To start this new series we'll be looking at the Orioles first ever home opener starter, Bob Turley. Turley was with the club for only one year as an Oriole, having come up with the St Louis Browns in 1951 and being traded after the inaugural 1954 season in Baltimore. In his lone season in Baltimore he led the league in both Ks and BBs and by default set several Orioles pitching records. So for a brief time, if you were to just count stats for the team in Baltimore, he was the Orioles record holder for every stat that he led the team in 1954.
He was a part of the infamous 17 player trade with the Yankees which is still the largest in baseball history. The Orioles sent Billy Hunter, Mike Blyzka, Darrell Johnson, Jim Fridley, Dick Kryhoski, Don Larsen and Bob Turley to the Yankees in exchange for Jim McDonald, Willy Miranda, Hal Smith, Gene Woodling, Bill Miller, Kal Segrist, Don Leppert, Theodore Del Guercio, Gus Triandos and Harry Byrd. Perhaps the most well known player in this trade is Don Larsen, who would go onto pitch the only perfect game in World Series history in 1956.
The book “Tales from the Baltimore Orioles Dugout: A Collection of the Greatest Orioles Stories Ever Told” by Louis Berney has a great excerpt about Turley and is part of the reason why he's one of my favorite random players from Orioles history. He may be most remembered for being a Yankee but I think the fact that he was the first Oriole to be the home opener starter and the first “ace” of the staff is something worth noting.
"I pitched a lot of baseball that year, and right near the end of the season, Paul Richards, who had just been named as general manager, asked me not to pitch at the end of the season. He said, "You have nothing to gain, but you could hurt your arm.' Jimmy Dykes was still the manager then, and he came to me and said, 'We could have you pitch, Bob, but it's probably better for you if you don't.' I was 14-15 and was trying to even my record to 15-15. Inside my heart, I wanted to pitch, but when you're a ball player, and you have your manager and your general manager telling you not to pitch, you pay attention. So I didn't pitch, and I ended up 14-15.
"After the season I took a job working for the Hecht Company in Towson. I was staying in Baltimore for the winter. Richards talked to me and said I was going to be one of the players they'd build the club around the next year. But then within 30 days, they traded me to the Yankees with Billy Hunter and Don Larsen.
"I remember real well how I heard about the trade. My son was born October 25 that year, and I was sitting watching television and feeding my son. Suddenly it flashed on the screen and said, 'Bob Turley, multiple players traded to the New York Yankees.' That's how I found out I was traded. No one from the club calledme to tell me. I don't think they ever called me.”
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This is my second history series in this sub. I’ll try to post daily until the end of the season but it’ll probably be more semi daily as my schedule dictates. I’ll try to post at least once a series. Since this is the middle of the season I’m going to be a little more casual than my previous series. I’d appreciate any feedback, players you’d like to see highlighted, or stories you’d like to see told. Sometimes reddit formatting is weird so I’d also like feedback on if I should use the body text option or if I should post the writeup as its own comment.
Although I started with Bob Turley, who is from the inaugural season in Baltimore, I don’t plan on going in chronological order with the players covered
Such a fantastic idea. I appreciate the time and effort!