DICK GROAT

By Marshall Adesman

Stats from www.baseball-reference.com

Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, North Carolina is one of the great places in America to watch a college basketball game. It is small, seating fewer than 10,00 people, and cozy, with the rabid students just a few feet away from the playing court. And oh yeah, the basketball is generally pretty good, too. Just look up, where nine retired jerseys are hanging from the rafters, a constant reminder of what that building has seen and expects to keep seeing. 

Fans are familiar with most of those jerseys ­ Christian Laettner's #32, Grant Hill's #33, Shane Battier's #31 ­ but many of them are not familiar with #10. It turns out that this was the very first one to be retired, way back in 1952. The fellow who wore it was a two-time Southern Conference Player of the Year (the Southern Conference was a forerunner to today's Atlantic Coast Conference) and the national Player of the Year in 1951. As you might expect, he was a first-round NBA draft pick, but played just one professional season. Why? Dick Groat concluded he wanted to play major league baseball instead.  

In 1952, he must have wondered if he had made the right decision, or if he had even landed in the majors. The Pittsburgh Pirates were a woeful collection of mostly mediocre journeymen who, despite the presence of slugger Ralph Kiner, could only manage around three runs per game. Staff ace Murry Dickson won 14 games but also lost 21, one of four Pirate pitchers who lost twelve or more games. When the season mercifully came to an end, the Bucs were 42-112, a winning percentage of just .273. They not only finished 54 1/2 games behind the pennant-winning Brooklyn Dodgers, they also finished 22 1/2 games behind the team immediately in front of them! That was one terrible baseball team ­ long-time humorist and broadcaster Joe Garagiola, who was the team's regular catcher, wrote that the team "lost ten out of the first fourteen and then had a slump."  

The legendary Branch Rickey was running things in Pittsburgh then, and he brought in Dick Groat to play shortstop, along with several other young players, to help change the fortunes of a franchise that had not appeared in a World Series since 1927. Players such as Roberto Clemente, Bill Mazeroski and Bob Skinner helped to make the lineup more potent; pitchers such as Vern Law, Bob Friend and Elroy Face helped to make the pitching a little more effective. By 1958 they were actually in the pennant race before settling for second place, the franchise's best since 1944. 

By this time Groat was the established team leader. His .315 average placed fifth in the league in 1957 (the four ahead of him were guys named Musial, Mays, Aaron and Frank Robinson) and he followed that up with a solid .300 in 1958. Primarily batting out of the second slot, Groat specialized in making contact. Though he had very little power (just 39 career home runs), he annually drove in 50-70 runs. Defensively he was neither fast nor particularly quick, but knew how to get himself into the proper position to field the ball and throw the man out at first. Gene Mauch once stated "he holds the Pirates together," and that was never more apparent than in 1960.  

Led by Groat, the Pirates won twelve of the season's first fifteen games, then picked up a key southpaw, Wilmer "Vinegar Bend" Mizell, who brought balance to the starting rotation. Offensively, they won 23 games in their final at-bat, twelve of them when they were just one out away from defeat, and they won their first pennant since 1927. Despite missing a couple of weeks in September when his hand was broken by a pitch, Groat won the batting crown with a .325 average, which led to his later selection as the National League's Most Valuable Player.  

The World Series of 1960 is still discussed today. The Pirates were considered no match for Casey Stengel's Yankees, and if you look at the numbers, the pundits were certainly correct. In the seven-game series the Yankees batted a collective .338, scoring 55 runs on 91 hits, 27 of them for extra bases (including ten home runs), and 142 total bases ­ all World Series marks that still stand. The Pirates scored 27 runs on 60 hits, and had 15 extra-base hits; their team ERA was an astounding 7.11, and in five of the seven games they allowed the Yankees ten or more hits. But the Pirates won in seven games because, trailing two games to one, their hitters delivered in the clutch. The Yankees won three blowouts but the Pirates won the close ones and the Series. 

Two years later Groat was traded to St. Louis, and in 1963 he enjoyed his best overall season, batting .319 (third in the league) with 201 hits (second), 43 doubles (first), eleven triples (third) and a career-high 73 RBI. His Cardinals battled the Dodgers for first place until very late in the season, and for his efforts Groat almost won his second MVP award, finishing just behind Sandy Koufax. The next year proved to be even more satisfying, as the Cardinals emerged from a four-team scrum on the season's final day to win the pennant, then defeated the Yankees in seven games to claim the World Championship, making Groat a two-time winner. When he hung them up three years later, he had a lifetime average of .286 and had amassed over 2100 hits in a career that was never flashy but was consistently solid, productive and professional.