To Absent Friends - Dick Groat

"Who is the greatest athlete to ever come out of (insert name of city/state/region here)?" is always a popular sports talk show gambit whenever no one is calling in.   If you play that game in reference to the Pittsburgh area, the name of Dick Groat, who died yesterday at the age of 92, comes up pretty quickly.

A two sport athlete from Swissvale, PA, Groat was an All-American basketball and baseball player at Duke University.  His Number 10 basketball jersey was the first number retired by Duke, and he is still revered by the folks in Durham.  He led the nation in scoring and assists and was the third overall selection in the NBA draft after his senior year.   He played one year for the Fort Wayne Pistons in he NBA before concentrating on his baseball career, a career that would last for fourteen seasons and include 2,138 hits, an MVP Award, a National League batting title, five All-Star designations, and being a key member of two World Series winning teams, the 1960 Pirates and the 1964 Cardinals.  He is a member of both the College Baseball and Basketball Halls of Fame.

He was, of course, the shortstop and team Captain of Pittsburgh's most remembered and beloved team, the 1960 Pirates.   It was that season when Groat won the batting title and was named the National League's Most Valuable Player.   Second baseman Bill Mazeroski is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, primarily because he is often conceded to be the greatest defensive second baseman ever, but for the first half of his career, someone was partnering with Maz at short on all of those jaw-dropping double plays, and that someone was Dick Groat.

Groat's leadership and contributions to that magical season were recognized on a national level, too, as this Sports Illustrated  cover shows.

Of course, you have to be of a "certain age" to remember Groat as a baseball player, and most people in western Pennsylvania know of Groat today as the longtime color analyst on the radio broadcasts for Pitt basketball games, and job he held for forty (!!) years.  Also, back in the 1960's, he and former Bucs teammate Jerry Lynch built and opened Champion Lakes Golf Course near Ligoner, a course that remains to this day one of the finest public golf courses in southwest Pennsylvania.

Groat's was, as Pirates owner Bob Nutting said in the paper today, "A life well lived."

I can remember chatting with Groat on several occasions as he took my money at the pro shop cash register.  I can also remember a SABR meeting in Pittsburgh back in the mid 2010's when Groat was the guest speaker.  He was astonished when the crowd there gave him a standing ovation when he entered.  It was a well deserved reception, and his humility on that occasion was striking.  

Groat was last seen just last week in a video when Steve Blass informed him that he would be inducted in this year's class of the Pirates Hall of Fame.  He appeared to be very frail both physically and in his speech, so I suppose that yesterday's news of his passing doesn't come as a surprise. Still, the passing of one of the sporting heroes of your youth always hits hard.  

As I always do on such occasions, I report that Groat's death leaves only six members of the 1960 World Series roster for the Pirates with us, Joe Christopher, Roy Face, Vernon Law, Bill Mazeroski, Bob Oldis, and Bob Skinner.  All but Maz, who will turn 87 in September, are in their nineties, now.  Which of this sporting tontine will be the one to open that figurative  bottle of champagne?

Linda and I were at the Pirates-Dodgers game yesterday afternoon, where the Pirates recognized this sad occasion.

RIP Dick Groat.

Pirates Short Stops

At the monthly breakfast of the Gang of Four yesterday, the following questions came up:

Who is the best Pirates short stop in our lifetimes, and does Jordy Mercer belong in the discussion?

We all know that any discussion of Pirates short stops starts and stops with Honus Wagner, hence the "in our lifetime" imitation.  Since the personal knowledge of the Pirates among our group goes back to the late 1950's, we narrowed down which guys played the most at the Number 6 position, so it was time to open up a spreadsheet:

	Seasons with Pirates	BA	Hits	Runs	Home Runs	Runs Batted In	OPS
Dick Groat	9	0.290	1,435	554	39	707	0.696
Gene Alley	11	0.254	999	442	55	342	0.665
Jay Bell	8	0.269	1,124	623	78	423	0.741
Frank Taveras	8	0.253	626	310	1	310	0.615
Jack Wilson	9	0.269	1,158	508	60	389	0.687
Jordy Mercer	5	0.262	377	146	25	146	0.694
Per Season:
Groat			159	62	4	79
Alley			91	40	5	31
Bell			141	78	10	53
Taveras			78	39	< 1	39
Wilson			129	56	7	43
Mercer			75	29	5	29
	Mercer’s stats are through May 21, 2016

A couple of limitations to my research:

• This takes into account only offensive numbers.  I don't have the smarts to ranks modern day defensive metrics for these guys.
• The "average per season" figures could tend to short change guys.  For example, Mercer played only 42 games in his first season, 2012, and has played only 41 games so far this season.  There are similar patterns for some of the other guys.
• Only the players' seasons with the Pirates are considered.
• Overall career numbers may flatten out a guy's performance.  I am thinking mainly of Gene Alley, injuries curtailed what could have been a bright career, but from 1966-68, he was arguable the best SS in the game.
• I never would have guessed that Frank Taveras was with the Pirates for eight seasons!

Okay, all that said, here is what jumps out at me:

1. I was surprised at Groat's run production.  His 707 RBI (79 per season) is far above anyone else on the list.
2. Similarly, I didn't recall what a run producer Jay Bell was, and his OPS was significantly higher that any of the others.
3. Jack Wilson was a much better player that we may have given him credit. Would you have guessed that until two nights ago, he held he record for most hits in PNC Park?  I wouldn't have.  Nor would I have guessed that he hit 60 HRs as a Pirate. The fact that Wilson played almost exclusively for lousy Pirates teams no doubt diminishes him in our memories. 
4. And while this is completely subjective, it seems to me that every time I went to a Pirate game when Wilson was playing, he always seemed to make a play in the field that made you where you said "I can't believe he made that play."

So, my Top three Pirates Short Stops In My Lifetime are:

#3 - Jack Wilson

#2 - Jay Bell

#1 - Dick Groat

(NOTE: On any given day, I could reverse the positions of Bell and Wilson on my list.)

As to the second part of the question, "Does Jordy Mercer belong in the discussion?", I would say that no, he does not, but only because it is too soon to say. He seems to be getting better each season, so perhaps the question should be revisited in a couple of years.  Of course, in recent years, the Pirates have invested Number One draft picks in short stops Cole Tucker and Kevin Newman, so who knows how long Mercer's tenure will be with the Pirates.

Agree, disagree, or any other thoughts?

"Unbroken", Stan the Man, Bob Nutting, and Dick Groat

It has been awhile since I have checked in, so here goes an extended version of The Grandstander for today.

Let's start with a book, Laura Hillenbrand's #1 bestseller, "Unbroken." I just finished reading the incredible story of Louis Zamperini. Zamperini was a young member of the 1936 American Olympic track team in Berlin, who was looking to be right on track, no pun intended, to win a gold medal for the USA in the 1500 Meter race in the 1940 Olympics that were scheduled to be in Tokyo.

Of course, WWII intervened and those Olympics never took place. Zamperini enlisted in the Army Air Corps and therein lies an amazing story. In 1943, Louie's plane crashed over the Pacific, he survived for 47 days floating in a raft in the ocean, was captured by the Japanese and then spent two and one-half years in several POW camps.

It is a most compelling story of perseverance and the triumph of the human spirit, and an incredibly sad and depressing story of man's inhumanity to man. At times while reading the book, I felt like I couldn't take much more of this story, but in the end, you are in awe of what Zamperini and his fellow POW's withstood.

Not to give too much away, but here is one statistic that will give you some idea of this. In WWII, 1 in 100 American POW's held in Germany and Italy died. Of the Americans held as POW's in Japanese camps, 1 in 3 died.

No doubt, this is an important and worthwhile book, but Hillenbrand's book of a few years back, "Seabiscuit", was a lot more fun to read.

******

Last week President Obama awarded the nation's highest civilian award to 15 Americans, including two athletes, Bill Russell and Stan Musial. Hard to dispute either award, and I will focus only on Musial today.

Go to a baseball encyclopedia of any online baseball reference and look at the lifetime stats for Stan Musial. When great players of his era are mentioned, the names of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio are always brought up, but rarely do you hear Stan the Man's name in the same conversations. Why is that?

Over the course of a career that lasted 22 seasons, Musial put together 475 HR, 1,951 RBI, and a .331 lifetime BA, 3,630 hits, and seven NL batting titles. Six times he recorded an OPS in excess of 1.000, and seven other times an OPS of .900 or more. Over those 22 seasons, he averaged 86 walks a year and only 37 strike outs. In fact, in only three seasons did he strike out over 40 times, and two of those seasons were his final ones, 1962 and 1963, when he was 41 and 42 years old. And to add some perspective, in that '61 season, at age 41, Stan hit .330 with 19 HR and 82 RBI.

Of course, Stan never had a "signature event" like Williams .406 average or DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak, so perhaps that is why he gets lost in history, but what a shame that is.

How can you not say that Musial is not one of the top ten players of all time?

*****

News came from Bradenton yesterday that Pirates owner Bob Nutting addressed the team. This is the year, Bob said, where things will change....merely being "good" is not enough....the only acceptable goal will be the National League Championship. I also believe that

the old Nutting buzzword, "accountability" was also tossed out there. Yawn.

We've sure heard this song and dance before haven't we?

I don't believe that any mention was made that the Bucs will open the season with a payroll in the bottom five (if not the bottom one or two) of MLB. This has been another hallmark of the Nutting Era.

*****

I know that Dick Groat is considered by many to be a hallowed institution here in Pittsburgh. After all, Dick Vitale always has the ESPN cameras pan in on him while he, Vitale, sings his praises whenever the four letter network is televising a Pitt game. So, at the risk of committing a mortal sin, I have to say that listening to Groat in the closing moments of Pitt's loss to St. John's while out running errands on Saturday was high comedy. Oh, the foolish turnovers, oh, the fouling of St. John's best free throw shooters, and, of course, the jobbing of Pitt by the officials. I thought old Richard Morrow Groat was going to start weeping at any moment during those final three minutes when Pitt was unable to make a basket. Even the biggest homer announcer of all, Bourbon -Nose Billy Hillgrove, was a model of journalistic comportment by comparison.