Dick Hall, an Orioles Hall of Fame reliever with impeccable control who helped Baltimore win two World Series, dies at 92

Dick Hall, a former star relief pitcher for the Orioles whose unconventional yet effective delivery helped Baltimore win two World Series, died Sunday of multiple myeloma and congestive heart failure in hospice care. The Timonium resident was 92.

“He had a strong sense of right and wrong, and he totally passed that to us and all of his grandchildren,” his daughter Helen Terry of Timonium said. “He was a very, very good man. There was nothing he loved more than sit there and watch the chaos unfold with all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”

Mr. Hall, a 6-foot-6 right-hander, was known for his jerky, near-sidearm delivery and pinpoint control. The unusual style earned him the nickname “Turkey.” Mr. Hall played nine seasons with Baltimore, during which he won 65 games, saved 60 more and had an ERA of 2.89.

Mr. Hall helped the Orioles win World Series titles in 1966 — though he did not appear in any games that Series — and 1970 and American League pennants in 1969 and 1971. He also won the first League Championship Series game ever played, a 4-3 Orioles victory over the Minnesota Twins in 1969. He was inducted into the Orioles Hall of Fame in 1989.

Mr. Hall, who played 19 seasons in the major leagues with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Kansas City Athletics, Orioles and Philadelphia Phillies, once retired 28 consecutive batters over five appearances in 1963. In addition to his unconventional pitching mechanics, Mr. Hall was known for being a strike-thrower. In 1,259 2/3 career innings, he unintentionally walked just 166 batters with only one wild pitch, throwing strike after strike, mixing fastballs and sliders to routinely nip the outside corner of the plate.

“We always said he could hit a little thimble on the outside corner because he had great control,” said Jim Palmer, a teammate of Mr. Hall’s for five years in Baltimore and now a broadcaster for the team-owned Mid-Atlantic Sports Network.

After starting his career with the Pirates, Mr. Hall spent one season with the Athletics before being traded to Baltimore in 1961 to begin a six-year stint as an Oriole. He was part of a bullpen that included Stu Miller, Eddie Watt, Pete Richert and Moe Drabowsky. After two years in Philadelphia, he returned to Baltimore in 1969 and remained a member of the bullpen until 1971.

Mr. Hall, son of the late David and Helen Hall, was born in St. Louis, but he spent most of his childhood in Haworth, New Jersey. His father was an engineer, first working on bridges and before becoming an aerospace engineer. His mother graduated with honors from the University of Vermont and spent one year as a teacher before being a homemaker.

Mr. Hall attended Mount Hermon School, a boarding school in Gill, Massachusetts, for high school and later obtained an economics degree from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. As one of the best athletes in Swarthmore history, he was inducted into the college’s Hall of Fame in 2012 after playing five sports — football, track and field, baseball, soccer and basketball — and setting several school records.

“He was very gentle and calm and sweet, but whenever we played sports, it was like a transformation,” his son David Hall of Matthews, North Carolina, said. “It was just a transformation to see him play sports or compete in something compared to the way he was a dad and a family man.”

At 21, he made his major league debut in 1952 as an outfielder with the Pirates. After spending most of 1952 and 1953 in the minors, he spent all of 1954 in the majors, hitting .239 with a .614 OPS. That winter, playing in the Mexican Pacific Coast League, Mr. Hall began pitching for the first time since his college days. He had success on the mound with the Pirates in 1955 and was a pitcher for the remainder of his career.

His prowess as a pitcher wasn’t the only thing he found in Mazatlán, Mexico. During his first winter there, he met Maria Elena Nieto, his future wife. Mrs. Hall, who goes by Elena, and Mr. Hall married on New Year’s Eve in 1955.

After a few years with the Pirates, Mr. Hall struggled as a starting pitcher in Kansas City, but he quickly found his form with the Orioles. As mostly a reliever, he was one of the club’s most valuable pitchers in the first half of the 1960s as the club emerged out of obscurity after moving to Baltimore in 1954 to become one of the best teams in the American League. From 1961 to 1964, Mr. Hall was 27-17 with a 2.60 ERA and 31 saves with a 0.99 WHIP in 440 innings.

“Because he was 6-6 and he had a distinct release point, he had a lot of deception,” Mr. Palmer said. “It would be so interesting for him to pitch in this era to see what the metrics and the analytics and the shape of his pitches were compared to the norm. They must’ve been exceptional.”

In 1965, a 19-year-old Mr. Palmer joined the Orioles, and the 34-year-old Mr. Hall was there to show him the way.

“He was kind of a mentor to me,” Mr. Palmer said. “I got to sit with him and learn baseball. He drove me to the ballpark, taught me about baseball and life. You never forget those type of people.”

After the Orioles beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1966 World Series, Mr. Palmer bought his first house “about 10 doors down” from Mr. Hall in Timonium. Mr. Hall was the godfather of Jamie Palmer, the eldest daughter of the Hall of Fame pitcher.

“We bonded because of the relationship between our families. They helped raise my children,” Mr. Palmer said. “When you’re 21 years old and you’re learning about life and parenting, to have people like Elena and Dick to help you do that — when someone helps you raise your children, that’s why he was such an instrumental part of my life.”

It wasn’t just Palmer’s children who Mr. Hall cared for, though. Every winter, Mrs. Terry said, he would build an ice rink in his backyard for the kids in the neighborhood to play ice hockey games on.

“That was the type of man he was,” she said.

After his short stint in Philadelphia, Mr. Hall made the Orioles in 1969 at 38 years old. After not pitching in the 1966 Fall Classic, he pitched in all three World Series between 1969 and 1971. He was the losing pitcher in Game 4 of the 1969 World Series against the Mets. But he was instrumental in Baltimore’s championship the following year. He pitched 4 2/3 shutout innings and was the winning pitcher in Game 1 of the ALCS against the Twins. He then pitched 2 1/3 scoreless innings and earned the save in Game 2 of the World Series versus the Cincinnati Reds, a series the Orioles won in five games for their second championship in five years. He then tossed a scoreless inning in Baltimore’s Game 2 win over the Pirates in the 1971 Fall Classic, which the Orioles lost in seven games.

When he retired as an Oriole, Mr. Hall was the oldest player in the American League at 41. Mr. Hall continued working as an accountant, a career he started in 1958 and maintained during his offseasons as a ballplayer, until his retirement in 2001.

In addition to Mrs. Hall, David Hall and Terry, Mr. Hall is survived by sister Barbara Partee, daughters Norma Griffiths of Timonium and Martha Dunbar of Cockeysville, nine grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

Services are being planned by the family.

Baltimore Sun reporter Mike Klingaman contributed to this article.