Hal Dues was a pitcher for the Montreal Expos in 1977, 1978
and 1980.
Hal Joseph Dues (Hal is his given name, not a nickname) was
born September 22, 1954, in La Marque, Texas. The Expos signed him as a free
agent on May 20, 1974, and sent him to Kinston of the Class A Carolina League,
where he went 4-7 with a 3.27 ERA in 110 innings. He started 1975 with the
Quebec Carnavals of the Class AA Eastern League, but after giving up 19 runs,
12 earned, in 14 innings with two strikeouts and ten walks in his first three
starts he was sent back down to A ball, this time with West Palm Beach of the
Florida State League. Here he did much better, posting a 2.97 ERA in 118
innings, but the Expos kept him at West Palm Beach again in 1976.
Hal spent the entire 1976 season at West Palm Beach,
starting 24 games and completing ten, going 12-10 with a 2.06 ERA. 1977 found
him back at Quebec, where he went 6-6 with a 3.75 ERA in 96 innings in 16
starts, and when the Eastern League season ended he was called up by the Expos.
He made his major league debut on September 9, starting in Pittsburgh, and won
2-1. The AP quoted him as saying “I was nervous before the start, but I think I
got over it once the game started. I knew that I would be in trouble if I
stayed nervous.” He had one more solid start, then two poor ones, then two
relief appearances, ending up with a 4.30 ERA for the six games.
Hal signed a Montreal contract at the beginning of February
1978, but was not expected to make the major league roster. He did, though, the
Sporting News remarking “The
23-year-old Texan Dues was an absolute dark horse, but he was the most
consistent of the righthanded relievers, most of whom eliminated themselves.”
He went back and forth between relief and starting appearances, his fifth start
of the year coming on June 22, on which the AP reported:
Ryan-Like Dues stifles Mets, 2-0
Hal Dues is a tall, lanky Texan who grew up about 12 miles from where Nolan Ryan now lives.
And the Montreal right-hander was asked Thursday night—after he and Mike Garman combined for a two-hit shutout over the New York Mets—if there had ever been a comparison made.
“Naw, I’ve never even met him,” Dues said in a soft drawl. “I was supposed to go fishing with him once, though, but it never worked out.
“He had the same agent who signed me, and he (the agent) tried to set something up for us, but it got fouled up somehow.”
Dues, who hails from the little town of La Marque, just a rock’s throw from Ryan’s home in Alvin, is 6-foot-3 and 190 pounds and, like Ryan, can throw smoke.
On Thursday, however, he mixed his fastballs with a good curve and gave up just two singles through six innings, when he was lifted for a pinch hitter. He walked one but didn’t strike out anyone, and Garman pitched hitless ball the last three innings for his fourth save.
The victory was Dues’ first of the season after three losses in four previous starts, and it earned him a spot in the Expos’ starting rotation.
Expos Manager Dick Williams said he took Dues out because “five or six innings was all we wanted from him. I don’t think he’s gone more than five, maybe six innings all season, and his elbow has been a little tender.”
“We’re in a five-man rotation,” Williams added, “and he’s in it. Right now, he’s got as strong an arm as anyone on the team.”
…”He (Dues) threw real well,” said Mets Manager Joe Torre. “He had a live fastball and a real good breaking ball, and that’s what you need. He was around the plate and ahead of the hitters most of the time, and that impressed me.”
…Dues, in his first full season with the Expos after splitting time last season with Montreal and Quebec in the Eastern League, said he knew it wouldn’t take much in the way of runs to beat New York.
“I knew the Mets weren’t a real good hitting ballclub,” he said, “and if we could get two or three runs, we’d be right in there.”
Dues’ last start was on May 28 before running into some arm troubles that sidelined him for a couple of weeks. Williams said Dues didn’t tell the club about the sore elbow at first, “and it hurt him, but he took a little cortisone and now he’s alright.”
Dues explained: “At first, I really didn’t know if it was sore or not. It just felt tight. I went to the doctor and he took a look at it and gave me some cortisone. Now it feels super.”
Hal lost his next start 1-0 on a Greg Luzinski home run,
then continued in the rotation through July. On July 8 he pitched his one
complete game of the year, a win against the Phillies, and the Trenton Evening Times said “Montreal’s
talented young righthander, Hal Dues, the kid who uttered the naughty no-no on
Ralph Kiner’s television post-game show recently in New York, let his pitching
do the talking and it quieted Phillies’ bats for an 8-1 Montreal win in the
afterpiece.” I didn’t find any more information about his television incident.
The July 15 issue of the Sporting News
featured an article on Hal:
Expos’ Dues Can Pitch…But He Can’t Hit
Rookie Hal Dues has an interesting lament, one which soon may become common because baseball has different rules for different leagues.
The righthanded Texan has been most impressive while winning a spot in the Expos’ starting rotation, despite an unexciting record. However, he feels he has let himself down at least twice because he can’t hit.
One reason he can’t hit is rather elementary. The minor leagues have adopted the designated hitter rule, which is in force in the American League, so the pitchers coming up don’t get a chance to hit.
In his first two starts since replacing Wayne Twitchell in the rotation, Dues won one and lost one. He gave up just one run in 13 innings, that in a 1-0 loss to the Phillies on June 27.
The 23-year-old Dues pitched the first six innings of the Expos’ 2-0 win at New York on June 22 when the Expos took the rubber match of a three-game series with the Mets.
“Why don’t they teach us how to hit in the minor leagues?” moaned Dues after being yanked in favor of a pinch-hitter in the seventh inning at New York.“They don’t even teach us how to bunt. I understand him (Manager Dick Williams) taking me out. I can’t hit, damn it.”
…Then, in his 1-0 loss to the Phillies on Greg Luzinski’s home run, the lack of hitting hurt him again. Gary Carter led off the seventh with a double and Larry Parrish singled.
After failing to sacrifice, Dues struck out.
“I wish I could hit,” Dues lamented again. “I’ve never been a good bunter, but what do you expect?
“All the way up through the minor leagues they had the designated hitter and I never had a bat in my hands.
“I’d like to practice, but it seems that every time we’re in Montreal, it’s raining.”Though he was 1-4 after that loss, Dues had a decent earned run average of 2.77.
Dues is heading in the direction of the team’s hard-luck ace Steve Rogers. In his last four starts, the Expos have scored four runs for Dues.
The rookie knows all about Rogers’ problems and also about his abilities.
“I’m becoming a much better pitcher just watching Rogers pitch,” Dues said. “I don’t have to ask him what he’s doing, I just watch him. He’s the best pitcher in the league. The other teams get dinky hits off him and then we don’t score.
“I know he’s the best pitcher I ever saw.”
After a start at Houston on July 24 Hal was 4-4 with a 2.17
ERA, but he had suffered a muscle tear in his elbow and pitched little after
that—four relief appearances between August 9 and 20 and a start on August 29
which didn’t go well and brought his season ERA up a bit to 2.36, still
excellent. He ended up pitching 99 innings in 25 games, 12 of them starts. But
before the season even ended both he and Steve Rogers had undergone surgery. As
reported in the Sporting News of
October 14:
Pitchers Steve Rogers and Hal Dues underwent arm surgery by Dr. Frank Jobe in Los Angeles on September 22 and both operations were reported as successful. Rogers already is taking therapy, but Dues’ operation was more complicated, and more painful, and Williams lists him as “a question mark” for next spring.
On February 10, 1979, the Sporting News reported that Hal had been in Montreal for a checkup
and had been given a clean bill of health: “Dues, who signed his contract while
in town, showed an elbow with curving scars on both sides of the limb. What
made the Texan so happy though was that he could straighten out the arm for the
first time in two years.”
From the March 3 Sporting
News:
“We’ll go along slowly with Dues,” Williams said about the Texan who climaxed two sore-armed seasons with elbow surgery in September. “Unless he shows us that he’s ready to pitch, we won’t rush him. There’s no problem with Dues. We just want to make sure that he’s sound.
“That’s something we’ll find out in the spring.”
During spring training there was speculation that Hal would
be the Expos’ fifth starter, but at the end of March he was sent to the Memphis
Chicks of the Class AA Southern League to work on getting his elbow back into
shape. He had a 4.09 ERA in 44 innings in seven starts for Memphis, then was
bumped up to the AAA Denver Bears of the American Association in late May,
where he pitched only 20 innings in five starts, with a 9.45 ERA, before being
shelved for the rest of the season. He got a mention in a September 1 Sporting News story about Expo pitcher
Dan Schatzeder:
Schatzeder struggled a little in the August 15 outing when he had to be removed after five because of tenderness in the shoulder. It seems that “Schotz” slept over at the home of injured teammate Hal Dues in nearby Dickerson, Tex. The air conditioning was on high and Schatzeder wasn’t covered properly. The shoulder muscles simply didn’t loosen up.
A UPI story that ran in papers on February 28, 1980, went:
The hard-luck Dues had his attempted comeback from major elbow surgery delayed after he was bitten by a dog while jogging near his Dickinson, Texas home Sunday. With stitches in three gashes on the back of his right knee, the 25-year-old Dues will not be in uniform until Saturday. Dues has a tough fight ahead to win a spot on the roster.
The last man to make the squad two years ago, Dues was 5-6 with an ERA of 2.36 through 99 innings, then underwent surgery in September 1978. He started in Memphis last year and moved quickly up to Denver. However, by June 14 Dues was on the disabled list and dreaming of a comeback this spring.
On March 25 it was announced that the Expos had sent him to
their minor league camp for assignment; he ended up back with Denver. After
allowing just two baserunners in a seven-inning complete game on May 9, he had
a 4-0 record and a 1.95 ERA. He then went to 5-0, but on May 20 he was relieved
after four innings due to a stiff shoulder, and on May 30 he was scratched from
a start due to shoulder soreness. He spent some time on the disabled list in
June and July, then made a few more starts before being called up to Montreal
on August 7. The Expos needed him to start the second game of a doubleheader on
August 9, then he made three relief appearances in the next two weeks before
being sent back to Denver on August 27. He lost a game at the end of the Bears’
season, finishing up 7-4 with a 3.40 ERA in 16 starts, then lost a game in the
American Association playoffs before being recalled back to Montreal. With the
Expos he made just two relief appearances in the final month of the season,
ending with a 6.57 ERA in 12.1 innings in his two stints there.
Hal signed a 1981 Montreal contract in February; it was
reported that he was fighting for the fifth starter spot, but at the end of
spring training he was optioned back to Denver.
He spent the entire season with
the Bears, spending some time on the disabled list in midseason after having
his ankle fractured by a Bobby Bonds line drive on June 7. He wound up with a
6.73 ERA in 91 innings in 20 appearances, 18 of them starts, and his control
was worse than ever before, yet he started and won the deciding games in
Denver’s first round and championship series playoff victories.
In 1982 the Expos’ AAA affiliate was switched from Denver to
Wichita, and Hal went to spring training on the Wichita roster, but in early
April he was optioned to AA Memphis, where he had played in 1979. In their May
31 issue the Sporting News ran the
following short article:
Suns Pay ‘Dues’
Memphis pitcher Hal Dues took out his frustrations on Jacksonville May 14, allowing four hits and fanning 12 en route to a 6-1 victory. The 27-year-old righthander once was one of the brightest prospects in the Montreal Expos’ organization, posting a 5-6 mark and a 2.36 earned-run average with the parent club in 1978. Since then, Dues has had elbow surgery, a sore shoulder and a broken ankle, and he thinks the Expos have given up on him. “I gotta get out of this organization,” he said. “I’ll never pitch for Montreal again. They think I’m washed up. I was going to hang ‘em up this year, but I decided to try to impress another organization by pitching well in Double A. I just wanted to get noticed and get traded or picked up by somebody else.”
He had a 4.85 ERA in 89 innings for the Chicks, but that was
good enough for him to be sent back up to Wichita on June 19. On July 16
Wichita manager Felipe Alou, who also moved over from Denver, was quoted as
saying of Hal: “When he’s in trouble, he can go with that curveball and he
didn’t do that last year.” Hal started the Aeros’ final game of the regular
season on three days’ rest, against Omaha, who trailed Wichita by one game; the
game was suspended due to rain in the 8th inning, and Omaha
eventually won the game and the one-game playoff. His Wichita stats were very
similar to those he accumulated with Memphis, and he finished with a 4.63 ERA
in 91.1 innings. On September 1 the Wichita
Eagle reported that he had talked about quitting.
Hal was one of eight non-roster players invited to the
Expos’ 1983 training camp, but on February 7 the Sporting News reported:
Righthander Hal Dues, 28, has retired. Dues was considered a super prospect when as a 23-year-old he went 5-6 with an ERA of 2.36 through 99 innings in 1978. However, his heavy sinker took a toll on the elbow. After surgery he never regained that touch.
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