Bill DeWitt

William Orville DeWitt Sr. (August 3, 1902 — March 4, 1982) was an American professional baseball executive and club owner whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned more than 60 years. DeWitt held multiple ownership and upper management positions in the major leagues, including general manager and owner of both the St. Louis Browns and Cincinnati Reds, chairman of the board of the Chicago White Sox, and president of the Detroit Tigers.

His son William DeWitt Jr. is currently the principal owner and managing partner of the St. Louis Cardinals, while grandson William III is the Cardinals' president.

Early life and career

DeWitt grew up in St. Louis. One of his first jobs, in 1916, was selling soda pop at the St. Louis Browns' home field, Sportsman's Park, and working as an office boy during his summer vacation. He began his formal baseball career with the Cardinals as a protégé of Branch Rickey, who moved from the Browns to the Redbirds in April 1917 and would become a legendary executive and member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. As a young man, DeWitt studied law at night at Washington University in St. Louis, passed the Missouri Bar exam,DeWitt, William O. Sr., interview by William J. Marshall. September 29, 1980, A. B. "Happy" Chandler: Desegregation of Major League Baseball Oral History Project
Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries. and became the first treasurer of the Cardinals.

DeWitt ultimately joined the Browns, the city's underdog American League (AL) team, in November 1936 as minority owner (initially in partnership with majority stockholder Donald Lee Barnes) and general manager.

St. Louis Browns

Financial struggles

The Browns were cash-strapped and struggling to survive as the second-ranked team in one of the smallest markets in the big leagues, during The Great Depression. The team had drawn only 80,922 fans during the entire 1935 season.

"We operated close to the belt. We had to," DeWitt told author William B. Mead in the 1978 book ''Even the Browns: Baseball During World War II''.Mead, William B., ''Even the Browns: Baseball During World War II''. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1978, pp. 57–65

"Once we ran out of cash. Barnes tried to get the board of directors to put up some money. They said, 'No! That's money down the rat hole.' A lot wealthy guys, too ... The Browns had a hell of a time because the Cardinals were so popular and the Browns couldn't do a damned thing. We didn't have any attendance money to build up the ball club with. Most of the clubs had players in the minors that were better than some of the ones we had on the Browns."

The Browns' attendance perked up when they were allowed to play more night home games than other AL teams. Meanwhile, Rickey disciple DeWitt managed to use some of his scant resources to strengthen the Browns' farm system and scouting department, signing and developing Vern Stephens, Al Zarilla, and Jack Kramer—all future major league stars. He also attempted to add depth and unearth hidden talent by trading the Browns' few veteran assets, such as pitcher Bobo Newsom, for second-string players or minor leaguers with other organizations.

Still, the team was nearly moved to Los Angeles after the season; however, the American League's secret vote on the transfer was scheduled for the week of December 8, and the attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, plunged the U.S. into World War II and saved the Browns for St. Louis for another dozen seasons.

1944 American League pennant

In 1944, under DeWitt's leadership as general manager, the Browns captured their only American League pennant. They won only 89 games (losing 65), but outlasted the Detroit Tigers by a single game. They drew as their World Series opponents their formidable tenants at Sportsman's Park, the Cardinals, who had won 105 games to breeze to their third consecutive National League championship. In the all-St. Louis 1944 World Series, the Browns took the opener and Game 3, but then they dropped the final three games to the Redbirds, who were in the process of winning three World Series titles in a five-year span. Nevertheless, DeWitt was named 1944 Major League Executive of the Year by ''The Sporting News'' to recognize his achievement.

The Browns' pennant is often downplayed by observers because it occurred during the height of the World War II manpower shortage, when most of the top American League players were in military service. But DeWitt's wartime Browns were one of the more successful teams in the American League, also posting winning campaigns in 1942 and 1945. During their pennant-winning 1944 season, the Browns drew more fans (508,644) than the Cardinals (461,968) for the first time since 1925. In 1945, they employed Pete Gray, an outfielder who, despite having only one arm, had become a capable minor league player. However, in 1946, the first postwar season, the Browns fell back into the second division and never enjoyed another winning campaign in St. Louis. DeWitt was forced to sell Stephens, Kramer and Zarilla—along with pitcher Ellis Kinder, a future 20-game-winner—to the wealthy Boston Red Sox to keep the team solvent.

DeWitt and the Browns also were among the vanguard, albeit only briefly, of MLB teams to break the baseball color line: in , they became the third club to integrate by purchasing the contracts of Hank Thompson and Willard Brown from the Kansas City Monarchs. Thompson made his MLB debut July 17 (only 12 days after Larry Doby of the Cleveland Indians had integrated the American League) and Brown two days later. But the experiment fizzled; the players performed below expectations and encountered resistance from their manager, Muddy Ruel, and some of their white teammates. They were sent back to the Monarchs late in August after only 41 total hits.

DeWitt and his brother Charlie (1900–1967), the Browns' traveling secretary, bought control of the club from majority owner Richard C. Muckerman in February 1949, but the team's struggles on the field and at the box office continued: they lost 101 and 96 games, and drew an average of 259,000 fans a season, in 1949–1950. The DeWitts bought the team with notes totaling $1 million that were due in 1954, and the team's revenues over the next two years did not even begin to service the debt. DeWitt was only able to stay afloat by selling most of the Browns' prospects for cash.

Finally, the DeWitts sold the Browns to Bill Veeck in June 1951. Bill DeWitt remained in the Browns' front office until Veeck was forced to sell the team in September 1953. They then moved to Baltimore to become the modern Orioles franchise in 1954.

Detroit Tigers

DeWitt then served as assistant general manager of the New York Yankees from 1954–1956 and as administrator of the "Professional Baseball Fund" in the office of the Commissioner of Baseball until September 1959, when he became president and ''de facto'' general manager of the Detroit Tigers.

Brief, but impactful, tenure

In his 14 months as the Tigers' president, DeWitt participated in three significant trades with swap-happy Cleveland Indians GM Frank Lane

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases