A right-handed pitcher from California, he recorded the last win for the Browns in St. Louis in 1953 and the first win for the Orioles in Baltimore in 1954.
(One in a series of articles about former major leaguers whom I interviewed for my oral history of the Orioles more than a quarter-century ago, but only on the phone, depriving me of a recording I could play now as a Bird Tapes Podcast interview.)
On September 27, 1953, the St. Louis Browns played their final game before they moved to Baltimore and became the Orioles. The Browns’ Duane Pillette, a 6-foot-3 right-hander, pitched all 11 innings of a 2-1 loss to the Chicago White Sox before a mighty crowd of 3,174 at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis.
It was not a glorious affair.
“They ran out of balls. I had to use dirty balls from batting practice, The umpire told me, ‘Just go out there and pitch,’” Pillette recalled decades later when I interviewed him for From 33rd Street to Camden Yards, my oral history of the Orioles published in 2001.
The loss finalized the Browns’ record for the 1953 season at 54-100. But the next spring in Baltimore, in the morning before the Orioles’ first home game at Memorial Stadium, tens of thousands of fans crowded the streets for a parade welcoming the team to town.
“You sat in the back of that convertible and went, ‘What in the world am I doing in this car with all these people I don’t even know screaming and hollering and carrying on? How can they be so happy about getting the St. Louis Browns? Don’t they know we lost 100 games last year?’” Pillette recalled.
The Orioles carried a 1-1 record into that home opener, having split two games with the Tigers in Detroit to open the 1954 season. Pillette had recorded the win, pitching a complete game in a 3-2 victory.
“I gave up a homer in the ninth, but the lead stood up. I got the Browns’ last loss in St. Louis and the Orioles’ first win in Baltimore. That’s my glory,” Pillette said.
Following the parade, the Orioles won their home opener against the White Sox.
“That pleased everyone and their brother. They could pick up the paper and see us with a 2-1 record on top of the league,” Pillette said. “God, they couldn’t hardly believe it. Of course, it didn’t last long.”
No, it didn’t. The Orioles wound up losing 100 games in 1954, but fans in Baltimore didn’t mind. They were just happy to have a major league team. The club drew more than a million fans, a threshold the Browns never reached in St. Louis.
“It was great to play for a crowd,” Pillette said.
He literally had baseball in his blood: His father, Herman Pillette, pitched in 107 major league games, mostly for the Tigers in the 1920s. Raised in California, Duane signed with the Yankees and made his major league debut with them in 1949. Then he was traded to the Browns in 1950, going from the top of the American League to the bottom. The Browns were nothing if not interesting under owner Bill Veeck in their final years in St. Louis — it was in 1951 that 3-foot-7 Eddie Gaedel strode to the plate and drew a walk — but they were a dismal club. Pillette made 79 starts and went 27-40 from 1951 through 1953.
“They weren’t trying to build the club up in St. Louis. They always sold players at the end of the season to make sure they made money. You knew they weren’t trying to win,” Pillette said. “But I loved Veeck. I don’t care what anyone says. He was probably the greatest owner ever to play for. He was just a normal human being, one of the guys. He wanted to win so badly that he started a midget. But we weren’t good and it was tough to play. The weather was brutal. It gets hot everywhere, but St. Louis, my gosh.
“It was different in Baltimore. The people were behind you all the time. It wasn’t that St. Louis wasn’t. The people in St. Louis were good fans, but Baltimore was enthusiastic. The restaurant guys wanted us to come in and eat on the house. We got good deals on cars and clothes. The people took to the players and the players took to the people. I felt pretty bad ’cause we didn’t win more.”
The Orioles’ losing record in 1954 obscured the fact that the team had a quality starting rotation. Bob Turley, a future Cy Young Award winner, was the ace. Don Larsen went 3-21 that season, setting a record that still stands for most losses in a season by an Oriole pitcher, but he would make history a few years later by tossing the only perfect game in World Series history. Pillette made 25 starts and went 10-14 with a 3.12 ERA.
“Turley was the commodity. He threw the hell out of the ball and competed hard. We also had a guy named Lou Kretlow, who could throw a ball through a brick wall,” Pillette said. “Larsen was just a big overgrown kid having a lot of fun. It wasn’t that he wasn’t competitive. He just could’ve won a lot more. I roomed with him in St. Louis and I called him Big Stupe, which was the name of a cartoon character back then. The guy had a lot of talent, but he just didn’t use it in Baltimore. He did pitch a hell of a lot better than 3-21. We weren’t scoring much.
“I had my best year in Baltimore in ‘54. I was in the All-Star game that year as a batting practice pitcher. (American League manager) Casey [Stengel] liked me and I had a pretty good ERA, like 2.70, which was good for a losing record. Turley made the team, but Casey told me I could come and pitch batting practice. ‘You got All-Star Game stuff ,’ he said. “I almost got into the game. I warmed up in the ninth.
“That year I was making $22,500, which was pretty good. I felt good. I felt confident. We had a little better infield than we’d had in St. Louis. The grass was nice, a little better defense. I was a sinkerball pitcher. Winning 10 with a tail-end club like that was like winning 17 or 18 with a good team. We just didn’t score any runs. A guy showed me some statistics that we allowed a half run less per game then we’d allowed in ‘53 but we scored three-fourths of a run less per game. So we lost 100 games again.”
In 1955, the Orioles hired Paul Richards as their manager/GM. Pillette began the year in the rotation but tried to pitch with a sore elbow due to bone spurs and started the season 0-3. Richards sent him to the minors for the rest of the season. He caught on with the Phillies in 1956 but made just 20 relief appearance due to his sore elbow. That was his last year in the majors, and he didn’t mind hanging up his cleats.
“It wasn’t easy. We were still riding the trains at that point,” he recalled. “The sleeper cars were OK. Most of them were little roomettes. They were good if you were six feet or smaller, but I had to curl up. What you did, you folded the bed down on the toilet if you had to go. You had to get up, push the bed up, go to the john and pull the bed back down. It wasn’t a big room. It was like being buried alive, that’s what it was.”
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