It’s a good thing Billy Hunter was a great storyteller, because he had so many great stories to tell.

Like the time he joined the inaugural Orioles team in 1954 after the St. Louis Browns moved east and changed their name. Or when he later came back as a coach and helped guide the Orioles to win two World Series. Sometimes he talked about earning a spot in the Orioles Hall of Fame or finding a home coaching baseball at what was then Towson State University.

There were outlandish stories, too, that often came out over post-game beers — the time he got in a scuffle on the field and diagnosed himself with “little-man syndrome,” or the colorful memories he made coaching alongside Orioles legend Cal Ripken Sr. He didn’t spill everything, but he spilled enough to capture the attention of everyone around him, said Mark Clem, a friend and peer who met Hunter during his time at Towson.

“Billy was a very unique person,” Clem said. “He never outgrew who he was.”

In his final days, Hunter added one more story to his collection: At 97, he was the last surviving member of the Browns and the first Orioles team. He died July 3, the Orioles announced.

“Bill was the Orioles’ first shortstop and later spent 13 ½ seasons as the Orioles third base coach, 1964-77. He was elected to the Orioles Hall of Fame in 1996,” the team wrote on social media. “The Orioles extend their sympathies to his wife, Bev, his sons Greg and Kevin, and his four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.”

He was born Gordon William Hunter on June 4, 1928, and grew up in Pennsylvania, according to the Society for American Baseball Research. As his high school career ended, Hunter accepted a football/baseball scholarship to Pennsylvania State University, but the school at the time didn’t allow freshmen on campus, to make space for World War II veterans.

Hunter instead enrolled at Indiana State Teachers College (later Indiana University of Pennsylvania) but transferred to Penn State as a sophomore. He played for the university’s football team but knew his heart was calling him to baseball, according to the society.

The Brooklyn Dodgers invited him to spring training in 1948. He played for five seasons in the minor leagues, the last of which was so good that the manager of the Browns orchestrated a $95,000 trade with the Dodgers.

He made his major-league debut as a shortstop on April 14, 1953, and played well enough to earn a spot in the American League All-Star game that season.

When the Browns became the Orioles the next year, Hunter recalled arriving in Baltimore and noticing an immediate difference in energy. His new home was much livelier than St. Louis.

“When we got to Camden Station, we got into convertibles and made the trip from downtown out to the park. It was unbelievable,” he said in “From 33rd Street to Camden Yards,” an oral history of the team. “People were hanging out of windows. It was a big deal, like we won the war or something.”

On Opening Day, he hit a single in his first at-bat, marking the second hit in Orioles history, according to MLB.com.

He was traded to the Yankees the next year. Hunter was a reserve shortstop when the team won the World Series in 1956, meaning he never actually played a game in the series, according to the society.

He later played for the Kansas City Athletics, Cleveland Indians and San Diego Padres, then a minor league team, before retiring in 1959. He played 630 major-league games throughout his tenure, according to his death notice.

The end of his professional baseball career marked the start of his vast career in scouting, managing and coaching.

He first scouted for the Indians and Orioles. In 1963, he became Baltimore’s third-base coach, eventually leading the team through two World Series wins in 1966 and 1970.

“He was a very serious coach that made quite an impression from day one,” Rick Dempsey, the former Orioles catcher, wrote in a Facebook post. “There was the Oriole Way and no other way. There were no smiles, no pats on the back, just expectation that you would fall in line or you were gone. Billy gave some well-accepted advice and that was it.”

Hunter became manager of the Rangers in 1977, but he was abruptly fired on the second-to-last day of the following season because of a poor relationship with his players, The Telegraph Herald reported. He vowed never to coach in the majors again and headed back to Baltimore.

He was named baseball coach at Towson in 1979. Eight years later, he became the university’s athletic director, retiring in 1995. Before the turn of the century, he was inducted into three athletic halls of fame — those of the Orioles, Towson University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Hunter was a good baseball coach, but he was an excellent athletic director, former players and colleagues said.

“In talking with the other head coaches, the thing that they loved about Coach Hunter as an athletic director was that he let you do your job,” said Spiro Morekas, Towson’s play-by-play broadcaster. “He wasn’t getting in your business all the time — just follow the rules and try to be successful. If you go back and look under his athletic directorship, Towson was probably the most successful that they’ve ever been across the board at one time.”

Morekas first met Hunter as an undergraduate at Towson in the early 1980s, and he remembers him as “welcoming and easy to talk to.” And, of course, there were Hunter’s famous stories — he had a million of them, because he’d been around forever, Morekas said.

“It was just always exciting to talk with Coach Hunter,” he said. “It really was.”

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