The One And Only Billy Loes

On his way to winning a team-high 14 games for the Orioles in 1957, pitcher Connie Johnson had a curious conversation with a teammate.

“Be careful. You don’t want to win too many games,” Billy Loes told him.

“What are you talking about?” Johnson asked.

“Well,” replied Loes, a fellow starting pitcher, who would record 12 wins that season, “if you win a lot of games, they’ll expect you to win that many every year. And then they’ll cut your pay when you don’t.”

Johnson recalled the conversation more than four decades later when I interviewed him for my book on Orioles history. And he laughed about it.

“Billy was right,” Johnson said. “They did cut my pay when I didn’t win as many the next year.”

Loes was just 26 when the Orioles acquired him on waivers from the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956, but he already had forged a reputation as an eccentric. Before the 1952 season, he’d predicted no pitcher on his team, the Dodgers, would win more than 15 games. “Better make it 17. I look pretty good,” he said after a winning performance early in the season. The Dodgers went on to win the National League pennant that year, but before the World Series, Loes predicted his team would lose to the Yankees in six games. When that caused a stir, Loes said he’d been misquoted and actually believed the Yankees would win in seven. (They did.)

Before joining the Orioles, he made headlines in New York throughout the early ‘50s. He was a native son, the only child of Greek immigrants who lived in a small apartment in Astoria, a neighborhood in Queens. According to a Society of American Baseball research profile of Loes, his father didn’t work because of a wartime injury and his mother supported the family by working in a furniture store. Like many New York youngsters in those years, Loes became obsessed with baseball. And he had enough talent to make something of his obsession. A tall right-hander with a sharp chin, he was so dominant as a high school star that the Dodgers gave him the largest signing bonus in their history ($21,000) at the time.

Even then, though, Loes exhibited a knack for making strange comments. When reporters compared him to Larry Jansen, a star pitcher for the crosstown Giants, Loes said, “I forgot more about pitching than he ever knew.” But then he did quickly become a starter, winning 13 games for the pennant-winning Dodgers in 1952 and another 14 games in 1953 with “the best fastball in the National League,” according to Brooklyn catcher Roy Campanella.

Overall, he went 50-26 and made three World Series starts for the Dodgers from 1952-55. “Billy could pitch better than anyone,” Connie Johnson told me. “He threw everything, a big curve, fastball, slider, changeup. When he wanted to win, he won.”

George Zuverink, who pitched out of the bullpen for the Orioles in the late ‘50s, agreed in his interview for my book that Loes “had really good stuff.”

But he also continually made news with his strange comments and behavior. In 1954 he told an interviewer he hated baseball and wished he had a 9-to-5 job. Then he picked up a stray dog, took it home to his mother and asked the Dodgers to pay for it as a business expense. When he made fielding errors that cost him in a World Series appearance, he blamed it on the sun. (Actually he called it the “%$#@! sun.”)

In the SABR profile, he is described as “a complicated and unpredictable player, filled with contradictions and myriad superstitions. Behind what Brooklyn beat writer Tommy Holmes called a ‘brusque exterior,’ Loes was a brooding type away from the game, yet a practical joker and clown with teammates. However, he never seemed at home with reporters, despite his penchant for good copy; rather, he often brushed them off with ‘I don’t know nothing about anything.’ Nervous and fidgety in the dugout on game days, Loes was more at ease on the mound, where he was typically undemonstrative. Later in his career he developed a reputation for arguing with umpires and even his catcher.”

The Dodgers eventually grew tired of him. They thought, with his talent, that he should win 20 games a year and wasn’t dedicated enough. Regardless if that was true, he developed a sore shoulder that made him less available and effective. Dodgers manager Walter Alston called him “a mystery.” When they sold him to the Orioles for $20,000 in May 1956, Dodgers GM Buzzie Bavasi said of Loes, “For four years we’ve been waiting for him to produce. I’m beginning to wonder how long it’ll take. His trouble is he has no sense of responsibility.”

Paul Richards, the Orioles manager/GM, was delighted to acquire him. An acknowledged pitching savant, Richards had inherited a miserable club and was looking for any player with talent. Loes didn’t fare well pitching out of the Orioles’ bullpen in 1956, but Richards put him in the starting rotation the next year and he thrived, winning eight straight decisions at one point, two on shutouts.

Named to the American League All-Star team by Yankees manager Casey Stengel, he came on for starter Jim Bunning in the fourth inning and threw three shutout innings — to the dismay of the National League manager, who was none other than Alston, the same skipper who’d grown tired of Loes in Brooklyn.

Loes wound up with a 12-5 record in 1957. Asked to pinpoint the factors that explained his improved results, he said, “Luck and a bigger ballpark.”

A dozen wins was plenty for him.

“Billy was a strange guy,” Zuverink told me. “He was content winning eight or 10 games a year. He said, ‘If you win 10, they want you to win 12. If you win 15, they want you to win 20. But if you do an average job, they leave you alone.’ He didn’t want to put pressure on himself. That’s just the way he was.”

Unable to replicate his success in 1958, he wound up back in the Oriole bullpen, pitching strictly in relief. And he irritated the imperious Richards. Speaking to reporters after he was suspended for an incident in which he bumped an umpire, Loes nodded toward Richards and said, “I’ve been suspended for making God look bad.” Richards traded him to the San Francisco Giants before the 1960 season.

But while his superiors may not have cared for him, his teammates did. When I interviewed his former Oriole teammates years later for my book, they tended to smile when Loes’ name came up. And they all had stories about him.

“He wasn’t crazy,” Connie Johnson said, “but one time the sportswriters asked him about an umpire and he said, ‘Oh, that guy’s blind.’ Who does that? And there was other stuff. He kept all his paychecks. I remember that, he wouldn’t take his checks to the bank. Made his eating money playing cards. He knew how to play cards. Didn’t wear expensive clothes. Told all the young guys getting bonus money to put it in the stock market. He wasn’t wrong about that.”

Gus Triandos, who caught Loes, said, “Billy didn’t like to talk to some people. If he didn’t want to talk to someone, he just stared out into left field. The guys thought he was a little flaky, but he was a smart guy. He just didn’t like to show it. He had a great arm when he first came up with Brooklyn. Then he ended up just getting by on his smarts.”

Billy Gardner, who played second base for the Orioles behind Loes, laughed as he recalled a specific incident at Fenway Park in Boston.

“Bases loaded, Ted Williams up. Loes comes halfway down to the plate and tells Ted, ‘You’ve been my idol all my life. Please don’t beat me.’ Ted just started laughing,” Gardner said. “Well, first pitch, boom, strike. Ted is still laughing. Next pitch, boom, ball. The count comes to three and two and Loes throws one right down the middle. The call is ball four. We come out of the dugout [arguing] and Gus is bitching and the umpire says, ‘The man didn’t swing, did he?’ That was the kind of respect Ted had. But the ball was right down the middle of the plate!”

Harry Brecheen, who was an Orioles pitching coach under Richards, recalled having a telling conversation with Loes: “One time he told me, ‘I could throw really hard before I hurt my arm.’ He picked up a ball and threw it 100 miles an hour and said, ‘That’s the way I used to throw.’ So he could still do it. I guess he just didn’t want to.”

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