Rich Dauer wasn’t a typical ‘star’ during his 10-year career with the Baltimore Orioles, but don’t tell pitching legend and former teammate Jim Palmer.
“We all loved him, because he was Richie Dauer,” Hall of Famer Palmer told the Baltimore Banner. “If you don’t have teammates like that, I don’t get to the Hall of Fame. We don’t win a lot of games. We don’t go to the World Series. And that’s what the Orioles were about, so he’ll be missed, because he had such a vibrant personality.”
Dauer, a second baseman who won a World Series with the ‘Birds’ in 1983, has died. He was 72.
No cause of death was revealed.
The San Bernardino, Calif., native didn’t have eye-popping numbers when he played for the Orioles (his slash line was .257/.310/.343 with only 43 career homers), but he was the 24th overall pick of the 1974 MLB Draft.
He became the Orioles every day second baseman in 1977 and earned a reputation of a superb defensive player. In fact, a year later, he broke two American League, single-season fielding records, including 86 consecutive errorless games and 425 consecutive straight errorless chances.
Dauer, who helped Southern Cal win a pair of College World Series championships during his collegiate days, helped the Birds reached the World Series in 1979 and, four years later, he helped the Orioles win it all with a World Series victory over the Philadelphia Phillies.
In fact, he played, perhaps, he signature game during Game 4 of the 1983 World Series when he finished with three hits.
Following his playing carer, he became a long-time coach and had jobs in Cleveland, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Colorado before manning the first-base box for the Astros when they won it all in 2017.
Dauer was inducted into the Orioles Hall of Fame in 2012 and the College Baseball Hall of Fame in 2021.
During the 2017 Astros celebration parade, Dauer suffered a subdural hematoma following a head injury that required emergency brain surgery, according to Wikipedia.
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