Jerry Walker obit

Jerry Walker, first Orioles All-Star starting pitcher, dies at 85

 

He was not on the list.

Jerry Walker, the first Orioles starting pitcher to start an All-Star Game, died at 85, the team announced Wednesday.

Walker was also the youngest pitcher to ever start in the exhibition, doing so at 20 during the second All-Star Game of 1959.

Between 1959 and 1962, there were actually two All-Star Games — a short-lived venture that players backed in order to put more money into their pension funds. Walker started the second of the two in the summer of 1959 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in August.

He pitched 3 innings and allowed two hits, one earned run and one walk. In a scoreless third inning, Walker recorded his lone strikeout against Milwaukee Braves slugger Eddie Mathews.

Walker was one of several young Orioles during the 1950s to make an immediate impact. He debuted as an 18-year-old in 1957 without having appeared in a minor league game.

Walker was an early member of Baltimore’s “Kiddie Korps,” which included several other under-23 starters by 1960, such as pitchers Milt Pappas, Steve Barber, Chuck Estrada and Jack Fisher. By that point, the 21-year-old Walker wasn’t pitching solely as a starter. After posting 182 innings in a breakout 1959 campaign, Walker threw 118 innings with a 3.74 ERA as a starter and reliever.

Walker will be remembered in baseball lore for one 1959 start in particular. Just two years after he finished high school in Ada, Oklahoma, Walker completed 16 innings of shutout ball against the Chicago White Sox on Sept. 11, 1959, at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

“I remember I did not do much the next day,” Walker told the Society For American Baseball Research in 2019.

Walker’s Orioles career ended after 1960. He pitched the next four seasons for the Kansas City Athletics and Cleveland Indians, and his last year of playing baseball was 1967, for the Double-A Binghamton Triplets.

After his playing career, Walker entered the coaching and scouting ranks. He served as the general manager of the Detroit Tigers in 1993, and from 1995 to 2007, he worked as the vice president and director of player personnel for the St. Louis Cardinals. He followed then-general manager Walt Jocketty to the Cincinnati Reds as a vice president and special assistant between 2009 and 2014.

On Tuesday, right-hander Corbin Burnes became the fifth Orioles pitcher to start an All-Star Game, joining Walker.

Walker's active career ended in 1967 in the Double-A Eastern League, but he maintained his involvement in organized baseball as a minor league manager, big-league pitching coach, scout and front-office executive. He served one season (1993) as the general manager of the Detroit Tigers; the Tigers posted an 85–77 record and finished tied for third in the American League East Division that season.

In the minors he also played with the Knoxville Smokies, Jacksonville Suns, Portland Beavers and the Toledo Mud Hens.

 

MLB statistics

Win–loss record  37–44

Earned run average            4.36

Strikeouts            326

Teams

Baltimore Orioles (1957–1960)

Kansas City Athletics (1961–1962)

Cleveland Indians (1963–1964)

Career highlights and awards

All-Star (1959²)