Bill De Witt
William Orville DeWitt Sr. (August 3, 1902 — March 4, 1982) was a longtime executive in Major League Baseball whose career spanned more than 50 years in the game. His son William DeWitt, Jr. is currently the principal owner and managing partner of the St. Louis Cardinals, while grandson William O. DeWitt III is the president of the Cardinals.
The senior DeWitt began his baseball career with the Cardinals as a protégé of Branch Rickey, legendary business manager (later general manager) of the Redbirds from 1916–1942. DeWitt's first job, in 1916, was selling soda pop at the Cardinals' park; as a young man, he received a law degree from Washington University in St. Louis and became treasurer of the Redbirds. But DeWitt ultimately took a front-office job with the city’s underdog American League team, the St. Louis Browns, where he rose to general manager, minority owner (initially in partnership with Donald Lee Barnes) and, finally, majority owner.
Read more about Bill De Witt: Pennant-winning GM, Later Owner of The St. Louis Browns, Making An Impact in Detroit, Another Pennant, Then Ownership of The Reds
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“We have our difficulties, true; but we are a wiser and a tougher nation than we were in 1932. Never have there been six years of such far flung internal preparedness in all of history. And this has been done without any dictator’s power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill of Rights.”
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