batting average was fifth best in the league. He also clubbed 11 homers, with 64 RBIs and 27 doubles to go with 12 triples. As fast as he was, however, Blair concedes that he was never much of a base-stealer, with a career high of 27 in 1974 and 20 or more only three times. At the end of the 1967 season, the speedy center fielder was rewarded for his seasonal stats, as Blair picked up several prizes, including a portable stereo from the radio station WFBR as the Most Valuable Oriole, an engraved silver tray from the Maryland General Assembly, a color TV set from the National Brewing Company after twice hitting home runs in Home Run Derby innings, and a black-and-white TV set.

In the winter of 1967, Blair again played in the Puerto Rican league, as the Orioles wanted him to continue to improve his hitting. However, in December of that year, Paul broke his right ankle, causing him to miss most of the 1968 spring training.

According to a June 2, 1968, article in The Sun Magazine, Blair’s nickname “Motormouth” was the inspiration of Harry Dunlop, who was Blair’s 1963 manager at Stockton, the Orioles’ farm team in the California League. “We were coming out of the dugout,” Blair said, “and Curt Motton and I were arguing. We were hitting about .320 apiece, but I had outhit him the day before — 4-for-4, I think it was — and I was reminding Curt about it. Dunlop heard us and said, ‘Motton, Blair’s getting to be as bad as a motor, isn’t he?”⁷ Frank Robinson and Curt Blefary revived the nickname in the big leagues and it stuck. Everyone on the Orioles knew that Blair was a big league hitter and a big league talker.

Blair’s best season, by OPS+, was 1967, but his most productive year was probably 1969, when he hit .285, had an on-base percentage of .327 and slugging percentage of .477. Showing more power, he smacked 32 doubles and 26 homers, stole 20 bases, scored 102 runs and had 178 hits in 150 games. He also had 76 runs batted in. Defensively, the loquacious Oriole won one of his eight Gold Gloves for the excellence he showed while roaming center field.

Paul ended the 1969 season as the only center fielder to have more than 400 putouts. The next best outfielder was Del Unser with 339. Fans would wrack their brains to remember the last time they saw a ball land between Blair and the center field fence. During the 1969 campaign, the Oriole hit an inside-the-park home run at Memorial Stadium. The date was August 8, 1969, and it was the first inside-the-park homer at that stadium since Billy O’Dell had hit one in 1959. That year, 1969, would mark the first time the fans voted the Orioles’ center fielder to the All Star Game. He would also be honored as a Sporting News All-Star at the conclusion of the season.

In 1970, Blair had two significant events in baseball. The first could well be the best single offensive display of his career. He hit three home runs and knocked in six runs in a game on April 29, 1970, as the Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox, 18–2. The second event was career-altering. Unfortunately, in addition to his remarkable defensive prowess, Paul Blair is remembered for receiving a severe beaning by California Angels pitcher Ken Tatum on May 31, 1970. He was carried off the field with a broken nose and serious eye and facial injuries; Blair claims he never saw the pitch. He missed the next three weeks of the season but came back to play a total of 133 games that season and insists it did not affect him. Nevertheless, Blair never equaled the offensive output from his successful 1969 season. In 1971, he attempted switch-hitting, but went 11-for-57 and gave up the experiment.

The Orioles played the Cincinnati Reds in the 1970 World Series. Paul Blair set a record by garnering nine base hits in the five-game series. The center fielder clubbed .474 in that Series, out-hitting all players on both sides, but everyone remembers instead what his Hall of Fame teammate at third base, Brooks Robinson, did defensively against Lee May, Johnny Bench, and the Big Red Machine.

In general, Blair was known around the league as a fastball hitter who liked the ball inside. He often crowded the plate, even after his accident in 1970. He himself admitted he was too stubborn to hit the outside pitch to right field, preferring instead to pull the ball. Part of his success at the plate came from batting ahead of Hall of Famer Frank Robinson. Blair once said, “With him behind me, I knew at two and oh or three and one counts what they’d throw me. They’re not going to walk Paul Blair to get to Frank Robinson, so they’re going to throw me a fastball. After Frank [left the Orioles], they were throwing breaking balls. And the slider was a pitch I had trouble with. I wasn’t disciplined enough to take those pitches and walk.”⁸

In 1972, Blair’s batting average dipped to a terrible .233, and his on-base percentage was only .267. Something had to be done. On June 15, 1973, Blair started seeing a Baltimore psychiatrist. After a suggestion from Chan Keith, a baseball writer for the Baltimore News American, Paul visited Dr. Jacob H. Conn and received hypnosis therapy, restoring confidence in his ability to avoid inside pitches. According to the doctor, in one session, he was able to unlearn three years of ducking out of the way every time a ball came inside. Over the next two weeks, he was hitting .522. In a dozen games, he collected 24 hits in 46 at-bats, including six doubles, a triple, and three home runs. He drove in eleven runs and scored ten. On May 29, he had been batting just .218, but a month later, he was fourth in the league at .321. He ended the season at .280.

Paul Blair accomplished a rare feat in 1973 when he hit an inside-the-park grand slam homer against the Kansas City Royals. The game was August 26 and featured Jim Palmer matched up against Paul Splittorff. Blair drove a ball into the gap. Royals outfielders Amos Otis and Steve Hovley collided in mid-air, and Blair rounded the bases. The official attendance was only 15,285. On September 3, 1973, Blair hit a three-run inside-the-park home run against John Curtis. At the end of the 1973 season, Blair was considered a unanimous Gold Glove selection. The dependable center fielder had received 44 of 49 possible votes. However, the 5 votes he did not receive were from the Orioles’ staff, who were not eligible to vote for him.

In 1974, Paul Blair again led all American League outfielders with 447 putouts in center field (in 1969 he had 407). In fact, nine times in his career, he had more than 300 putouts in the outfield. His defense kept him in the line-up, despite his batting .218 in 1975 and only .197 in 1976.

On January 20, 1977, the Orioles traded the contract of 32-year-old center fielder Paul Blair to the New York Yankees for Elliott Maddox, 27, and Rick Bladt, 30. At the time, Blair was the Orioles’ all-time leading base stealer with 167. He also ranked third in the Orioles record books (behind Brooks Robinson and Boog Powell) in games, at-bats, runs, hits, total bases, and runs batted in. His career average with Baltimore was .254. He had played in all five American League Championship Series and all four World Series in which the Birds were involved. His eight Gold Gloves contributed mightily to the Orioles’ success.

Blair left Charm City to become a reserve for the Yankees for two seasons (both World Series championship seasons for the Bronx Bombers), and then was released just into the 1979 season. After a month off, in May 1979, the Cincinnati Reds signed Blair to a one-year contract. His acquisition gave the Reds 31 Gold Gloves on the team: Bench (10), Blair (8), Morgan (5), Concepcion (4), and Geronimo (4). Unfortunately, Blair, new to the National League, did nothing for the Reds, batting .152 in 77 games and just 145 at-bats, then went back to New York for 1980. He played in 12 games as a defensive replacement (just two at-bats), and retired at the age of 36.

After his playing days were over, Paul Blair became an outfield instructor for the New York Yankees in 1981. He was named the head baseball coach at Fordham University in August 1982 and coached the 1983 season, compiling a record of 14?19. That position lasted only one year, but Blair kept in touch with major league teams, offering his services again as an instructor. He last did it at the major league level for the Houston Astros in 1985. In 1989, at the age of 45, he played 17 games for the Gold Coast Suns of the Senior Professional Baseball Association. The club split its home games between Miami and Pompano Beach, Florida, and hired future Hall of Famer Earl Weaver as its manager. Despite fine performances from Bert Campaneris (.291 with 16 stolen bases) and Joaquin Andujar (5-0 with a 1.31 ERA), the team did not make the playoffs. After its first season, the Gold Coast Suns ceased operations.

In 1995, the former major leaguer accepted a coaching job for the Yonkers Hoot Owls, one of six teams in the new independent professional Northeast League (the Hoot Owls became the Bangor Blue Ox in 1996). Between the time he stopped playing and began coaching, Paul devoted his time to high school coaching, operating a baseball camp, and working as a sports coordinator for a clothing firm. He was also the head baseball coach at Coppin State College from 1998 to 2002. Granted, he inherited a desperately inexperienced team, but under his leadership, the team posted a disappointing 30-185 record. Although Paul Blair the player had been associated with very successful major league teams, Paul Blair the coach could not attain the same success. He retired to Owings Mills, Maryland.

Paul Blair had two great postseason series for the Orioles in his career. In the 1969 American League Championship Series against Minnesota, he hit .400 and slugged .733 with a homer and six RBIs, and in the 1970 World Series against the Reds, he hit .474 and slugged .526, also scoring five runs. Blair’s five hits in the final game of the 1969 American League Championship Series against Minnesota is still a record. Indeed, the former Orioles center fielder is the only player ever to get five hits in a single ALCS game. Twice he was named to the American League All-Star squad (1969, 1973). He played in a total of 52 post-season games during his 17-year baseball career, and his team won nine of 13 post-season series. He played in six World Series and won four World Series rings, two with the Orioles (1966 and 1970) and two with the Yankees (1977 and 1978). The player once known as Motormouth received votes for the American League’s Most Valuable Player in four different seasons. At the time Paul Blair retired, his eight Gold Gloves were a record for an outfielder, since broken by Ken Griffey Jr. Blair’s career fielding percentage was .987, as he only had 57 errors in 4462 chances. He batted .250 for his career during a time when the league batting average was just .254.

Postscript

On December 26, 2013, Paul Blair, 69, collapsed while bowling in Pikesville, Maryland. He was taken to Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, where he died.

Sources

Baltimore Orioles Media Guide, 1970.

Personal conversations with SABR members Gabriel Schechter, Malcolm Allen, and Jan Finkel.

Notes

Donald Alvin Buford was born on February 2, 1937, in Linden, Texas, a small town in the northeast corner of the state, near the Louisiana border. His father was apparently a pretty good semipro player, but Don never got to know him—he was killed in a shooting accident when Don was about 6 or 7 years old. Soon afterwards, his mother, Sedalia, moved with Don to Southern California to be closer to her own family.

Buford grew up playing sports with his friends, in sandlots and backyards with whatever equipment they could rustle up. He always worked, beginning with a paper route as a boy. He starred in baseball and football for Dorsey High in Los Angeles but because of his small size (5-feet-7, 160 pounds), was not heavily recruited. After his 1955 graduation, he spent three semesters at Los Angeles City College, winning all-conference honors at quarterback in 1955 and at halfback in 1956, and getting honorable mention as a junior college All-American. He tried to interest several Pacific Coast Conference schools in his services, and chose the University of Southern California so that he could play baseball as well. He played baseball in the spring of 1957 before his football scholarship started in the fall.

On the baseball diamond Buford played little in 1957 but regularly the next two years. He hit .323 as an outfielder at USC, and his 1958 squad, which also included future major leaguer Ron Fairly, won the College World Series, the first of 10 won by Rod Dedeaux as head coach. On the gridiron, Buford played defensive and offensive halfback in 1957 and 1958; he led the Trojans in 1958 in interceptions, punt returns, and rushing yardage, and in both seasons in kickoff returns. In the big game against Notre Dame in November 1958, Buford rushed for 34 yards, threw a touchdown pass, returned kicks and punts, and made two interceptions. Notre Dame won, 20-13, but all the national stories featured Buford’s performance. That year he was named All-Pacific Coast, and was a halfback for the national all-stars in the Copper Bowl in Tempe, Arizona. In May 1959 he was awarded USC’s Jacob Gimbel Athletic Attitude Award, given to a senior athlete for best attitude.

Still, there were no professional football offers and few for baseball. Buford later said he spoke with four baseball clubs—the Yankees, Dodgers, Pirates, and White Sox—and it was Chicago that gave him the best deal, a Triple-A contract and a small bonus. He was signed in November 1959 by scout Hollis Thurston.

In the spring of 1960, Buford trained with the Triple-A San Diego Padres (Pacific Coast League), and hit safely in his first 21 games before being stopped in the spring-training finale. This earned the 23-year-old a starting outfield position for the Padres to start the season, but after hitting .268 for two weeks he was sent down to Lincoln, Nebraska, in the Three-I League. There he hit .287 with 94 walks and 36 stolen bases, but suffered a knee injury late in the season that required surgery. The knee bothered him the rest of his career, and was operated on three additional times.

Buford recovered in time to play all of 1961 with Charleston in the Sally League, where he hit just .236 in 136 games. He showed signs of progress after the season, hitting .324 playing against many future major leaguers in the Florida Instructional League. The next year he began with Triple-A Indianapolis, but after going just 3-for-27, was sent down to Single-A Savannah in the Sally League. He hit .323 there, with 91 walks and 100 runs scored, again showing signs of the great on-base skills that would later mark his major-league career. He shifted to third base in midseason, and was named the third baseman on the circuit’s all-star team after the season. He was a promising player, but at 25 years old a bit long in the tooth for Single-A. He played that fall in the Florida Instructional League, then played winter ball in Venezuela.

Buford, though small in stature, developed surprising power from both sides of the plate. With Indianapolis in 1963, he proved himself ready, leading the International League with a .336 batting average, 206 hits, 41 doubles, 114 runs scored, and 42 stolen bases and helping his team capture the league’s championship. He was named most valuable player and rookie of the year, and The Sporting News minor-league player of the year. After the season he joined the White Sox, where he played 12 games and hit .286 in 42 at-bats. In his September 14 debut in Washington, Buford finished 1-for-3 with a double off Bob Baird. He spent the winter playing in Puerto Rico.

With young star third baseman Pete Ward blocking Buford’s path to the majors, the club played Buford at second base in September and after the season sold longtime second baseman Nellie Fox to Houston, partly to open up the job for Buford.

Although it would take another generation before on-base skills became universally valued, Buford’s performance in this area was always remarked upon. In his first major-league spring training, Al Lopez raved, “This fellow knows how to get on base.”1What came more difficult for Buford was his transition from third base, a position he had played only a couple of years, to second base, having to the learn the difficult double-play pivot at age 27. Although he proved to be sure-handed, most observers felt that he had trouble taking the ball out of his glove fast enough on the pivot. In early April, Buford and the San Francisco Giants’ Jesus Alou were named by The Sporting News as the rookies most likely to succeed in 1964.

Buford was not the best rookie in the league, but he did hit .262 with good plate discipline that made up for his erratic glove. Middle infielders in the mid-1960s rarely hit as high as .262, so Buford’s job was secure. He improved considerably the next year, up to .283 with 67 walks, which helped him score 93 runs, fourth most in the league. He generally hit second in the batting order, but he defied type by drilling 10 home runs among his 37 extra-base hits.

Nonetheless, Buford’s defensive struggles caused the White Sox to play him at third whenever regular Pete Ward needed a rest. In 1966 manager Eddie Stanky moved Ward to the outfield so that Buford could play his “natural” third base, a position he had really not played until his last year in the minor leagues. Buford responded by leading league third basemen with 26 errors, mostly on throws. He also fell off at the plate, hitting just .244 while still scoring 85 runs. Stanky also wanted Buford to run more, and offered him a sports coat if he stole 30 bases. In the event, Buford stole 51, second in the league, earning himself slacks, a shirt and tie along with the jacket.

The next season Buford continued to struggle getting hits, dropping to .241, but walked enough to be a valuable offensive player. The White Sox were part of a historic four-team race for the pennant, and Buford epitomized the club—a versatile singles hitter with good speed (34 steals). Stanky moved him back to second base during the pennant race, and he handled himself well enough at second, third, and left field. Nonetheless, after the season he was traded to the Orioles, going with pitchers Roger Nelson and Bruce Howard for outfielder Russ Snyder, first baseman John Matias, and shortstop Luis Aparicio. The Orioles mainly wanted the pitchers, while the White Sox coveted Aparicio (whom they had traded away five years earlier) and Snyder.

Buford was going to a team one year removed from a championship, and a team that already had an All-Star third baseman (Brooks Robinson), an established second baseman (Dave Johnson), and three outfielders (Curt Blefary, Paul Blair, and Frank Robinson) whom manager Hank Bauer liked. Buford had no place to play. Earl Weaver, who joined the club that year as the first-base coach, loved Buford’s game, and remembered managing against him when he was a star outfielder in the minors. He urged Buford to remind Bauer that he could play the outfield, but Buford spent the early part of the 1968 season as a part-time second baseman, when Johnson sat down or moved to shortstop in place of Mark Belanger. At the All-Star break he had started 22 games and played in 26 others, mainly at second, and was hitting .234 with his usual patience. During the break, Bauer was fired and replaced by Weaver.

In Weaver’s first game, he played Buford in center field and batted him leadoff. Buford walked and scored in the first, then homered in the fifth, the only runs in Dave McNally’s 2-0 shutout over the Minnesota Twins. Buford never left the lineup again that season. Weaver essentially platooned Blair and Blefary, with Buford playing left field when Blair started and center field when Blefary did. Buford hit leadoff the rest of the way, and responded by hitting .298 with 11 home runs and 45 walks in the final 82 games of the season. “Don Buford is the spark plug,” said teammate Frank Robinson after the season, “the guy who always gets on base, who doesn’t scream or yell, but when you see him out there on a sack, you just have just got to bring him home.”2 Buford scored 45 runs in the second half of the season.

Weaver’s 1968 team had a lot of talent, and he helped guide them to a second-place finish behind the Tigers. His key change to the club was his insertion of Buford into the regular lineup, a move that helped spark the team to its three straight pennants. Leadoff men of the 1960s were often little guys who choked up on the bat and hit singles. Weaver loved Buford because he got on base, a skill not universally valued at the time but coveted by the rookie manager.

The move to Baltimore was easier on the field than it was off. The Buford family, which included his wife, Alescia, and two sons (soon to be three) had difficulty finding housing in Baltimore, suitable apartments suddenly not available when the renters realized that the interested family was black. Once their plight became publicly known, offers were made, and they rented a place just north of Memorial Stadium in a predominantly black neighborhood. Still, Buford openly wondered how it would be were he not a famous baseball player.

Meanwhile, Baltimore’s outfield picture was complicated in 1969 by the arrival of Merv Rettenmund, who had hit .331 with 22 home runs at Rochester in 1968, and was ready to break in. Although Buford assumed the regular left-field job on Opening Day, many observers felt that Rettenmund would take over soon enough. Instead, Buford played 144 games, hit .291 with 11 home runs, 31 doubles, 96 walks, and 99 runs scored. He led off all year, and helped spark the great offense and the team to a magnificent 109-53 record. After hitting .286 in the team’s playoff sweep of the Twins, he led off the bottom half of the first inning of the World Series with a home run off Tom Seaver, leading the Orioles to a 4-1 victory over the New York Mets. But he hit only 2-for-20 in the Series, which the Orioles lost in five games.

Rettenmund broke through to hit .318 in 1970, playing part time at all three outfield positions, though mainly in center field. Buford played 144 games again, and the club dominated the division with 108 wins. Though his average dropped to .272, he compensated with 109 walks and 17 home runs, helping epitomize the perfect Weaver leadoff hitter. On April 9 he hit home runs from both sides of the plate, the first Oriole to accomplish the feat. On August 28, after Milwaukee pitcher Dave Baldwin intentionally walked pinch-hitter Boog Powell, Buford hit a grand slam to lead the Orioles to an 8-4 victory. He hit .318 in the postseason, with a home run in both the LCS and the World Series, helping the great club to a dominating World Series title over the Cincinnati Reds.

Buford’s final big year came as a 34-year-old in 1971. Weaver brilliantly employed his four outfielders, giving them all between 545 (Robinson) and 589 (Rettenmund) plate appearances. Despite the slightly lessened workload, Buford responded with a .290 average, 89 walks, a career-high 19 home runs, a career-high .413 on-base percentage (fourth in the league), and a league-leading 99 runs. He played in his only All-Star Game, striking out against Don Wilson of Houston in the AL’s 6-4 win. He hit .300 in the postseason, including two home runs in the World Series, but the Orioles fell to the Pirates in seven games. For his career, Buford hit five home runs in 22 postseason games.

In December 1971 the Orioles traded Frank Robinson to the Dodgers to ease the logjam in the outfield, though the holdovers had to contend with another great prospect, Don Baylor. The incumbents all later claimed they tried too hard to adjust to Robinson’s departure and the entire offense collapsed. The Orioles team had led the league in runs for the past two seasons but fell to eighth of 12 teams in 1972. Buford was now 35, and hit just .206 for the season, and scored just 46 runs.

After the season the Orioles offered Buford a big salary cut and the sides could not come to terms. Instead Buford signed to play with the Taiheiyo Club Lions in Japan, doubling his salary and allowing his wife and three sons to enjoy a new culture. He played three years for the Lions, making two All-Star teams, and then played 1976 with the Nankai Hawks. He finally retired after the 1976 season, after 17 years in professional baseball.

With his baseball career over, Buford went to work as a personnel manager for Sears, with whom he had worked over several off-seasons. He kept this job until 1981, when old friend Frank Robinson, manager of the San Francisco Giants, hired him to coach. Buford worked as the first-base coach for four years, and later served under Robinson with the Orioles and Washington Nationals. He also served as a minor-league manager several times and worked with the Orioles in player development for a few years in the 1990s.

In 1960 Don married Alescia Jackson, who eventually graduated from UCLA law school and owned her own public-relations firm in Sherman Oaks, California. The couple raised three sons. Donald, Jr. played baseball at Stanford and USC, and graduated cum laude in economics from USC. He then played four years in the Orioles minor-league system before graduating from UCLA medical school. He began a practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Dallas in the mid-1990s. Daryl graduated from Cal-Berkeley and USC Law School, and became a lawyer and sports agent in Beverly Hills. Damon followed his father to USC, and then had a nine-year career in the major leagues with the Orioles, Mets, Rangers, Red Sox, and Cubs.

Don and Alescia Buford, rightly proud of the accomplishments of their sons, pointed especially to their educational achievements that they both had stressed. “I just really have tried to encourage all three of them, and be in their corners,” Don told the Baltimore Sun. “I always told them that whatever they do, they have to dedicate themselves.”3 Asked by another writer about Damon following in his footsteps as a major league player, Don said, “Damon wasn’t raised to be a baseball player. He decided he wanted to pursue it from the time he was in college. They were kids, not really stressing being professionals but enjoying themselves and having fun.”4

Buford was elected to the Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame in 1993, and was hailed as the club’s greatest-ever leadoff man. Despite their early difficulties finding a place to live in 1968, the Bufords grew to love the city, and the city them. “That was the time of our lives,” Mrs. Buford told the Sun, “That was home.”

Notes

Terrence Michael Crowley was born on February 16, 1947, in Staten Island, New York, and grew up rooting for the Yankees. Despite his admiration for pinch-hitting expert Johnny Blanchard, Crowley was a left-handed pitcher in high school, and drew the attention of professional scouts. Starring at Curtis High in Staten Island, the school that sent Bobby Thomson of “Shot Heard ’Round the World” fame to the major leagues, Crowley got to pitch for the city championship as a junior. But he hurt his arm and couldn’t even throw — much less pitch – when he returned for his senior year. Not surprisingly, the demand for Crowley’s services in pro ball dipped accordingly. “Some teams had made offers and said they would wait until my arm got better,” he said. “But I couldn’t realistically go away to play pro ball when I couldn’t move my left shoulder.”2

Instead, Crowley enrolled at the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University, the institution that Hall of Famer Larry Doby once attended on a basketball scholarship. He never went back to the mound, but Crowley got his baseball career back on track with a first-team All-American performance as a sophomore. Now married to the former Janet Boyle with a baby daughter, Carlene, he was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles him in the 11th round of the 1966 June amateur draft, but was in no particular hurry to sign unless the price was right.

The Orioles inked one draftee after another, but Crowley kept refusing to sign. Scout Walter Shannon came to watch him play, and after following Crowley around “for a good two months,”3 finally offered a bonus of $27,500 with only a few weeks remaining in the minor league season. Crowley signed, reported to Miami and batted .255 in 19 Florida State League games with only one extra-base hit in his first taste of professional baseball.

He returned to Miami in 1967 and batted .262 with a league-leading 24 doubles in 135 games. Surprisingly Crowley, a 6-foot, 180-pounder never known for his speed, added 10 triples and 21 steals. However, he managed only three homers and 49 RBIs. “The wind blew in from right field so hard, it was impossible for a lefty to hit a home run,” Crowley remembered. “The whole league was like that.”4

After the season the Orioles put Crowley on their 40-man roster, and after a stint in the Florida Instructional League, they promoted Crowley to the Double-A Elmira Pioneers in 1968. “Crow” hit .271 without a home run in 55 Eastern League games playing for Cal Ripken Sr., but he earned a promotion to Triple-A Rochester after a red-hot June. There, he began to hit with power for the first time as a professional, launching eight home runs to go with a .268 average in 75 games. The Orioles sent him back to the Florida Instructional League after the season, and minor-league director Jim McLaughlin speculated that “Crowley may just come up in September for a look after a season in Triple-A.”5

That’s exactly what happened, but not before Crowley overcame a slow start at Rochester to become a unanimous in-season All-Star selection by International League managers. He batted .282 with 28 home runs and 83 runs batted in, walked 69 times, and led the league with 246 total bases. On September 4, 1969, he fouled out as a pinch-hitter in his major-league debut at Tiger Stadium, but notched three hits in his first start (against the Indians) when the Orioles returned home. He got into seven games that September, hitting .333 (6-for-18), and at just 22 years of age, his future appeared very bright.

Nevertheless, Crowley was a long shot to make the Orioles in 1970. The team’s 109 victories had given it the American League pennant in 1969, and no starting jobs were open in the outfield or at first base. Even two reserve outfielders had spots secured, but Crowley forced his way into the mix by hitting .380 in Grapefruit League play. Utility infielder Bobby Floyd became the odd man out, and Crowley was wearing a Baltimore uniform on Opening Day in Cleveland. He didn’t get into the game, but wound up in the hospital overnight when a foul liner one-hopped its way into the Orioles’ dugout and struck him above the ear. He was fine, though, and started the series finale in right field.

Though Crowley began the season as the Orioles’ 25th man, his contribution to the team’s 108-54 record and second consecutive American League East title was substantial. His first major-league home run was a three-run blast off the Minnesota Twins’ Dave Boswell at Memorial Stadium on May 1 that gave Baltimore a lead it wouldn’t lose. He added game-winning home runs in Detroit and Cleveland before the season was through. He batted .257 in 83 games (34 starts). His totals of five homers and 20 RBIs in 157 at-bats were pretty good, and his .394 on-base percentage was exceptional. Perhaps most telling was Crowley’s .290 average as a pinch-hitter, a difficult role for any player, but particularly for a 23-year-old rookie. “It’s a job usually handled by a veteran,” remarked Crowley. “It’s a big adjustment to go from playing every day to pinch-hitting.”6

He made only one plate appearance in the postseason, but earned a World Series ring as the Orioles romped through the Minnesota Twins and Cincinnati Reds by winning seven times in eight tries. “It was like, hey, this is the way it’s supposed to be,” said Crowley. “We pretty much had an All-Star at every position. We had a fantastic pitching staff. It was a great time.”7

The Orioles hoped Crowley would head to Puerto Rico to sharpen his skills in the winter league, but with daughter Carlene about to turn 7 and sons Terry Jr. and Jimmy still in diapers, Crowley elected to stay home and be daddy. When spring training rolled around for 1971, he pulled a hamstring in a running drill, didn’t hit when he was able to play, and wound up getting sent back to Rochester. “It was an emotional adjustment, no doubt, going from the world champions back to the minors,” he said. “I had to fight not only the opposing pitchers, but my situation as well.”8

Crowley was recalled to Baltimore a few times that season, and managed only a .174 average in 23 at-bats over 18 games. At Rochester, he hit cleanup, played first base, and helped the team to a Junior World Series title by smashing five homers in the playoffs. Still, the season was a disappointing setback, and he did go to the Puerto Rican league that winter trying to turn things around.

Fellow Orioles Don Baylor, Rich Coggins, Dave Leonhard, and Fred Beene were also on the Santurce squad, but Crowley gained his most valuable experience of the winter away from the baseball field. Though physically fine, he’d been placed on the disabled list after a disagreement with manager Ruben Gomez, and found himself sitting around the pool one day when heavyweight boxing contender Joe Roman happened by and the two became friends.

“I had boxed informally as a kid,” Crowley recalled. “We always had the gloves, and my dad and uncles always taught me how to fight because they were into the fight game a little bit. When I actually started to fool around with Joe Roman, it was fun and I could handle myself a little bit. I could move around, and I found that doing it every day for the first time, I got to improve.”9

In addition to sparring, Crowley spent about three weeks following the training regimen of Roman, who in 1973 became the first Puerto Rican to fight for the heavyweight championship. (George Foreman knocked him out in one round.) “Boxers are fantastically dedicated guys,” marveled Crowley the following spring. “They get up at 4 o’clock in the morning and go out and run for an hour or so. Every morning. They never miss. I’ve never seen anyone work so hard in athletics and, boy, does it pay off. I feel in great shape.”10

Crowley wasn’t sure where he fit in the Orioles plans heading into 1972, but one major obstacle had been removed when Baltimore traded Frank Robinson to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Crowley wound up more or less platooning in right field with his good friend and roommate Merv Rettenmund. “Merv Rettenmund was one of funniest, wittiest, sarcastic type guys that you could ever be around,” said Crowley. “He was a great teammate. Guys loved him, and he was a really funny guy.”11

Crowley got into a career high 97 games in ’72 and hammered 11 home runs in 247 at-bats. In June, he shared the cover of The Sporting News with teammates Don Baylor and Bobby Grich, and received praise from Baltimore coach Billy Hunter in the accompanying story. “I am more surprised at what Crowley has accomplished than the other two,” Hunter said. “We always knew that Terry was a natural hitter, but he has impressed me even more by working very hard at other phases of the game.”12 But, a .193 second-half batting average dropped Crowley’s season mark to .231, and the Orioles missed the playoffs for the first time in four years after a September swoon.

Crowley lifted weights with Rettenmund nearly every day that offseason at a Baltimore YMCA, seemingly in preparation for a great opportunity. The American League adopted the designated hitter rule for the 1973 season and Crowley made his first-ever Opening Day start as the first DH in Orioles history. Veteran Tommy Davis, a two-time batting champion, seized the job in May, though, and Crowley wound up hitting just .206 with three home runs in 54 games. Fed up, he let it be known that he’d welcome a trade. The Orioles sold him to the Texas Rangers in December for a reported $100,000.

After another winter in Puerto Rico to get some at-bats, Crowley expressed optimism about joining a new team. “If I could get about 350 or 400 at-bats, I think I could hit between 15 and 20 home runs and help this club a great deal,” he said. “I’ll DH, play first or the outfield, platoon, anything. All I’d like is the opportunity to play in some predictable fashion.”13

Crowley didn’t even make it through spring training with the Rangers, however. Texas placed him on waivers and he ended up with the Cincinnati Reds. There, he was reunited with Rettenmund, whom the Orioles had also traded away because he wasn’t satisfied playing part time. The pair of ex-Orioles earned one more World Series ring when the Reds went all the way in 1975, but mostly endured two miserable years of dwindling playing time and disappointing production with Cincinnati. Crowley hit .240 with one homer in 1974, then .268, again with a single homer the following year, and saw his at-bats drop from 125 in 1974 to 71 in 1975.

Just before the 1976 season opener, Cincinnati sent Crowley and Rettenmund packing in separate deals. The two friends were so glad to be leaving the Reds that, The Sporting News wrote, they went joyriding back and forth over one of the Reds’ spring training fields in Tampa. More than three decades later, Crowley still wasn’t talking. “No comment,” he replied with a laugh. “Let (Rettenmund) tell you that story.”14

Traded to the Atlanta Braves, Crowley was soon reminded that the grass is not always greener. After he went hitless in seven pinch-hit appearances, the Braves tried to option him to Triple-A. He refused, became a free agent, and wound up back at Rochester a few weeks later after re-signing with the Orioles. Baltimore brought him back to the big leagues in late June, and he hit .246, primarily as a pinch-hitter the rest of the way.

Just before the 1977 season got underway, the Orioles, in a surprise move, decided to keep rookie first baseman Eddie Murray, and Crowley was sent back to Rochester again. “Very mad” is how he described his reaction.15 With four children (daughter Karen arrived in August 1976) between 7 months and 13 years of age, being back at Rochester nine years after his first tour there was not a welcome career move. “I think I’m the best hitter in this league, but I have to prove it,” Crowley said.16

“He doesn’t belong in this league,” observed Tidewater Tides skipper Frank Verdi.17 “He was right,” replied Crowley when the quote was relayed to him years later.18

Playing every day for the first time since 1969, Crowley set out to bat .300 with 30 home runs, and accomplished his goal by the first week of August. The Orioles brought him back to the majors a week later, and he remained a big leaguer for the next six years. “Terry has what you call a classic swing,” observed Hall of Famer Frank Robinson. “It’s one you don’t tamper with.”19

From 1977 through 1981, Crowley delivered a .314 average as a pinch-hitter for the Orioles. “People say you can’t carry Crowley for what he does,” said Earl Weaver midway through Baltimore’s pennant-winning 1979 season. “But he’s already got us three games.”20

“I’ve been doing it for so long that people just naturally think I’m older,” Crowley said in 1978. “I’ve been around for a while, and I’ve been in a couple of World Series. A year ago, people thought I was washed up, though I was only 30 years old.”21

American League managers voted Crowley the circuit’s best pinch-hitter in 1979, and he made them look good in Game Three of that season’s American League Championship Series with a hit that would have driven in the pennant-clinching run had the Orioles been able to hold the lead in the bottom of the ninth inning. Baltimore did advance to the fall classic the next day, however, setting the stage for one of the most memorable hits of Crowley’s career.

The Orioles were trailing the Pittsburgh Pirates 6-3 in Game Four of the World Series entering the eighth inning, but pulled within a run when John Lowenstein smacked a two-run double to the right-field corner. After Pirates ace reliever Kent Tekulve issued an intentional walk to set up the double play, Crowley stroked a pinch-hit double to the same location as Lowenstein’s hit to knock in the tying and go-ahead runs. Baltimore took control, three games to one, and Crowley’s hit would be remembered even more fondly if the Orioles hadn’t dropped the final three games of the series.

“Once you get to the World Series, everything is gravy,” Crowley said. “I had some pressure-filled pinch hits that got us to different pennant-winning teams. Not only that year, but other years that were pressure-filled. If you get a hit, we win the game. If you don’t, we drop into second place. But the one thing about the hit off Tekulve, people started to notice, ‘Hey, this guy’s done that before.’ That was the one that probably got me the most notoriety.”22

The Orioles won 100 games in 1980 and, though they missed the playoffs (the Yankees won 103), it was an especially gratifying year for Crowley. He got 233 at-bats, the second highest total of his career, blasted 12 home runs, and drove in 50 runs while batting .288. He was rewarded with a two-year contract extension to keep him employed through 1983.

Crowley was frustrated, however, when he found himself back in his familiar pinch-hitting role, struggling for at-bats again in 1981. ”I’m coming off one of the most productive years on the club,” he said. “What’s wrong with letting me prove I can do it again?”23

“Terry’s got an awful lot of value as a pinch-hitter,” manager Earl Weaver said. “You can’t be too good at your job, and that’s his job. I think the object of everyone to help the club is to do what he does best, and one of the things Crowley does as well as anyone is pinch-hit. It isn’t that I’m disappointed with what he can do as a DH, but he’s excellent as a pinch-hitter.”24

Though Crowley came off the bench to hit two home runs in 1982, including a walk-off grand slam against the Royals, his average as a pinch-hitter dipped to .194 that season. Nevertheless, when the Orioles had to choose between Crowley and his friend Jim Dwyer for the final roster spot coming out of spring training in 1983, a story in a Baltimore newspaper was headlined DWYER SET TO GO. Crowley hit .357 that spring, so it was a surprise when the Orioles decided to release him instead. Baltimore General Manager Hank Peters called it “one of the toughest things I’ve ever had to do in this job”.25

Crowley was about to accept an offer to become the Orioles’ minor-league hitting instructor when the Montreal Expos called in late May. But he got only 44 at-bats all year, batted .182, and decided to call it a career. “I had some phone calls to go play, but my back was hurting pretty good at that time, and I thought it best and wisest to get into my coaching career, to try to become a hitting coach.”26

Crowley spent 1984 as the Orioles’ minor-league hitting instructor, then served on Baltimore’s major-league staff as the hitting coach from 1985 through 1988. In 1986, the Orioles drafted his son Terry Jr., a shortstop, in the eighth round. (Crowley’s younger son, Jimmy, was the Red Sox’s 11th-round pick in 1991) When the Orioles lost 107 games in 1988, all the coaches lost their jobs except the popular Elrod Hendricks. Crowley spent 1989 and 1990 working with Boston Red Sox minor leaguers.

He returned to the majors in 1991, becoming the hitting coach for a Minnesota Twins club that surprised nearly everybody by going from “worst to first” to win the World Series. He remained there through 1998, and explained part of his approach to instructing hitters this way: “If they’re good enough to get here to this level, then they must be doing something right. Unless there’s something I see that absolutely prevents them from having success at this level, I’ll basically leave them alone and try to help them improve their own style, to improve on their own.”27

“You know, it’s like a signature,” he continued. “If you can read it, it’s not too bad, but when it gets to the point that I can’t read it, I’ve got to straighten their swing out a little bit.”28

“If there’s a hitter who’s capable of hitting home runs, hitting with power and driving in runs, that’s what I’ll strive for. I’d hate to see a player just being a singles hitter if he could hit with some power.”29

The way Crowley fought to get at-bats during his playing career helps him communicate to his pupils the importance of making the most of every plate appearance. “Sometimes I go into detail with them to try to make them understand you can develop good habits just as well as you can fall into bad habits. Once you get in the groove and start hitting the ball good, you have to work as hard as you can to stay there, because in the blink of an eye you can fall into a slump or start to struggle.”30

Crowley left Minnesota after eight seasons and returned to Baltimore in 1999 for a second stint as the Orioles hitting coach that lasted a dozen years. He outlasted six managers and was invited back for a 25th season on a major league staff in 2011, but opted for the reduced travel of a newly created hitting evaluator position instead. Crowley was to evaluate Oriole major and minor leaguers, possible trade and free agent targets and potential draftees.

“I think I was lucky. I had a pretty good swing, and I had some ability and I made the best of it. I would like to have played more. That’s the only regret I have. I wish I could’ve played more, but I turned out to be a pretty good pinch-hitter, so I guess everything worked out.”31

Notes

Miguel Angel Cuellar Santana was born on May 8, 1937, in Santa Clara, Las Villas province, Cuba. His family, including four boys, worked in the sugar mills. Cuellar did not want to follow in his family’s footsteps and enlisted in the Cuban army for 70 pesos a month because he knew he could play baseball on Saturdays and Sundays. He pitched for Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista’s army team in the winter of 1954-55. He hurled a no-hitter that season and was heavily followed by Cuban and American scouts.

After his discharge, the thin (6 feet, 165 pounds) left-hander pitched in the summer of 1956 with a Nicaragua Independent League team, finishing 10-3 with a 2.95 earned-run average. His manager, Emilio Cabrera, immediately brought him to his Almendares team in Cuba for the 1956-57 Winter League season. He pitched in relief (1-1, 0.61 ERA). Before the 1957 season, he was signed by the Cincinnati Reds, who optioned him to their Cuban Sugar Kings (often called the Havana Sugar Kings) affiliate in the International League. He impressed Sugar Kings manager Nap Reyes, who said, “I have coached a lot of pitchers, here in Cuba and in the US, but none so quick to learn as this boy. I have put him in the toughest spots in relief to test him out. He has a good curve but he doesn’t have to vary much. He makes the left-handed batters look pretty bad when he does.”2

Cuellar made a sensational pro debut with Havana in 1957 against Montreal, striking out seven men in a row in 2? innings of no-hit relief. He led the league with a 2.44 earned-run average and posted an 8-7 record in 44 games, 16 of them starts. After another winter with Almendares (4-5 with a 3.03 ERA), he returned to Havana in 1958 and pitched 220 innings, with a 13-12 record and a fine 2.77 ERA. That winter he pitched for again for Almendares, which won the Caribbean Series title. Cuellar was 5-7 with a 3.79 ERA.

In 1959 Cuellar began the season with the Reds but was ineffective in two relief appearances: four innings, seven earned runs on seven hits, for a 15.75 ERA. He was returned to Havana, and did not see the big leagues again for five years.

He found the International League much more to his liking, and he hurled 212 innings, finishing with a 10-11 record but a 2.80 ERA. The Sugar Kings wound up the regular season in third place but upset Columbus and Richmond to win the International League championship, and then captured the Junior World Series title by defeating the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association in seven games. (The decisive seventh game was decided in the bottom of the ninth inning.)

The Junior World Series was notable for more than baseball. In Cuba, Batista had just been overthrown by Fidel Castro’s forces, and the games in Havana were played in a fortress-like atmosphere. Because of winter-like weather in Minneapolis, the last five games were all played at Havana’s Gran Stadium. Nearly 3,000 soldiers were at the stadium for the seventh and deciding game, many lining the field and others stationing themselves in the dugouts, their rifles and bayonets clearly evident. “Young people not more than 14 or 15 years old were in the dugout with us, waving their guns around like toys,” recalled Millers pitcher Ted Bowsfield. “Every once in a while, we could hear shots being fired outside the stadium, and we never knew what was going on.”3 Millers manager Gene Mauch reported that the soldiers were not above trying to intimidate the Minneapolis players. “Our players were truly fearful of what might happen if we won,” said Mauch. “But we still tried our hardest, figuring we’d take our chances.”4 Cuellar started Game Two and pitched 7? innings, giving up four earned runs in a no-decision. He pitched in relief in the next two games, picking up a win in Game Four, before getting knocked out early in a Game Six loss. He did not pitch in the final, won 3-2 by Sugar Kings.

From 1960 through 1963, Cuellar bounced around the minor leagues and the Mexican League, playing for six different teams with not a lot of success. After Castro began tightening travel into and out of Cuba, Cuellar chose to play winter ball in Venezuela or Nicaragua rather than return to his native land. By 1964, his contract had been passed from Cincinnati to Detroit to Cleveland to St. Louis, but the 27-year-old seemed no closer to a return to the major leagues.

After five consecutive seasons with under-.500 won-lost records in the high minors, Cuellar turned things around in 1964. Ruben Gomez, a winter league teammate, persuaded him to start throwing a screwball, the pitch that changed Cuellar’s life. He practiced the pitch all winter and spring, and during the 1964 season he threw it 30 percent of the time. For Triple-A Jacksonville, Cuellar logged a 6-1 record and a 1.78 ERA into mid-June. The St. Louis Cardinals called him up to the majors on June 15, and he got into 32 games the rest of the season, starting seven. The August 26 game was special for Mike. When hitless Gene Freese popped weakly to shortstop for the last out, Cuellar finally had his revenge after 5½ seasons. “I hit a pinch-hit home run with the bases loaded off Cuellar in 1959 and that blow sent him back to the minors for five years,” Freese said. “He’s a lot faster and has come with quite a scroogie.”5 Cuellar finished 5-5, but did not see action in the 1964 World Series, in which the Cardinals defeated the New York Yankees.

Cuellar went to Puerto Rico to pitch that winter, and he finished 12-4 with a 2.06 ERA for Arecibo. At one point he had a stretch of 27 scoreless innings and threw four shutouts. He went to spring training hoping to land in the Cardinals’ rotation but instead was optioned back to Jacksonville after Opening Day. After dominating the International League for 10 weeks (9-1 with a 2.51 ERA), he was traded in an all-pitchers deal on June 15 to the Houston Astros with Ron Taylor for Hal Woodeshick and Chuck Taylor. He spent the rest of 1965 with the Astros, finishing 1-4 with a 3.54 ERA in 25 appearances.

At nearly 29 years old, Mike had finally reached the major leagues to stay. By 1966, he was using his screwball between 50 and 60 percent of the time, and had added a curveball that made his fastball appear even sharper. Astros pitching coach Gordon Jones taught Cuellar the curve. Cuellar had been releasing his curve with almost a slider motion but without the good slider break. Jones showed him how to get rotation on the ball by bending the wrist in toward himself and popping the ball loose with the overhand motion.

On June 25, 1966, Cuellar beat the Cardinals and recorded a team-record 15 strikeouts, running his record to 6-0 with a 1.73 ERA. He ended the season by throwing six complete games in a row, including his first major-league shutout, a 2-0 victory over the Pirates on August 29. He finished 12-10 with a 2.22 ERA that was second best in the National League behind Sandy Koufax.

The next season, 1967, Cuellar did it all again, this time with a bit better luck in run support. His ERA rose to 3.03 but he finished 16-11 in 246 innings, including 16 complete games. He pitched two shutout innings in the All-Star Game in Anaheim. After the season the Astros told Cuellar he couldn’t pitch winter ball, which did not sit well with the star. At the time many major-league players played in the winter, and to the Latin players in particular it was an important part of their culture. Cuellar blamed his arm trouble the following season to his not playing in the winter. In 1968 he was just 8-11 (for a last place team), though with a fine 2.74 ERA in 170 innings.

Apparently overreacting to his won-loss record, the Astros traded Cuellar and minor leaguers Elijah Johnson and Enzo Hernandez after the season to the Orioles for infielder-outfielder Curt Blefary and minor leaguer John Mason. Cuellar was having some off-field difficulties, mainly a struggling marriage and related financial problems. Baltimore General Manager Harry Dalton’s scouts told him that his off-field issues could be rectified. Scout Jim Russo raved about Cuellar and recommended his acquisition. When Cuellar came to Baltimore the Orioles helped him get rid of his debt, and Cuellar was soon divorced and remarried. He became immensely popular with his Baltimore teammates. “Cuellar was a wonderful person,” remembered manager Earl Weaver.6

With the Orioles, the combination of his great left arm and the tremendous Orioles team made Cuellar one of baseball’s biggest pitching stars. In his first year with Baltimore, 1969, he put up a 23-11 record with a 2.38 ERA, and he shared the Cy Young Award with Denny McLain of the Tigers. Cuellar set Orioles pitching records for wins and innings pitched (291) and tied the club mark with 18 complete games. He threw five shutouts. In the first game of the American League Championship Series against the Minnesota Twins, Cuellar allowed two earned runs in eight innings in a game the Orioles won in the 12th. In the World Series, he outdueled the New York Mets’ Tom Seaver to win the first game, 4-1, but his seven-inning, one-run performance was not enough in Game Four, which the Mets won in the 10th. The Mets won the Series in five games but Cuellar had a stellar 1.13 ERA in 16 innings.

Cuellar’s Baltimore teammates called him Crazy Horse for his weird sense of humor and especially his strange superstitions. Since he had pitched well in 1969 spring training with coach Jim Frey warming him up, only Frey was permitted to catch the Cuban southpaw’s pregame tosses the rest of the year. Elrod Hendricks—nobody else—must stand at the plate for part of that period, simulating a batter. Cuellar would not finish warming up until the opposing starter had finished. He never stepped on the foul line when he took the field; he always picked the ball up from the ground near the mound himself. He would not warm up before an inning with a reserve while his catcher got his gear on—Cuellar waited for the catcher to get behind the plate. As he kept winning, the importance of ritual only grew.

Cuellar’s ERA rose to 3.48 in 1970, but his run support and his remarkable durability allowed him to finish 24-8, with 297? innings pitched and 21 complete games. He typically started slowly, and posted a record of 8-5 with a 4.34 ERA through the end of June. As the weather heated up Cuellar caught fire; in the final three months he went 16-3 with a 2.78 ERA, completing 14 of his 21 starts. Cuellar was joined in a great rotation by Dave McNally (24-9) and Jim Palmer (20-10) The trio made 119 starts and pitched 899 innings. Their 68 victories is the most by three teammates since the 1944 Tigers (also 68).

Paul Blair later said, “With Cuellar, McNally, and Palmer, you could almost ring up 60 wins for us when the season started because each of them was going to win 20. And with Cuellar and McNally, you never knew they were winning 10-0 or losing 0-10. They were the same guys. They were two really great left-handers, and the reason they were so great was they didn’t have the talent Palmer had. They didn’t have the 95-mile-per-hour fastball Palmer had. They had to learn to pitch, know the hitters, hit corners, and they did it. And they never complained. Those kind of guys, you just die for. You break your neck to go out there and win for them.”7

In the first game of the 1970 ALCS against the Minnesota Twins, the Orioles gave Cuellar a 9-1 lead (in part, based on a grand slam he himself hit off Jim Perry in the fourth) but he failed to finish the fifth, though he left the game with a 9-6 lead. Reliever Dick Hall shut down the Twins the rest of the way, beginning an Orioles sweep. Cuellar next got the ball in Game Two of the World Series but could not survive the third inning in a game the Orioles pulled out with a five-run fifth inning over Cincinnati. In Game Five he allowed three hits and three runs in the first before shutting the door, going all the way in a 9-3 victory for his only World Series title, the second for Baltimore.

Cuellar again won 20 games in 1971, finishing 20-9 with a 3.08 ERA. This time he, McNally, and Palmer were joined by a fourth 20-game-winner, Pat Dobson. The Orioles thus became the second team to have four 20-game winners, joining the 1920 Chicago White Sox. Cuellar was 13-1 with a 2.88 ERA at the All-Star break, and pitched two shutout innings for the American League in the All-Star Game. It was the third of his four All-Star selections. Cuellar cooled off in the second half of the season, but the Orioles easily won their third consecutive division title. He defeated Oakland’s Catfish Hunter with a 5-1 six-hitter as the Orioles swept the ALCS. He lost his two World Series starts, against the Pirates, allowing all five runs in a 5-1 loss in Game Three and then falling short in a tough 2-1 loss to Steve Blass in Game Seven. For his career, Cuellar was 2-2 with a 2.61 ERA in five World Series starts.

In 1972, the Orioles’ run of championships ended, though it was mostly the offense that fell off. Cuellar pitched 257 innings with a 2.57 ERA, but slipped to 18-12. After a slow start, he finished 16-8 after June 1, with 15 complete games, including six straight at one point. The Orioles finished third in a tight American League East.

During a May 26 game with the Indians, Cuellar’s superstitious behavior was on full display. After Cleveland left fielder Alex Johnson caught Boog Powell’s fly ball to end the third inning, he slowly jogged the ball back to the infield. Timing his pace with Cuellar’s approach to the mound, Johnson tossed the ball to the pitcher, but Cuellar ducked just in time, and the ball rolled free. Helpfully, the batboy retrieved the ball and threw it to Cuellar. Once more he dodged the ball, which dribbled toward first baseman Boog Powell. Momentarily forgetting his teammate’s habits, Powell threw it squarely at Cuellar, who had no choice but to catch the ball in self-defense. Disgusted but undeterred, Cuellar tossed it to the umpire and asked for a new ball. The umpire obliged, and Cuellar again sidestepped the ball which trickled passed him and stopped right at the feet of his second baseman Bobby Grich. At long last Grich rolled the ball to the mound, and Cuellar picked it up, satisfied now that no evil spirits had invaded his place of business.

Cuellar started slowly again in 1973 (4-9 with a 4.00 ERA through July 7) before again turning it on in the second half of the season (14-4, 2.64 the rest of the way). He was now 36 years old and there were concerns that perhaps his days as an elite pitcher were behind him. Not yet, as manager Earl Weaver again got 267 innings out of Cuellar, including 17 complete games, en route to his 18-13 final record as the Orioles returned to the postseason. In Game Three of the ALCS against the Oakland A’s, Cuellar hooked up with Ken Holtzman in a great pitching duel. Through 10 innings, Cuellar allowed just three hits and one run, but he gave up a game-winning home run to Bert Campaneris in the bottom of the 11th inning to lose 2-1. Holtzman pitched all 11 innings for Oakland and tossed a three-hitter. The Athletics prevailed in the series, 3 games to 2, and went on to win the World Series over the Mets.

Cuellar returned to the 20-game circle in 1974, finishing 22-10 with a 3.11 ERA, 20 complete games, and five shutouts. He was now 37 but showed no signs of aging. His performance earned him the Game One assignment against the A’s in the ALCS, and he pitched eight strong innings to earn the 6-3 victory. His next start, in the fourth game, was not nearly as successful—he had to be relieved in the fifth after allowing just one hit but walking nine. After walking in a run, the first run of the game, he was relieved, and the Athletics won the game, 2-1, to capture the series. It was Cuellar’s 12th and final postseason start, finishing his log at 4-4 with a 2.85 ERA.

Cuellar finally began showing his age in 1975, dropping to 14-12 with a 3.66 ERA, his highest since 1964. He still threw 17 complete games and had five shutouts but did not have the consistency that had been his hallmark during his Oriole years. After seven years with the Orioles he had 139 victories, just shy of a 20-win average. The following season, the 39-year-old finally imploded, finishing just 4-13 with an ERA of 4.96. Earl Weaver was used to Cuellar’s slow starts, in a season and also in a game, and he was patient with the pitcher long after others thought he needed to make a change. He finally pulled his beloved left-hander at the beginning of August and put him in the bullpen.8

Cuellar was released in December 1976 and was picked up a month later by the Angels, whose general manager was old friend Harry Dalton. But after a terrible spring training and two forgettable regular-season appearances (3⅓ innings, seven runs), he was released by the Angels. Cuellar’s major-league career had come to an end, just shy of his 40th birthday. He continued to pitch in the Mexican League and in winter ball, before finally calling it quits after the 1982-83 winter league season. He was a few months short of his 45th birthday.

Cuellar remained occasionally active in baseball, serving as a pitching coach in the independent leagues and for many years in Puerto Rico. He was an instructor with the Orioles during the last years of his life, and showed up often for team functions and reunions.

Cuellar was a healthy man for many years when he was suddenly diagnosed with stomach cancer in early 2010. He died on April 2 in Orlando, Florida, where he had lived for several years. He was survived by his wife, Myriam; his daughter, Lydia; and his son, Mike, Jr. The latter pitched for five years in the Toronto Blue Jays farm system but did not rise past Double-A ball.

“He was like an artist,” Palmer said after Cuellar died. “He could paint a different picture every time he went out there. He could finesse you. He could curveball you to death or screwball you to death. From 1969 to ’74, he was probably the best left-hander in the American League.”

An updated version of this biography appeared in “Cuban Baseball Legends: Baseball’s Alternative Universe” (SABR, 2016), edited by Peter C. Bjarkman and Bill Nowlin. It also appeared in “Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers: The 1970 Baltimore Orioles” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), edited by Mark Armour and Malcolm Allen.

Sources

Weaver, Earl, and Berry Stainback. It’s What You Learn After You Know It All That Counts. New York: Doubleday, 1982.

Eisenberg, John. From 33rd Street to Camden Yards—An Oral History of the Baltimore Orioles. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2001.

Jorge Colon Delgado and Alberto “Tito” Rondon of SABR’s Latino Baseball Committee

Clippings from Mike Cuellar’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library

Thornley, Stew. “Minneapolis Millers vs. Havana Sugar Kings.” The National Pastime (Society for American Baseball Research), No. 12, 1992.

Notes

Unfortunately, Dalrymple was sidelined while the Orioles won their only World Series in that run. In June 1970, he suffered a broken ankle in a home-plate collision with Mike Epstein of the Washington Senators. Dalrymple watched the Series from the bullpen and was on hand for the victory celebration. “Yeah, I wear the ring. I really felt like I was a part of that team,” he said in 2008.

The memorable name of Dalrymple is Scottish – the clan’s motto is “Be firm.” Clay’s father, Lyndon, grew up in the Dakotas. He met his wife, Elsie Mae Henderson, in Alberta, Canada. The couple wanted to live in a warmer place, though, and so they moved to Chico, California, in the Sacramento Valley. During the Depression, Lyndon was an iceman. He then recapped tires for a service station in Chico and also drove a truck for Butte County. He and Elsie had four children: sons Leslie and Melvin, daughter Lois, and finally Clayton, who was born on December 3, 1936. Clay and his father shared the middle name Errol.

Chico, 90 miles north of Sacramento, is today a city of about 85-90,000. In 1940, though, it was just a town of 16,970 – with only two or three thousand in the center, as Dalrymple recalled. In author Debra Moon’s words, “Chico was a fun place. It had an ideal location for raising food and families.”2 Baseball was also popular. “The Chico Colts [semipro] baseball team drew a big crowd every Sunday afternoon for years. . . . They had some good players. Gordon Slade, a third baseman, later played with the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds [in the 1930s].”3

Lyndon Dalrymple’s athletic efforts were limited to some wrestling in his youth, but his sons all became part of the local baseball scene. The oldest brother, Les (1924-1999) played for and later managed the Colts. Les, also a catcher, was in the minor leagues in 1947 and 1948. He hit .309 and .278 for the Wenatchee Chiefs of the Western International League (Class B).

Another local star was the second Dalrymple brother, Mel (1928-2015).4 Nicknamed Bush, the lefty pitcher played six years with the Colts after graduating from Chico High in 1946. Some of his pitching records at Chico State College, now known as Cal State-Chico, remain unbroken. Most are from 1949, when he threw 11 complete-game wins in 11 starts. In 1950, Bush posted a 4-6, 5.97 record for Salt Lake City of the Pioneer League (Class C). A teammate and friend on the Bees was Hawaiian Wally Yonamine, who went on to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. Later, as head baseball coach at both Chico and Pleasant Valley High Schools, Bush instructed future big-league pitchers Nelson Briles and Pat Clements.

Dalrymple recalled that when he was a boy, “Chico was just forming Little Leagues at the time. The problem was getting enough kids together for teams in a small town – there were just enough for one.” He then followed the same pattern as his brothers: Chico High, the Colts, and Chico State. In his own view, he “was not way out in front of the other kids. My ability grew from year to year on a steady scale. I wasn’t one of those players who could have made it to the majors out of high school.”

Dalrymple’s first year with the Colts was 1954, his senior year in high school. It was then that Les stepped aside for his 17-year-old brother and became manager. Clay remained with the Colts during his first two years at Chico State (1955-56). Back in the mid-1950s, “we didn’t have the scale or the coaching that they do now.” Yet in something of a surprise for this good-quality program, it took nearly 50 years for the Wildcats to produce another big-leaguer. Drew Carpenter arrived in 2008, followed by Dale Thayer in 2009.

Dalrymple had good size (6’0” and 200 pounds) and also played football. “It was always interesting, and I enjoyed it. But baseball was far and away my favorite.” Otherwise, his most notable athletic endeavor was boxing. “I was a physical education major [at Chico State], and I had to give it a try as part of the curriculum. I really found how different it was to be one person, not part of a team. The day of a fight, you can really feel the butterflies piling up, a knot in your stomach. You don’t know, stepping into the ring, what you’ll get from your opponent.” In 1969, he joked, “My feet couldn’t stand to see my face take a beating.” However, with an 11-1 record, he became heavyweight champion of the Far Western Conference. “Seriously, it was a good character and confidence builder.”5

In August 1956, Dalrymple made his pro baseball debut with the Sacramento Solons of the Pacific Coast League. At that time, the Solons were not affiliated with any major-league club. “Don Masterson was a bird dog for Sacramento. He got into pro ball [1949-56, with two years away in Korea] but had an accident. A ball got through his catcher’s mask and broke some bones, and then he got a settlement. He told Sacramento I was a good prospect. But they couldn’t approach me, they would have gotten fined. So I called the general manager, Dave Kelley.”

The 19-year-old hit .286 with no homers and two RBIs in five games. In his first at-bat as a pro, he singled off future Red Sox hurler Jerry Casale, a 19-game winner with the San Francisco Seals that year. “I was scared and nervous. . . . I had the lightest bat I could find, but it felt like a two-by-four. . . . I could have had a double but stopped at first.”6 Not long after, he singled as a pinch-hitter for future big-league manager John McNamara. From the beginning, Dalrymple established a work ethic. “I had to do a lot of things for the organization to have them be pleased with my progress,” he said.

In 1957, Dalrymple was assigned to the Amarillo Gold Sox, a Class A team that had a working agreement with Sacramento. The left-handed dead pull hitter made the Western League’s All-Star team, hitting 17 homers and driving in 81 runs with a .298 average. He said of the city, “I like it fine. These are the friendliest people I’ve ever met.” A day after the season ended, on September 16, Dalrymple married the one he found friendliest of all, Celia Faye Creamer.7

During the offseason, Dalrymple went back to Chico State for more classes. (Teaching and coaching was his backup plan, though as it turned out, he never finished up his degree.) Meanwhile, the Solons reportedly turned down an offer of $50,000 for their prospect – which the financially strapped club could have used. In August 1958, The Sporting News noted, “Although Dalrymple has been hitting only around .190, General Manager Dave Kelley says he wouldn’t take $90,000 for him now.”8 He wound up hitting .191, with 5 homers and 21 RBIs.

After that PCL season, Dalrymple went to Venezuela, where he played with the Pampero Licoreros. As the team’s name suggests, the principal sponsor was a local distiller, mainly of rum. It’s no longer a mass-market presence, but Ron Pampero remains a high-end niche brand today. Its logo – a llanero, or Venezuelan cowboy – is a national symbol, evoking images of the rural plains. On these pampas one also finds sugar cane plantations . . . and, at least in the past, baseball.

The Pampero club actually played in the capital city, Caracas. The Dalrymples – Clay, Celia, and baby daughter Dawn – shared a house in the American section with pitcher Joe Stanka and his family. In 44 games for the Licoreros, Dalrymple batted .276, with 2 homers and 16 RBIs. He remembered getting a cut forehead from a piece of glass that came from the stands as he strapped on his shin guards. Aside from that, his lasting image was of the stadium vendors. “They would go around with a Thermos and these little cups. I thought it was whisky, but I found out it was a strong shot of coffee.

“It was quite an interesting time. The people were very warm and friendly, and I enjoyed
it there. But at the end of the Venezuelan season, Cuba still had another month to play,” he continues. “So I went there. I was recommended by Chuck Churn. It was right after Castro had taken over. The military wanted to show how big and tough they were. Once I was ushered off a plane by a guy with a rifle and bullets hanging off his chest. It kind of frightened my wife, but I was never in any danger, though.”

Dalrymple went 7 for 62 (.113) with no homers and 3 RBIs for Habana as a backup to John Romano.9 “That was the end of my winter ball experience. It was mainly family reasons, but I found other jobs. I drove a cement truck one year, and I was also with the Southern Pacific Railroad [as a rodman].”

Before the 1959 season rolled around Stateside, at least one veteran baseball man saw beyond Dalrymple’s .191-5-21 batting line at Sacramento the previous year. That was Red Davis, then manager of a PCL opponent, the Phoenix Giants. In an article that focused on Vada Pinson and Claude Osteen, Davis remarked, “There’s a young catcher who got little recognition but I sure like him. He is Clay Dalrymple. He’s a left-handed hitter with good power and is a good receiver. Don’t let his .191 average fool you. I had him on my All-Star club and he hit a homer with two on and caught the last four innings.”10

The Milwaukee Braves, who had a working agreement with the Solons, must have spotted the prospect too, for they invited Dalrymple to spring training in 1959. He returned to Sacramento, though, improving to .230-12-48 with the bat. After the season ended, The Sporting News observed, “The work horse of the mask-and-mitt men in the PCL, he appeared in more games (121) than any other receiver in the circuit and was the leader in flagging would-be base stealers, throwing out 33.”11

That article followed the minor-league draft on November 30, in which the Phillies selected Dalrymple on the recommendation of Dave Kelley, who had become their Far West supervisor of scouts. Dalrymple later told author Robert Gordon, “At the time, [Milwaukee] had a great team and a great catcher, Del Crandall. I didn’t see much opportunity for myself with the Braves with Crandall there. I was happy when the Phils drafted me. . . . I knew I had a chance to play.”12

The Sporting News called Dalrymple and fellow draftee Bobby Malkmus “both strictly gambles.”13 Even so, both made the Phillies team in spring training 1960. As the season opened, veteran catcher Valmy Thomas was sent down to Indianapolis. Scrappy but light-hitting Jim Coker caught every inning of the first 10 games before Dalrymple made his debut in the nightcap of a doubleheader on April 24. Don Newcombe, then with Cincinnati, struck him out looking – but in his next at-bat, Dalrymple doubled off Newk.

Dalrymple initially made his mark as a pinch-hitter, going 12-for-42 in that role in 1960. One of those hits came in Juan Marichal’s debut on July 19 – and it was the only one the high-kicking Dominican allowed that day. Dalrymple was “assigned to veteran receiver Cal Neeman to learn how to improve his defensive skills.”14 Neeman came over in the Tony Taylor trade on May 12; Dalrymple thought that Coker “was always a little cool to me ’cause he thought I was out for his job.”15

The receiver already possessed a vital knack. “Impressed with his pitch-calling, Phillies ace Robin Roberts went to Mauch and asked that the young backstop catch him on a regular basis, and, by August, Dalrymple was the team’s regular catcher as well.”16 He finished the year with .272-4-21 totals in 158 at-bats.

In spring training 1961, Dalrymple suffered a case of the “yips” – he had problems even throwing the ball back to the pitcher. “I had a bad arm,” Dalrymple said. “And then it became a mental thing. The exact same thing Steve Sax went through with the Dodgers.”17 He also had an ice-cold first half at bat. However, while the team endured a 23-game losing streak from late July through most of August, the catcher came around in the second half and lifted his average to .220. Gene Mauch observed, “Dalrymple has sure improved . . . from midseason on he led the club in hitting and he gained confidence in his ability to handle a game.”18

Dalrymple (already balding in his mid-20s) had his best hitting year in 1962: .276, 11 homers and 54 RBIs, with 70 walks as well. The next year, after a winter of diet and exercise, he posted career high in games (142) and at-bats (452).19 In 1964, though, Mauch decided to go with a platoon behind the plate. “Although the Phils’ veteran catcher was not too happy about splitting time with the recently acquired [Gus] Triandos, he understood the benefit of platooning. ‘Having Gus here ought to mean a better year for the club and for me,’ he admitted. ‘This year we should get a solid .270 out of both catchers.’”20

However, Dalrymple went into a funk with the bat and never recovered. “For some reason, I developed a hitch in my swing – just one of those mechanical things. We didn’t have a hitting coach. We didn’t have videos either. I never fixed the problems the rest of my career. I just stopped hitting.”21

Nonetheless, he remained a key contributor to the club that looked certain to win the NL pennant. As ever, he handled pitchers capably. He also sought out talented but divisive star Richie Allen after a contentious team meeting, telling Allen “that he was a smart guy and that he had some great leadership qualities. I guess he didn’t appreciate all the talent he had at that time, though.”22 Dalrymple noted in 2008, “Richie Allen and I were very close. I roomed with Pat Corrales and they were close – all three of us were.” There weren’t many African-Americans in Chico when Dalrymple was growing up, and he was shocked to see the treatment they received in the Deep South.

Many writers have covered the Phillies’ notorious “September Swoon” in depth. Author William Kashatus devoted an entire book to it in 2005, and in 1989, veteran Philadelphia journalist Stan Hochman came out with a series on the players. Dalrymple was one of their featured interviewees. He commented on the many ingredients that went into the collapse:

• The most debatable factor, of course, was how Gene Mauch handled his pitchers down the stretch. Dalrymple told Kashatus that the “bullheaded” and “panicking” skipper gave up on Ray Culp and Art Mahaffey, viewing the former as overweight and both as lacking guts.23

• Hochman heard that when Frank Thomas suffered a broken thumb, the team went from aggressive to defensive.24

• Dalrymple himself suffered a strained knee in September as he dived back into first base on a pickoff attempt in September. “I hit the ground real hard. They were going to drain some water off my knee, but there was a skinned-up mark there and we didn’t want to put the needle in that.”

• Ultimately, though, he said to Hochman, “Not one thing is at fault. Not one single thing can you put your finger on. Lose that many in a row with that big a lead, everyone had their finger in the pie.”25

Dalrymple recognized Mauch’s special acumen. “Gene manipulated his players on the field better than anyone I ever played for,” he said after the manager’s passing in 2005.26 However, in 1968, some months after
Mauch was fired, Dalrymple also remarked on the flip side of this habit. “Gene is a great manager but he will not let the players ‘play the game.’ . . . He wants to play the game from the dugout.”27

Only someone as strong-minded as pitcher Jim Bunning could break free of Mauch’s micromanaging. In his book, the future U.S. senator observed, “Clay had been trained to look for Mauch’s every sign. As soon as Clay put down the sign, I changed it. . . . and Dalrymple finally said, ‘I’m not even going to look anymore.’ Clay found out Mauch was not going to object. . . . We played much faster games that way. It was so much easier.”28 However, it was Gus Triandos, not Dalrymple, who caught Bunning’s perfect game on June 21, 1964.

On a personal level, a truly heartwarming story from the ’64 season came as Dalrymple befriended a little blind girl who attended games at Connie Mack Stadium. The catcher took his “biggest fan” onto the field after one game and escorted her from home plate around all the bases for her to feel them. “She was just so overjoyed,” he told Kashatus, “It was probably the biggest ovation I ever received.” Dalrymple was still nearly overcome with emotion nearly forty years later. “Fans like that little girl made my entire career worthwhile.”29

Dalrymple also developed his personal touch in Philadelphia as an after-dinner speaker. “I would get $35 for appearing at Little League banquets. You get a feeling for yourself – it’s good for your personality. Stabilization.” He was the guest of many community groups over the years.

From 1965 through 1968, Dalrymple remained in a platoon with various other catchers, none of whom hit well. After Triandos was sold to Houston in June ’65, Dalrymple’s partner was Pat Corrales. Bob Uecker, Gene Oliver, and the even lighter-hitting Mike Ryan followed. Dalrymple’s defense remained sharp – he set a league record, since broken, with 99 consecutive errorless games (and 628 chances) during 1966 and 1967. Yet the notoriously harsh Philly boo-birds piled on him.

“The pressure of playing before fans who weren’t appreciative was too much,” Dalrymple observed in 1969.30 A few decades later, he added, “The fans were brutal to me toward the end. Eventually I told the Phils, ‘You should trade me. I’m not doing you any good here.’”31

Dalrymple’s wish was granted – he went to the Orioles for outfielder Ron Stone on January 20, 1969. Earl Weaver – “a good manager and a good man, though his personality left something to be desired” – had taken over at Baltimore in mid-1968. He always liked to have a deep bench with a lot of capable role players. Although he already had a catching platoon with righty Andy Etchebarren and lefty swinger Elrod Hendricks, Earl typically carried three catchers on his roster. Curt Blefary had been traded and Larry Haney had been lost to Seattle in the expansion draft. Weaver also aimed to have three righty and three lefty bats available. Dalrymple’s experience and defensive skill added maneuverability and insurance against injury.

At that stage in his career, Ellie Hendricks was still viewed as more of a hitter and a “project” behind the plate.32 As Hendricks worked to smooth off his rough edges as a catcher, Dalrymple did not mentor him. “I did not feel it was my duty. He was the number-one catcher. Weaver wanted to write his name in the lineup. It would piss Earl off when pitchers would ask for me.” Still, Dalrymple and Hendricks, a good-humored Virgin Islander, got along well (it was almost impossible to dislike Ellie), exchanging locker-room banter.

“Etchebarren and I were pretty close,” Dalrymple observed. “He had a history of breaking a hand [broken right metacarpals in both 1966 and ’68]. You should have seen the mitt he had, it was tiny and thin with a little pocket – such a miserable piece of equipment. I told him, ‘That thing must date back to 1912.’ It was his right hand that would get broken because he’d have to reach in there with it. I got him to switch, and no more broken hands.”

As a backstop, Dalrymple upheld the classic fundamentals. “The mitts you see today, that are more like a first baseman’s glove – they lead to backhanding, rather than shifting your weight and receiving the ball. Elrod was a snagging-type catcher.” The cost is framing pitches and getting borderline ball-and-strike calls. “The mitt I have bronzed today, it was one of the first from Rawlings that had the cross-webbing. I used that for plays at the plate [his bid to carry a fielder’s glove in an enlarged back pocket for this purpose was turned down by the league office later in 196933]. For pitches, I formed a big round pocket, a nice target that the pitcher could see.”

The mental game was a major dimension for the Baltimore pitchers, notably Jim Palmer and Mike Cuéllar. Palmer often battled his catchers, but Dalrymple’s flexible approach avoided this. “I would find out how a pitcher’s mind works. You call a game according to how the pitcher wanted, not how you wanted.”

Playing time was scarce for Dalrymple, though he had a case for more, and he noted that this made it more difficult to stay sharp.34 He played in just 37 games during the regular season in ’69, going .238 with 3 homers and 6 RBIs in 80 at-bats. Dalrymple did not appear in the playoffs against the Twins, but in the World Series, he went 2-for-2 as a pinch-hitter. “You can win a bar bet with that,” he said with a laugh. In Game Three, he singled off Nolan Ryan of the Mets in the ninth inning. Then in Game Four, with Dave Johnson on first and one out in the 10th, he had another single off Tom Seaver. However, the Mets ace got the next two outs, and J.C. Martin’s bunt won it in the bottom of the inning.

In 1989, Dalrymple recalled to Stan Hochman that as the ’69 season began, he said to Andy Etchebarren, “If we were allowed to bet, I’d put every nickel on this ballclub. It was the best team I’d ever, ever seen.”35 He echoed that view in 2008, noting the strength of the pitching. Yet a couple of months after the Amazin’ Mets pulled off their upset, he noted that while the Mets had gathered momentum late, the Orioles were flat. “We played our best earlier. The second half was like a cakewalk. . . . There’s no doubt that the reason was lack of excitement.”36

During the first few months of the 1970 season, Dalrymple’s action was even more limited (.219-1-3 in 32 at-bats in 13 games). On June 27, however, he got one of his infrequent starts, in a Saturday night game at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. “Palmer insisted that I catch him. In the third or fourth inning, I could see he wasn’t on his game – I was nursing him along.” Then in the bottom of the seventh, Frank Howard and Mike Epstein singled. Aurelio Rodríguez followed with a double to left. “It was in the gap, and the relay came from [Paul] Blair to [Mark] Belanger to me. The throw bounced high off the grass, and when I turned around, Epstein’s eyes were barely two feet away from my chest.

“I had put my left foot in front of the plate. I gave him the back edge to slide to. But Epstein, who was a fullback in college football, decided to take me out. My right ankle popped – it was dislocated and broken in two places.

“There was no pain in the ankle at the time – it was really gathering in the knee. The pain was too great for the ankle to register, so it went to the next place, the doctor said.” Dalrymple was taken off the field on a stretcher, yet he never lost consciousness. The great play held a 3-2 lead for the O’s, but Palmer lost it in the eighth inning.

“To show you the camaraderie and the sick humor we had on that team, let me tell you about my friend Merv Rettenmund. Merv’s the kind of guy who would joke, even though he’s been married to the same woman all his life, ‘Why is it that when I come home from a road trip, I always hear the back door slam?’ Well, I was there
in the hospital with my foot so badly deformed that my toes were pointing in different directions. Merv brought in a card that said, ‘Best wishes from your last team.’ But I didn’t get pissed off. . . . I laughed my ass off.”

The cast came off three months later, just before the World Series. “I tried to do a little bit of jogging, but it was really sore and there were adhesions.” Thus Dalrymple remained inactive for the Series. Also, though he was able to rejoice with his teammates, privately he and his wife were facing an ordeal. Celia had been diagnosed with the cancer that would eventually claim her life two years later. Her Christian Scientist beliefs dissuaded her from the minor surgery that might have caught the disease early.

Dalrymple was able to come back in 1971, with hockey as part of his winter rehab.37 “I got the screw out of the ankle and broke the adhesions loose.” Again he played sparingly (23 games, .204-1-6 in 49 at-bats), but he did make the postseason roster. However, he did not appear in either the playoffs or the World Series (though he did provide some scouting reports on Pittsburgh batters). “I was in the on-deck circle one time against the Pirates, but the hitter before me made the last out.” Tongue in cheek, he added, “I think Weaver wanted me to put my 1.000 lifetime [World Series] average in jeopardy!”

Later that October, the Orioles left on one of the periodic American postseason tours to Japan, and Dalrymple was there. Though he did not get into a game, he said, “It was such a fun trip. It was about goodwill – winning and losing was not the most important thing. Etchebarren was my roommate. I learned a few Japanese words from a book that I kept in my back pocket, and I knew the menu. It pissed Etch off that I would out-order him! I was only there about a week, though, when I got word that my wife had to go back into the hospital. I cut it short.”

Not only was Celia ill again, the Orioles sent Clay a message by leaving him off the 40-man roster and assigning him to Triple-A Rochester. So that December, at age 35, he retired after 12 seasons in the majors. Beyond his 55 homers, 327 RBIs, and a .233 average, “I’ve fulfilled my baseball dreams,” he said.38

It’s worth reiterating his most impressive big-league stat, though: 306 runners caught stealing against 320 successful. Even as the third-string catcher with the O’s, each year there he nailed over 50% (25 out of 44 total). Analyst Chuck Rosciam compiled this statistic across the majors from 1956 through 2007. Over more than half a century, Dalrymple ranked second only to Roy Campanella (whose entire career was available for study).39

Dalrymple credited his quick release more than his arm strength. “Every instant, every split second counted. Facing somebody like Maury Wills, I thought, what do I have to do to cut him down? It was always going to be a bang-bang play anyway. Grab the ball and don’t look for the seam – get rid of it. It was almost a sidearm throw sometimes.”

Celia Dalrymple, aged only 34, passed away in November 1972.40 Clay then felt compelled to stay with their three daughters, Dawn, April, and Autumn (whom they had adopted eight years after April was born). In 1989, he said, “What was I to do with the kids? After losing a mother, they were going to lose a father, too? Dallas Green offered me a good job with the Phillies organization just before Celia passed away. I would still be in baseball in some capacity. I think about it occasionally, but I don’t dwell on it.”41 In 2008 he added, “I would probably have started managing in the minors. I could have gone into the front office.”

Dalrymple continued to work for a plumbing wholesaler, a job that originally started in the offseason in Philadelphia in 1964. During 1976 and 1977, he also served as a color man on Orioles TV broadcasts. “Bill O’Donnell and Chuck Thompson [Baltimore’s longtime announcers] got me in. They would alternate between radio and TV, and I would join whoever was on TV. I did it for two years, right at the end of Brooks Robinson’s career. Then when he retired, I interviewed him and found out he was going to take my job! But Brooks is an Orioles legend and a great guy.”

Around 1982, Dalrymple returned home to Chico. “I was offered a job in cable TV [back east], just as it was exploding. But I’m a small-town guy. I missed my brothers. I missed hunting and fishing. Plus, I had gotten remarried and that wasn’t working out.” Back in California, he held a sales job with Allied-Sysco Food Services. He later worked for another food distribution company, S.E. Rykoff, before retiring in 1998.

In 1987, Dalrymple was inducted into Chico State’s Athletic Hall of Fame. Eighteen years later, he was part of the inaugural class of the Chico Professional Baseball Hall of Fame, along with former Cincinnati star pitcher Gary Nolan. (Brothers Bush and Les later joined him.)

Since 2001, Dalrymple has lived in Gold Beach, Oregon. “It’s a more moderate climate – it can get up to 115 or 118 degrees in the Sacramento Valley in the summer. Some of it was taxes too; the politics are so far left in California.” After his second divorce and losing another wife to sudden death, he stated, “I’m very happy now” with his fifth wife, Teresa. Clay and Teri enjoyed gardening, both vegetables and flowers.42

For a couple of years, Dalrymple helped coach the local high school baseball team. “It was very unofficial. I was doing it just because I wanted to. But I found there was too big an age gap, I wasn’t communicating properly. I don’t have the patience any more.” He also noted, “I know things about catching that I can’t teach. You have to experience it.”

One town over to the east, in Agness, Oregon, Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr was still living as of 2017. In April 2008, Dalrymple helped the old Red Sox second baseman celebrate his 90th birthday. “He’s just starting to show his age. Myself, I’m starting to feel that old broken ankle now.” Dalrymple served as a commissioner for the local port district, but that was not his most avid pursuit. “I’m a news junkie,” he said. “I follow politics very closely. I write articles, I’m a conservative. I enjoy writing about politics more than anything.” In 2017, with President Donald Trump in the White House, he continued to express his beliefs with letters to the editor of a local newspaper, the Curry Coastal Pilot.

Dalrymple saw his old champion Oriole teammates – “those of us who are still here” – at a March 2008 autograph show in the Baltimore-Washington Airport. Among the other guests was Reggie Jackson. Once he realized who Dalrymple was, Reggie recalled with pleasure how, as a teenager growing up just north of Philadelphia, he had watched the catcher at Connie Mack Stadium. The show also gave the old banquet speaker a chance to flash his relaxed, self-deprecating sense of humor.

“The line for Frank Robinson was snaking all the way around the place when they announced me. About ten minutes went by. . . . I had nobody. I looked at the guy at my table with all the different kinds and colors of pens and I said, ‘Watch this.’ I stood up and made an announcement. ‘Can I have your attention, please?’ There was silence. I said, ‘I know it’s crowded over here, and you’re gonna have to be patient – but if you bear with me, I just might be able to squeeze you in!’

“The place broke up laughing. Then I got a nice group of people and we talked about baseball.”

Neither a star nor a “character,” Clay Dalrymple still struck a chord with many fans. If you appreciate honest artisans and the game’s subtle nuances, you could be one of them.

Last revised: April 5, 2017

This biography is included in the book “The Year of the Blue Snow: The 1964 Philadelphia Phillies” (SABR, 2013), edited by Mel Marmer and Bill Nowlin. For more information or to purchase the book in e-book or paperback form, click here.

An alternate version of this biography also appeared in SABR’s “Pitching, Defense and Three-Run Homers: The 1970 Baltimore Orioles,” published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2012.

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment to Clay Dalrymple for his memories (phone interviews, May 11 and May 23, 2008). All quotes from him are from these interviews unless otherwise indicated.

Thanks also to Alfonso Tusa (Venezuelan stats).

Sources

www.goldenbaseball.com/Chico

Professional Baseball Players Database V6.0

Daniel Gutiérrez, Efraim Álvarez and Daniel Gutiérrez, Jr., La Enciclopedia del Béisbol en Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela: Editorial Norma, 2007.

Notes

After leaving the military he had a brief stint as a sportswriter in Springfield. After the 1953 season, the St. Louis Browns franchise relocated to Baltimore. Coincidentally, Harry’s parents had moved there earlier, and in early 1954, while in Baltimore to visit his parents, Dalton phoned the Orioles and asked for an interview and was hired by scouting director Jim McLaughlin as a gofer in the Orioles organization. The job paid so little that Dalton had to drive a taxicab at night just to make ends meet.

McLaughlin was so impressed with the young man’s intelligence and work ethic that he moved him over to the baseball operations side to become his assistant. During his stint as farm assistant, Dalton was put in charge of the Birds’ minor-league spring camp in Thomasville, Georgia.

Just prior to the two major-league All-Star Games in 1960, he married Pat Booker on July 9, 1960. The couple had originally met on a blind date. They had three daughters – Kimberly (1962), Cynthia (1965), and Debbie (1967.)

Before the 1961 season, McLaughlin left the Orioles after a dispute with manager Paul Richards over the signing of pitcher Dave McNally. Ironically, Richards left the Orioles late in the 1961 season to accept the general managership of the expansion Houston Colt .45s.

General manager Lee MacPhail replaced McLaughlin with the 32-year-old Dalton, who assumed his new position on February 1, 1961. Dalton, having spent seven years under McLaughlin, had developed a reputation as a man with good baseball sense and a wonderful memory for names and maintained the work ethic which had first secured him the job. The Orioles farm system had been magnificently successful under McLaughlin so Dalton decided in the early days to maintain the status quo. Dalton later credited McLaughlin with training him well. That training led to a smooth transition from assistant to farm director.

Among the things Dalton did in his first year on the job was to name Cal Ripken, Sr., a 25-year-old catcher in the Orioles farm system, as player-manager of the Class D farm club at Leesburg, Florida. Ripken would manage the major-league team a quarter of a century later.

Dalton was very proud of his scouts and gave them a lot of credit for the success of the team’s minor-league system. In the minor-league draft of December 1962 the Orioles lost an astounding 18 players to other organizations. While disappointed in losing so many players, Dalton also noted that the losses were a credit to the scouts who had signed so many talented players. Dalton gave his scouts a lot of leeway in negotiating with potential signees. He asked only that they call him in the cases where a particular signee might require a large bonus.

During his nearly five years in the position of farm director, the Orioles produced such talent as Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Boog Powell, and Dave Johnson.

In the autumn of 1965, new Commissioner of Major League Baseball Spike Eckert brought Oriole president and general manager Lee MacPhail aboard to assist him in baseball matters. MacPhail’s departure led to a reorganization of the Orioles’ front office. Chairman of the Board Jerry Hoffberger assumed MacPhail’s former role as team president with Frank Cashen assuming the executive vice presidency. Cashen was put in charge of improving the club’s public image and increasing ticket sales. While Dalton would be reporting to Cashen, Cashen was given no power in player moves. This power was vested entirely in the 37-year-old Dalton.

Dalton was named to replace MacPhail in his role as director of player personnel. At the time of his appointment, MacPhail had been working on a trade with the Reds to bring outfielder Frank Robinson into the fold. Dalton’s first move was to try and get an additional player out of the Reds.

In what is still considered one of the most lopsided trades in baseball history, Dalton obtained the future Hall of Famer for pitchers Milt Pappas and Jack Baldschun and minor-league outfielder Dick Simpson. The trade was finalized on Dalton’s third day in his new job. Robinson had recently reached his 30th birthday and the Reds were concerned that he was about to enter the downside of his career. As it turned out, nothing could have been further from the truth. All Robinson did in his first year in Baltimore was to win the American League Triple Crown and the league’s MVP award.

Dalton immediately divided the team’s minor-league operation into two separate arms. Lou Gorman was put in charge of player development while Walter Shannon was put in charge of scouting. Shannon had spent 27 years as a scout with the Cardinals during which he was involved in the signings of players such as Bob Gibson and Tim McCarver. Gorman was a minor-league general manager before Dalton hired him.

In 1966, Dalton’s first year at the helm, the Orioles, managed by Hank Bauer, won the American League pennant with a 97-63 record, finishing nine games ahead of the second-place Twins. As they were coming down the stretch, Dalton tried to make a trade for additional pitching but found the price was too high. Teams wanted some Triple A talent and Dalton was unwilling to mortgage the team’s future. It was the first pennant the team had won in their 13 seasons in Baltimore. The Orioles were led by the bat of Robinson, who won the league’s MVP award, and second-year pitcher Jim Palmer who led the team with 15 wins.

During their pennant-winning season, Dalton proposed cutting the major-league schedule from 162 games to 144. He cited three reasons for the proposal. One: fans feel the season is too long; two, players get tired and their performances suffer as a result; three: a shorter season would lengthen the career of most players. Dalton’s plan called for the season to begin in late April and run until mid-September. This, other league executives noted, would not help ease the problem of fatigue as the schedule would require the same number of trips. The proposal was not accepted, and the schedule remained at 162 games.

In 1967 the Orioles fell from the top of the league standings to sixth. This was due in part to a sore shoulder suffered by Jim Palmer that limited him to nine starts and a 3-1 record. The Orioles quickly proved the 1967 season was an anomaly by rising to a second-place finish in 1968.

After Bauer got the team off to a 43-37 record at the All-Star break in 1968, he was fired by Dalton. The firing took place less than two years after Bauer led the team to their first World Series title. He was replaced by Earl Weaver who had been a longtime manager in the Orioles chain. Weaver took the team to a second-place finish in the league.

In his first three full seasons at the helm, 1969-71, Weaver led the team not only to the AL East title but to the World Series as well. This was a great credit to Dalton who as farm director and director of player personnel had led the Orioles in their development of such players as Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, and Boog Powell. In those three seasons, the Orioles won one World Series (in 1970) and lost two. The World Series title led to Dalton being named Major League Executive of the Year for 1970.

In late October 1971, Dalton accepted an offer from Angels owner Gene Autry to leave Baltimore and become executive vice-president and general manager in Anaheim. The five-year deal, at a reported $60,000 per year, included stock options. Oriole President Jerry Hoffberger originally charged Autry with tampering for stealing Dalton away from Baltimore but later stated that he only asked Commissioner Bowie Kuhn to prevent teams from talking directly with personnel from another organization in the future.

One of Dalton’s first moves as Angels general manager was to swap longtime Angels shortstop Jim Fregosi to the Mets for four players, one of whom was future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan. The trade, which took place three months after Dalton assumed his new position, reaffirmed his reputation as a shrewd trader and a keen judge of talent.

Despite the emergence of Ryan as one of the American League’s best starting pitchers, Dalton was unable to duplicate the success he had had in Baltimore. In six seasons at the helm of the Angels he failed to produce a winning season and was never able to rise above fourth place in the AL West. At the end of the six years, Autry decided to replace Dalton with former Padres President Buzzie Bavasi. Autry announced that Dalton would remain with the Angels and left in charge of player trades and free agent negotiations while Bavasi would oversee baseball operations.

On November 21, 1977, Milwaukee Brewers president Bud Selig fired both GM Jim Baumer and field manager Alex Grammas. After receiving Autry’s permission to talk with Dalton, Selig hired Harry as his GM.

Dalton took over a Brewers team that had finished sixth in 1977 and had never had a winning season in the franchise’s nine-year history. But all was not bad. Four days before hiring Dalton, Selig had managed to lure defending AL RBI leader Larry Hisle from the Twins by signing him as a free agent.

Selig granted Dalton full power in all player moves. Coming to Milwaukee along with Dalton were Walter Shannon, Walter Youse, and Roy Poitevint. This group became known as Dalton’s Gang as they loyally followed him from Baltimore to the Angels and then to the Brewers.

With just weeks to go before the start of his first spring training in Milwaukee, Dalton named George Bamberger as his manager. Bamberger had been the pitching coach in Baltimore when Dalton was there and continued in that role until Dalton lured him away. Milwaukee was pitching-poor and Dalton valued Bamberger’s work in Baltimore.

It turned out to be a good move; the 1978 Brewers turned in the first winning season in franchise history going 93-69, good for third place in the AL East. They were spurred on by the emergence of Rookie of the Year candidate Paul Molitor and pitcher Mike Caldwell who won 22 games in ’78. Molitor finished second to Lou Whitaker in ROY voting.

The Brewers continued to win going into the early 1980s. In 1979 they won a franchise-record 95 games finishing second in the AL East – behind the Orioles. After posting a third-straight winning season in 1980 the Brewers made the first postseason appearance in franchise history in 1981. In that strike-ravaged season, the Brewers won the second-half title in the AL Eastern Division but lost the playoff to first-half champion New York Yankees. The Brewers were led by Cy Young Award-winning reliever Rollie Fingers, who also won the League’s MVP that year.

The Brewers entered the 1982 season with high hopes of winning a division title. The team got off to a slow start and manager Buck Rodgers found himself fired after a 23-24 start; he was replaced by hitting coach Harvey Kuenn, who took over the reins and led the team to their first-ever World Series appearance. They took it to the seventh game before losing to the Cardinals. Dalton’s accomplishment was recognized with his second Major League Executive of The Year honor.

Dalton was never able to return his team to that level of success, and team owner Bud Selig was forced to release him following the 1991 season. Selig replaced Dalton with assistant GM Sal Bando. Bando was hired in the hopes that his business acumen would help the financially-strapped franchise rebound. Dalton remained as a consultant in the team’s front office through the 1994 season at which time he retired.

Dalton’s contributions to the franchise were recognized when he was inducted into the Brewers Walk of Fame outside Miller Park in July of 2003. Dalton retired to Scottsdale, Arizona, and died there of complications from Lewy body disease, misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s disease, on October 23, 2005. Dalton was 77 years old.

Sources

Telephone interview with Pat Dalton, May 23, 2012.

Daniel Okrent, Nine Innings (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989)

The Sporting News, January 25, 1961.

The Sporting News, June 12, 1961.

The Sporting News, November 1, 1961.

The Sporting News, December 6, 1965.

The Sporting News, December 18, 1965.

The Sporting News, January 29, 1966.

The Sporting News, August 13, 1966.

The Sporting News, September 17, 1966.

The Sporting News, November 5, 1977.

The Sporting News, November 12, 1977.

The Sporting News, December 3, 1977.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dalton

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BAL/1968-schedule-scores.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BAL/

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/ryanno01.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIL/