Former Baltimore Orioles GM Hank Peters dead at 90

A year removed from an off season in which the Baltimore Orioles’ family lost several people (including Monica Barlow), the O’s lost their first of this off season yesterday. Former General Manager Hank Peters passed away early yesterday morning, of complications from a stroke he had recently suffered. Peters, who served as the Orioles’ GM from 1975-’87, was 90 years old. Condolences go out to all who knew and loved him on my own behalf, as well as on that of all of our staff writers and the Fansided Network.

Photo: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Peters is the architect of the 1983 World Series champion Orioles, and he’s probably best remembered for pulling off a ten-player trade in 1976 with New York which brought the likes of Rick Dempsey, Tippy Martinez, and Scott McGregor to Baltimore. Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.

Yesterday was also a heavy one in the sense that the sports world overall lost a soldier in the form of ESPN anchor Stuart Scott, who also passed away yesterday morning. Anyone who’s ever watched Sportscenter knows the effect that Scott had on the sports world, myself included. He had been fighting lung cancer (which recurred twice) since 2007.

In all sincerity, I take these types of things fairly hard and they’re difficult for me to hear. My own father had a bout with cancer in 2006 – he was diagnosed about a month or so after we had lost my grandfather to lung cancer. It wasn’t an easy time for our family, however there’s not a day that goes by where I don’t recognize that we’re the lucky ones. The Scott family among many others deal with cancer stories which don’t have happy endings, and thus it’s nigh time that we find a cure for this terrible disease.

Nevertheless, I once again send my deepest of condolences to the Peters family, as well as to the Scotts and the ESPN family. Death is never an easy thing to tackle, regardless of it’s cause. But it’s unfortunately something that’s a part of the human experience. And we’ll all be there one day.