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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.
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.
"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 team 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.
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.Baseball Reference: 1944 MLB Attendance by Team 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. Costello, Rory, Willard Brown, Society for American Baseball Research Biography Project 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.
The Reds contended for the first five years of DeWitt's six-season tenure. They fell three games short of repeating in 1962 and one game short of the NL pennant in 1964, a season marred by the terminal illness of their 45-year-old manager, Fred Hutchinson, who was suffering from lung cancer. DeWitt's Reds benefited from a productive farm system, with Jim Maloney, Johnny Edwards, Pete Rose, Tony Pérez, Lee May, and Tommy Helms making their debuts through 1966, and Johnny Bench reaching Triple-A in only his second pro season.
After announcing the trade, DeWitt famously defended it by calling Robinson "not a young 30." In his first season with the Orioles, Robinson won the Triple Crown, was unanimously voted the American League Most Valuable Player, and led the Orioles to their first World Series title. Pappas, not yet 27 when the Robinson trade was made, won 28 games in his first two seasons in Cincinnati before being sent to the Atlanta Braves after beginning the 1968 season 2–5. Among the players coming to Cincinnati in that trade would be future bullpen ace Clay Carroll. Another player involved in the Robinson deal was Dick Simpson, a physical specimen and minor league standout who was both fast and powerful, but could not hit major league pitching. In January 1968, Simpson would be traded to the Cardinals in exchange for future AL batting champion Alex Johnson.
The Robinson deal somewhat clouded DeWitt's Cincinnati legacy, although many of the players he had signed or developed became key members of the team's "Big Red Machine" dynasty of the 1970s. On December 5, 1966, he sold the Reds for $8 million to a 13-person syndicate that was led by Francis L. Dale and included Bill DeWitt Jr. "Cincy Reds Sold In $8 Million Deal," United Press International (UPI), Tuesday, December 6, 1966. Retrieved March 2, 2023. One month later, the senior DeWitt was succeeded by Bob Howsam as general manager.
DeWitt died in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 4, 1982, at age 79.
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