Bird Tapes 2025: An interview with Dan Duquette

As the Orioles' GM from 2011-2018, he presided over an on-field renaissance. But few in Birdland knew of his deep and abiding connection to Orioles history that went back decades.

Dan Duquette in his Oriole days

When Dan Duquette became the Orioles’ general manager in 2011, his resume suggested that he had no prior connection to the organization. He’d grown up in New England. The Milwaukee Brewers had hired him out of college. Then he’d moved on to the Montreal Expos, ultimately becoming their GM. He left that job to become GM of the Boston Red Sox. The words “Baltimore Orioles” were nowhere to be found in that resume.

But in fact, Duquette brought a deep understanding of Orioles history to the job.

Harry Dalton, as GM of the Milwaukee Brewers, gave Duquette his start in the baseball industry in 1980. Dalton, of course, was and is a true Oriole legend — an original employee, hired well before the club’s first game, who became critical to the construction of Baltimore’s winning tradition as the assistant farm director, farm director and GM from 1954 through 1971.

He left the Orioles to become GM of the California Angels in the early ‘70s, then moved on to the Brewers, bringing with him important personnel and best practices that had worked so well in Baltimore.

Dalton liked young Duquette — the connection was innate, as both were Massachusetts natives and Amherst College graduates — and pledged to mentor him in Milwaukee. In my recent interview with Duquette, available below to paid Bird Tapes subscribers (and well worth a listen for anyone who likes good baseball storytelling), he unspools the story of how he was hired and what he learned from working under Dalton for seven years.

Spoiler alert, he almost was hired out of college by another former Orioles GM, Frank Cashen, who’d recently become GM of the New York Mets. But Duquette had already said yes to Dalton, and decades later, he has no qualms about how things worked out.

“Harry told me, ‘I’m not going to pay you very well, but I’ll give you an education and training and you should be able to develop a career if you pay attention,’” Duquette told me.

He did pay attention. And he had quite a career.

The “education” he received was awash in Oriole influences. When Duquette arrived in Milwaukee, Earl Weaver’s longtime pitching coach, George Bamberger, was the Brewers’ manager. Ray Poitevint, a top Orioles scout for years, was the scouting director. Former Orioles Larry Haney and Ron Hansen were major league coaches. Later, Andy Etchebarren was a minor league catching instructor and major league coach, and another former Oriole, Herman Starrette, was the pitching coach.

“Bamberger, Starrette, Haney, Etchebarren, that was the brains of the Orioles pitching dynasty going back to the ‘60s. I’d go to lunch with them and soak it up,” Duquette told me.

Naturally, I made sure to get Duquette’s thoughts about his tenure as the Orioles’ GM from 2011 through 2018. He and manager Buck Showalter helped the franchise emerge from years of losing and become contenders again, with three postseason appearances and a division title to show for it.

Mike Elias replaced him and receives kudos for having torn down and rebuilt the organization with shrewd drafting and player development, but my two cents, Duquette doesn’t receive nearly enough credit for having drafted quality major leaguers such as Cedric Mullins, Grayson Rodriguez, Josh Hader, Tanner Scott, Austin Hays, Hunter Harvey,. Kevin Gausman, Ryan Mountcastle, Trey Mancini, Anthony Santander (a major Rule V bargain) and John Means into the organization.

When he became the Orioles’ GM in 2011, Duquette told me, he inherited what he thought was a solid roster of everyday players including Adam Jones, Nick Markakis, Matt Wieters and J.J. Hardy, with Manny Machado set to join them from the minors. Duquette felt the club was poised to become a winner again if he could just improve the pitching, and he did just that. But no one in Birdland understood how his old Oriole influences, which traced back to his Milwaukee days, made it happen.

Coming into the job, Duquette asked Starrette, at age 75, to draw up a pitching program for use throughout the organization. That program helped Chris Tillman become a No. 1 starter. Duquette also hired Poitevint, at age 82, as the club’s director of international scouting. Four decades after he signed Dennis Martinez out of Nicaragua in 1973, Poitevint recommended that Duquette sign Wei-Yin Chen, a starter in Korea’s KBO League. Chen made 117 starts and won 59 games for the Orioles from 2012-2015.

Talk about a connection between the past and present.

Dalton’s influence on the Orioles — and really, his influence throughout the major leagues — was the reason I wanted to add an interview with Duquette to the Bird Tapes archive (which now contains 36 interviews, by the way, including one with Dalton). The point of the Bird Tapes is to explore Orioles history with the recollections of those who lived it, and through his relationship with Dalton, Duquette can explain what Dalton did, and how he did it, better than just about anyone. He was interviewed for Leave While the Party’s Good, Lee Kluck’s excellent Dalton biography, published in 2024.

In Baltimore, Dalton trained future major league GMs John Schuerholz, Lou Gorman and Joe McIlvaine, and signed another, Pat Gillick, who pitched for Orioles minor league affiliates in the early ‘60s. Duquette pointed out to me that adding himself to that list meant an organization either led by Dalton himself or a Dalton-mentored executive won Baseball America’s organization of the year award almost every year between 1984 and 2002.

“It’s an amazing record,” Duquette told me.

These days, he teaches an online class about baseball player development and strategy, and the value he places on Orioles history is readily apparent. The texts he uses include Modern Baseball Strategy, written decades ago by Paul Richards, the Orioles’ pioneering manager/GM in the early years, and Weaver on Strategy, a 1984 book by the Hall of Fame manager. Both offer baseball lessons without expiration dates, Duquette told me, despite the fact that the game constantly evolves.

In our conversation, we explored the philosophy and fundamentals of what Duquette called “the Orioles pitching dynasty,” i.e., when 20-win seasons were routine and plentiful. Duquette believes it all started with Richards, a certifiable pitching guru who mentored Dalton, who mentored others, including himself.

Really, my interview with Duquette is what the Bird Tapes is all about — exploring the Orioles’ past with, hopefully, lessons about their present inherently included.

(Note from John Eisenberg: The Dalton interview is the second in a series of new interviews with figures in Orioles history that I’ll post in 2025. Interviews with broadcaster Jon Miller and former players Gregg Olson, Fred Lynn, Tippy Martinez and Scott McGregor are coming soon, with many more to follow. I’ll also post interviews with more former broadcasters and newspaper beat writers. To upgrade to a paid subscription, which gives you access to the interviews, click on the “subscribe now” button.)