He was once an All-American basketball participant at Duke within the early Fifties, surroundings a single-season NCAA scoring document. He went directly to play professional basketball. But Dick Groat was once most commonly referred to as one among foremost league baseball’s main shortstops of his time.
“I’m remembered as a baseball player and not by the sport I played the best,” Groat as soon as stated. “North Carolina is the one place where I’m still remembered as a basketball player.”
“I didn’t have speed, power or the greatest arm,” he informed Sports Illustrated. “Baseball was work, every day.”
Groat, who died Thursday at 92 in a Pittsburgh medical institution, carried out that task beautifully for 14 foremost league seasons. He helped take the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates to their first World Series championship in 35 years whilst successful the National League’s batting championship and Most Valuable Player Award. He anchored the infield for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964 after they received the World Series. And he was once a five-time All-Star.
Groat lacked vary at shortstop, however he was once adept at positioning himself and had fast palms, forming an excellent double-play mixture for the Pirates with 2nd baseman Bill Mazeroski, a long run Hall of Famer.
Mazeroski hit the memorable 1960 World Series-winning house run off the Yankees’ Ralph Terry. But Groat, a right-handed batter who was once professional at stroking the ball to the other box at the hit and run and seldom struck out, received the batting name with a .325 moderate. He was once the smooth-fielding captain of the Pirates, whose lineup additionally featured Roberto Clemente and Bill Virdon within the outfield and the power-hitter Dick Stuart in the beginning base.
“He makes a great play and makes it look easy,” Danny Murtaugh, the chief of the 1960 Pirates, was once quoted as pronouncing by means of Baseball Digest. “Then he comes back and plops in the dugout as if nothing has happened.”
Richard Morrow Groat was once born on Nov. 4, 1930, in Wilkinsburg, Pa., and grew up in Swissvale, close to Pittsburgh. He was once a highschool big name in baseball and basketball, which he began taking part in at age 5.
In basketball, as a 5-foot-11-inch, 180-pound guard at Duke, Groat had no hesitation about using in the course of the lane. He hit bounce pictures and was once an excellent playmaker. He was once a two-time all-American and set an NCAA major-college single-season scoring document with 831 issues as a junior within the 1950–51 season. He averaged 23 issues a sport for his 3 seasons at Duke.
Playing shortstop, he led Duke to its first College Baseball World Series look, in June 1952, then joined the Pirates, who had been in the middle of a adolescence motion orchestrated by means of their basic supervisor, Branch Rickey, who had come to Pittsburgh from the Brooklyn Dodgers.
While in highschool, Groat admired Alvin Dark, the shortstop for the 1948 pennant-winning Boston Braves. In Groat’s rookie season, Dark, taking part in for the New York Giants, gave him recommendations on easy methods to make the double play pivot.
Groat batted .284 for the 1952 Pirates, then joined the NBA’s Fort Wayne Pistons (now the Detroit Pistons), who had selected him as a first-round draft pick out. He averaged 11.9 issues a sport within the 1952–53 season however performed in handiest 26 video games whilst commuting to the Duke campus to finish his stage.
After Groat spent two years within the Army, taking part in army basketball for a part of that point, Rickey informed him that he would have to make a choice from baseball and basketball.
“I was heartbroken,” Groat stated. “Basketball was my first love.”
But he returned to the Pirates in 1955 and flourished as they become a championship workforce 5 years later.
Groat hit .319 in 1963 when he was once traded to the Cardinals, and he was once runner-up to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax as most precious participant.
With a workforce that integrated Julian Javier on 2nd, Bill White on first, Ken Boyer on 3rd, Lou Brock and Curt Flood within the outfield, Tim McCarver catching and Bob Gibson pitching brilliantly, the Cardinals defeated the Yankees within the 1964 World Series.
McCarver as soon as recalled that Groat was once a workforce chief but additionally “an antagonist.”
“He was a tough competitor,” he informed Danny Peary within the oral historical past “We Played the Game.” (1994). “You had to play it his way, ‘the right way.'”
After 3 years in St. Louis, Groat performed for the Philadelphia Phillies and the San Francisco Giants, then retired after the 1967 season with a profession batting moderate of .286 and a couple of,138 hits.
He was once an established radio analyst for the University of Pittsburgh basketball video games and a founder and proprietor of the Champion Lakes Golf Club in Ligonier, Pa.
On Tuesday of remaining week, Groat was once at his house in Edgewood, Pa., a Pittsburgh suburb, when the previous Pirates pitcher and broadcaster Steve Blass gave the impression on his doorstep with a digital camera group. They knowledgeable Groat that he were elected to the Pirates Hall of Fame, and carried out an impromptu interview.
Two days later, on his technique to watch a telecast of the interview earlier than a Pirates sport, Groat had a stroke, his daughter, Allison DeStefano, stated. He died on Thursday, she stated.
In addition to Ms. DeStefano, who manages the Champion Lakes membership, Groat is survived by means of two extra daughters, Tracey Goetz and Carol Ann Groat; six grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren. His spouse, Barbara (Womble) Groat, died in 1990.
When Groat focused on foremost league baseball and put the then-struggling National Basketball Association at the back of him, he was once opting for the pre-eminent American recreation of his time and the risk for excellent paydays. But he had a private attention as neatly.
“I confess that one reason I chose baseball over basketball was that my father didn’t like basketball,” he stated in “We Played the Game.”
“He loved baseball,” Groat added. “He threw out his arm pitching when I was just a boy, and he dreamed of having a son be a major league player.”
Alex Traub contributedreporting.