Dick Groat does not have the fame of Bill Mazeroski, the immortality of Roberto Clemente, or the legend of Willie Stargell. Nevertheless, he was a mainstay of the Pittsburgh Pirates for a majority of his major league career, which spanned 1952 to 1967.
In the October 1, 1952 edition of the Sporting News, Les Biederman honored the rookie shortstop’s special relationship with the city. “Of all the bonus babies the Pirates scouted, signed and put into major league uniforms during the first two years of the Branch Rickey regime, the one standout has been Dick Groat, Pittsburgh native who leaped from the Duke University campus right to the Big Time in June,” wrote Biderman. “Groat had a choice of many teams when he completed his baseball curriculum at the North Carolina breeding grounds, but now admits he chose well when he picked the Bucs.”
Groat’s best year was 1960, the year that the Pirates beat the Yankees in the World Series; with a .325 batting average, Groat won the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award. In his career, Groat compiled 2,138 hits and achieved a .268 batting average.
Though Groat displayed solidity in baseball, he might have had a career in basketball; at Duke, Groat was an All-American in both sports. In a 2014 article for the magazine GoDuke, Groat explained, “Baseball was always like work for me. Basketball was the sport that I loved, but it was baseball, where I knew I would make a living. I made a deal with Mr. Rickey (Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates at that time). I was a junior at Duke. I went home and worked out for the Pirates in the summer before I went back to Duke. After I had worked out he invited my mother and father to come to a game at Forbes Field where the Pirates played. I was sitting in his booth and he turned to me, remember I am only 20, I’m still a minor, he says to me, ‘Young man, if you will sign a contract tonight, I’m going [to] start you against the Cincinnati Reds tomorrow night.’
“I said, ‘Mr. Rickey that’s not even fair. You know I want to play major league baseball [sic], but I owe my senior year to Duke and I am going back to play basketball and baseball. But I promise you, you make the same offer to me next spring and I will sign with the Pittsburgh Pirates.'”
Rickey relented.
After the 1962 season, the Pirates traded Groat to the Cardinals, where he became a vital part of the team’s infield. In a 1963 Sports Illustrated article, Walter Bingham wrote, “Groat, still the same deadly opposite-field hitter he was when he won the National League batting title in 1960, uses a log for a bat and merely slaps the ball wherever it is pitched. While [Cardinals manager Johnny] Keane admires Groat’s uncanny ability at performing the hit-and-run, he feels that Groat too often gives himself up to protect the runner. ‘He’s too good a hitter to be sacrificing himself.'”
Groat added another World Series championship to his résumé in 1964, when the Cardinals beat the Yankees in seven games.
After three season with the Cardinals, Groat played for the Phillies and the Giants—1967 was his last season.
In 2007, the College Basketball Hall of Fame inducted Groat. Four years later, the College Baseball Hall of Fame followed suit. Groat, like many athletes, pursued a broadcasting career after his playing days, but he did not join the ranks of Bill White, Tom Seaver, Keith Hernandez et al. Rather, Groat went back to his first love—he provides the color commentary for the radio broadcasts of the University of Pittsburgh Panthers men’s basketball games.
A version of this article appeared on www.thesportspost.com on December 25, 2015.