Hank Peters obit

Baseball executive Hank Peters dies

 

He was not on the list.

Hank Peters helped build championship baseball in Baltimore and revive the sport in Cleveland.

A longtime executive who began his career after serving in World War II, Peters died on Sunday of complications from a recent stroke. He was 90.

The Indians said in a statement that Peters passed away in Boca Raton, Florida. Peters served as the club’s general manager and president from 1987-91, his second stint with the franchise. Before coming to Cleveland, Peters spent 12 seasons with the Orioles, who had 10 consecutive winning seasons and won their third World Series in 1983 when he was there.

Orioles owner Peter Angelos was saddened to learn of Peters’ death.

“Hank was highly regarded throughout baseball as a man of integrity and great character,” Angelos said. “His impact was felt by multiple organizations throughout his 40-year baseball career, and he will be missed by all who knew him.”

Peters came to Cleveland when the Indians were perennial losers. Hired by late Indians owner Dick Jacobs, Peters was credited him with helping set the foundation for a new downtown ballpark in Cleveland and turned around a foundering franchise.

Indians president Mark Shapiro called Peters “a cherished member” of the Indians family. Both the Orioles and Indians offered their condolences to Peters’ daughter, Sharon, son, Steve, and grandchildren. Peters also worked in Cleveland as the club’s vice president/director of player personnel from 1966-71.

After serving in the Army, Peter broke into baseball with the St. Louis Browns, his hometown team. He and his wife, Dottie, were married for 59 years. She passed away in 2010.

Following his military service, Peters joined the St. Louis Browns after answering a newspaper advertisement, and eventually worked his way into their scouting department. When the Browns left St. Louis for Baltimore after the 1953 season, becoming the modern Orioles franchise, Peters stayed in the Midwest. He spent 1954 as general manager of the Burlington Bees of the Class B Illinois–Indiana–Iowa League, then joined the front office of the Kansas City Athletics, newly transplanted from Philadelphia, in 1955.

Kansas City Athletics

By 1960, Peters was in charge of the Athletics' scouting and minor league system. In the autumn of that year, Charlie Finley bought the team, and Peters became farm system director of the Cincinnati Reds. But after one season in Cincinnati, Peters returned to the Athletics and Finley, where he would work for the tempestuous owner for four full seasons and hold the title of general manager during the 1965 campaign. Kansas City finished last in 1965, but it possessed at the big-league level (Bert Campaneris, Dick Green and Catfish Hunter) and in its farm system (Sal Bando, Rollie Fingers, Blue Moon Odom, Gene Tenace, Rick Monday, and others) a core of players that—after the franchise moved to Oakland in 1968—would help the A's win three consecutive world championships from 1972 to 1974.

President of minor league baseball

After leaving Finley and the Athletics, Peters joined the Indians as director of player personnel and assistant general manager working under Gabe Paul from 1966 to 1971, but the Indians had only one successful season (1968) during that six-year time frame. He then served as the sixth president in the history of the National Association, the umbrella group that governed the minor leagues, during a critical period. The minors had been suffering from over 20 years of plunging attendance, contraction and decline, and were in danger of extinction. The short-season Northern League folded after the 1971 season, and other circuits like the Class A Carolina and Western Carolinas leagues, the short-season Northwest League and the Rookie-level Pioneer League, then operating with the bare minimum of four teams, were on the verge of collapsing.

"We had so many leagues that were in danger of going out of business," Peters said. His response was to encourage the creation of "co-op" teams that received players from multiple MLB clubs to keep the struggling leagues afloat. "I spent a lot of my time trying to convince Major League Baseball that they really needed these leagues. I’m proud that we were able to create clubs, getting two or three players from this team and a few from another team and so on, so that we could put together an unaffiliated team and each league could have at least four teams. Some of those leagues that were in trouble are now strong and prosperous."

Baltimore Orioles

Peters was appointed executive vice president and general manager of the Baltimore Orioles on November 3, 1975. He succeeded Frank Cashen, who had returned to team owner Jerold Hoffberger's Carling National Breweries, Inc. as its senior vice president of marketing and sales. The challenge that Peters faced was maintaining the Orioles as perennial contenders despite the limited finances of both the ballclub and the brewery and the advent of free agency in MLB which was made possible by the Seitz decision overturning the reserve clause.

During his initial year in Baltimore, Peters executed a pair of blockbuster deals that were influenced by the oncoming free agency following the 1976 campaign. The first happened just before the start of the regular season when Reggie Jackson, Ken Holtzman and minor-league right-handed pitcher Bill Van Bommel were acquired from the Oakland Athletics for Don Baylor, Mike Torrez and Paul Mitchell on April 1. The other came at the trade deadline on June 15 when Holtzman, Doyle Alexander, Grant Jackson, Elrod Hendricks and Jimmy Freeman were sent to the New York Yankees for Rudy May, Dave Pagan, Rick Dempsey, Scott McGregor and Tippy Martinez, the last three becoming part of a nucleus that kept the Orioles as perennial contender for the next decade. Peters augmented that nucleus with a farm system that produced Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken Jr., Rich Dauer, Mike Flanagan, Dennis Martínez, Sammy Stewart, Mike Boddicker and Storm Davis. The Orioles won the American League pennant in 1979 and 1983 and also captured the World Series in the latter year.

Following the 1983 world championship, the Orioles went into decline, and after enduring their first back-to-back losing seasons in three decades, in 1986–87, Peters was fired on October 5, 1987.

Cleveland Indians

Less than a month later, on November 2, 1987, he returned to the Indians as their president and chief operating officer. Although the Indians never compiled a winning record during Peters' four full years in the job, he lay the foundation for the strong Cleveland teams of the 1990s, signing youngsters Jim Thome, Manny Ramírez and Charles Nagy, and trading for Sandy Alomar Jr. and Carlos Baerga.[3] Peters also brought John Hart from Baltimore to the Indians' organization as his hand-picked successor As the club's top baseball operations executive from September 1991 through October 2001, Hart would lead the Indians through their period of sustained success that began with their move to Jacobs Field in 1994, including American League pennants in 1995 and 1997