Inductees

Dick Groat is a former two-sport athlete best known as a shortstop in Major League Baseball. He played for four National League teams, mainly the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals, and was named the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1960, when he won the batting title with a .325 average for the World Series champion Pirates.

From 1956 to 1962 he teamed with second baseman Bill Mazeroski to give Pittsburgh one of the game’s strongest middle infields; he led the NL in double plays a record five times, in putouts four times and in assists twice.

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 putouts (10th, 3,505), assists (8th, 5,811) and total chances (9th, 9,690).

Also an excellent basketball player, he attended Duke University, where he was a two-time All-American 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 in the NBA.

In 2011 Groat was inducted into the National College Baseball Hall of Fame, becoming the first man ever inducted into both the college basketball and college baseball halls of fame.

In November 1962, in the hope of bolstering the team’s pitching, Pirates general manager Joe L. Brown  traded Groat to the Cardinals in exchange for Don Cardwell.

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, 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 Sandy Koufax.

In 1964, Groat batted .292 for the pennant-winning Cardinals, again leading the league in assists and double plays and making his last All-Star team. In the World Series against the Yankees, he reached base on Bobby Richardson’s error in the sixth inning of Game 4, and scored on Ken Boyer’s grand slam in the 4-3 St. Louis victory. Groat also tagged out Mickey Mantle in the third inning of that game on a pickoff play.

He scored in the three-run 10th inning of Game 5, a 5-2 win, and had an RBI groundout in the final 7-5 win in Game 7.