Former Expos and Blue Jays employee Durso preferred to be reclusive figure

Not surprisingly, it’s difficult to find a photo of former Montreal Expos director of team travel, Peter Durso, but you can find his name listed in the executive directory in the 1981 Montreal Expos media guide.

December 2, 2020

By Danny Gallagher

Canadian Baseball Network

You can't fault someone if they choose to be a recluse.

That appears to what happened with Peter Durso, a former travelling secretary with the Expos and the Blue Jays director of promotions from 1977-79.

I just noticed online several days ago that Durso, a lifelong bachelor, died 15 months ago in Locust Valley, N.Y. at the age of 68. No cause of death was given. His passing in August of 2019 went largely unnoticed. To the average reader, he wasn't a household name but certainly an important behind-the-scenes employee with the Expos during two different tours.

Valued background people like Durso help make organizations run smooth and bump-free. They are like part-time players who don't receive enough credit for what they bring to an organization. Their support of the main cast is often overlooked. Durso tried to make travelling for players, coaches and managers and non-uniformed employees as easy as possible.

Durso had been employed by the Expos for part of the 1970s before going to the Jays in their first three seasons of operation but he returned to the Expos in 1980 to become their travelling secretary, replacing Gene Kirby, who was appointed assistant general manager. Durso later handled the same duties for the Chicago Cubs and Colorado Rockies.

Durso was very close with former Expos player/executive Bob Gebhard, the Rockies first general manager, who hired Durso when Colorado became an expansion franchise in 1993. Gebhard, though, told me in 2017 that Durso "had disappeared'' and that he had-had no communication with Durso since 1997.

Larry Parrish, Ray Burris and trainer Ron McClain were among a group of former Expos personnel who told me this week that they weren't aware that Durso had died. That's how secluded and reclusive Durso had become for close to 25 years. Even when he stayed in hotels with the Expos on the road, he was known not to go anywhere unless he was able to walk to where he was going.

I didn't know Durso but I knew of him. I sent him a postal letter a few years ago at his residence near Long Island, N.Y. to get comments for a book I was writing but I never heard back from him.

His online obituary said he had been a "long-time employee'' of the Creek Club, a fancy golf club located on Long Island's Gold Coast about 35 miles from New York City and was "previously employed by several Major League Baseball teams" as their travelling secretary.

"Good guy. Dedicated to his position. Always on call for players or management,'' McClain said in an interview. "He ran the whole show when it came to planes, hotels, buses, trains, luggage problems and player-family travel.

"Gene Kirby loved him. I hate to hear about this but he would not contact anyone in baseball for years. I have not ever heard of anyone who had heard from him for years.''

Durso was the son of the late Joseph Durso, a highly respected sports reporter for the New York Times and J.G. Taylor Spink award winner in 1995.

Danny Gallagher's Expos book Always Remembered is available at Indigo and Amazon at discounted prices throughout the holiday season.