In my first book, The 10 Cent Chocolate Tub,” there is a chapter about the 1960 Major League Baseball season and how the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series on October 13, 1960. That particular Pirates team was a mixture of talent, athletic hustle and studying the opposition. The Pirates also knew their teammates strengths and weaknesses and covered for each other perhaps better than any team before or since. Infielders adjust where they play their position based on the knowledge of opposing batters tendencies and how their pitchers will pitch to each of them. Baseball is cerebral in the sense that you have to know as much as possible and use that to compensate for any weakness in your own game abilities. For example, if your pitcher throws a lot of outside and low pitches to keep a “pull hitter” off ballance, the defense will compensate by playing more to the opposite side of the field. This “cheat” means that the defense is leaning toward the direction to which they believe the batter will hit the ball. Each pitch may require and adjustment of one or two steps either way by the infielders. If a right hand batting power hitter is being pitched fast balls low and away, chances are he will not pull the ball down the left field line. Thus the second baseman and shortstop will both play 3-4 steps to their left to get a faster “jump” on getting to the ball when it’s hit in the opposite direction of what one would expect. If the next pitch signaled for is to be thrown on the inside of the plate and it’s a curve ball, the infield may shift slightly to their right a few steps. It’s a bit of a cat and mouse game. There have been some wonderfully talented athletes who have played baseball and some may have had slightly less physical abilities, but made up for it by playing their position with intelligence. Before Deion Sanders, and Bo Jackson, two rather famous “two sport” athletes there was Dick Groat. Groat retired the year Sanders was born. Injuries ended Jackson’s career very early. Here is a summary of Dick Groats career according to Wikipedia.
Richard Morrow Groat (born November 4, 1930 in Wilkinsburg a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA. He played shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates and three other teams in his career and was named as the Most Valuable Player in 1960/wiki/1960_in_baseball after winning the batting title with a .325 average. Between 1956 and 1962 he teamed with second baseman , Bill Mazeroski to give Pittsburgh one of baseball’s strongest middle infields; he led the NL in double plays a record five times, in put outs four times and twice in assists. At the end of his career he ranked ninth in major league history in games at shortstop (1,877) and fourth in double plays (1,237), and was among the NL career leaders in put-outs (10th, 3,505), assists (8th, 5,811) and total chances (9th, 9,690). Also an excellent basketball player. Twice he was named All-American at Duke and was voted as the Helms National Player of the year in 1952 after averaging 25.2 points per game. He played one season as a guard with the then, Fort Wayne Pistons. He was twice (1951 and 1952) an All-American, and was named the Helm Foundation Player of the Year in 1951 and the United Press International National Player of the Year in 1952 after setting an NCAA record with 839 points in one season. On May 1 of that year, his #10 was the first jersey to be retired in the rafters of Cameron Indoor Stadium and it remained the only jersey retired by the school until 1980. During the 1951-52 season, he scored 48 points against North Carolina, the most ever scored against the Tar Heels. He played only one season for the Pistons, 26 games with the number 5, and averaged 11.9 points 3.3 rebounds and 2.7 assists. His basketball career was cut short by military service though; when his enlistment was up, he returned to the Pirates but not to the Pistons. Groat was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball hall of Fame in 2007. Groat was signed by Pirates general manager, Branch Rickey, just days after graduating from Duke, where he had been a 2-time All-American in basketball and baseball. He led the NL in put-outs for the first time; pitcher Roy Face has noted that Groat was always in the best position for the various hitters, although he didn't have great speed or a strong arm. He batted .315 (fifth in the league) in 1957 along with a career high of 7 home runs; on September 29 of that year against the Giants, he threw out the final batter ever at the the Polo Grounds as the Giants moved to San Francisco the next year. In 1958 he again hit .300, and led the NL in put-outs and double plays as the Pirates finished in second place, the first time they had placed higher than seventh since 1949. He led the NL in put-outs and double plays again in /wiki/1959_in_baseball, and made his first of five All Star teams. In the ensuing off season he was nearly traded for Roger Maris, but the deal was canceled by manager Danny Murtaugh.
Groat responded with his best year as team captain, becoming the first Pirate to be named Most Valuable Player since Paul Waner in their last pennant year of 1927, and also the first right-handed Pirates hitter to win the batting title since Honus Wagner in 1911. He missed a few weeks late in the season after having his wrist broken by a Lew Burdette pitch on September 6, 1960.
In November 1962, in the hope of bolstering the team's pitching, general manager Joe L. Brown traded him to the Cardinals in exchange for Don Cardwell. Cardwell, while he did pitch a no hit game once, was a slightly below mediocre pitcher winning 102 games and losing 138. Groat was deeply hurt by the trade, having hoped to become a coach and eventually manager after retiring, and severed all contact with the team until a 1990 reunion of the 1960 champions. He had another outstanding year in 1963 /wiki/1963_in_baseball, finishing fourth in the league with a .319 batting average, just seven points behind champion Tommy Davis and collecting 201 hits. He also led the NL with 43 doubles, and was third with a personal high of 11 triples; he was the runner-up in the MVP voting, behind the legendary Sandy Koufax.
In a fourteen-season career, Groat compiled a .286 batting average with 2138 hits, 39 home runs, 829 runs, 707 runs batted in, 352 doubles and 14 stolen bases in 1,929 games.
The true measure of Dick Groat is not his athletic ability, nor his statistics in record books. It is how he treats people, his openness with the public and his ability to make everyone welcome. Groat was and is a realist about himself, his accomplishments and is truly a humble man. We met in the 1970s when Dick became the radio broadcast color analyst for the University of Pittsburgh Panthers mens basketball team. At the company Christmas dinner we ended up sitting next to each other, along with our wives, both named Barbara.
That evening I told Dick, “ I hate to say this, because Im sure you hear it a lot but when I was a kid, you were one of my baseball heroes.”
His reply was, “Thanks Mike, just so you know, we listen to your radio show every night when we set the clock radio in bed and you are one of our favorites.”
Thus began our friendship. When I returned to Pittsburgh, in December of 2002, after many years away and not broadcasting here, one of the first phone calls I answered in the studio was from, you guessed it, Dick Groat.
Groat, “ Michael where have you been? It’s great to hear you one the air again. I’ve missed you ”
On April 5, 2011, after a year of trying to schedule it, Dick and I met at a local watering hole,
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