Lefty Grove- 300 Game Winner
Although he mellowed as he grew older, the tales of Lefty Grove’s temper are many. Suffice to say that Lefty Grove hated to lose, illustrated by the fact that he never forgave outfielder Al Simmons for missing the game in which Lefty Grove could have tied the American League record for consecutives win at seventeen. Simmons took the day off to go see a doctor, and when his replacement misjudged a fly ball into a game winning hit, Lefty Grove never cut Simmons any slack for as long as he lived. When Lefty Grove did finally get his temper in check and his wicked fastball under control, he was virtually unbeatable.
Lefty Grove began his pro career with the minor league Baltimore Orioles, owned by Jack Dunn, the same fellow who had discovered Babe Ruth. As the Orioles were unaffiliated with any major league team, Dunn kept Lefty Grove in Baltimore until the right offer from one of them came along. At the age of twenty in 1920, Lefty Grove went 12-2 for Baltimore; over the next four seasons he would run his minor league mark to an astounding 109-36. Finally, Connie Mack, owner of the Philadelphia Athletics, bought Lefty Grove for the then huge sum of $106,000, the most ever paid for a player at that time. Lefty Grove had some trouble at first adjusting to the major leagues. That, and arm trouble, caused him to go 10-13 his rookie year of 1925 despite leading the league in strikeouts with 116, which was eight more than Walter Johnson rang up.
Lefty Grove finished at .500, 13-13, in 1926 and won the first of his record nine earned run average titles with a 2.51 standard. The following season he won twenty games for the first time. It would not be the last time Lefty Grove reached that number. In all, Lefty Grove won at least twenty contests in a year a total of seven times, with a thirty one win season in 1931. From 1928 through the 1931 season, Lefty Grove went a mind-numbing 108-23! The A’s won the AL pennant in ’29, ’30, and ’31 and the World Series in ’29 and ’30. His 1931 campaign, in which Lefty grove went 31-4, is arguably the best ever had by a major league pitcher. This was at a time when the ball had been juiced to bring fans to the park during the start of the Depression, yet Lefty Grove’s ERA was 2.06 and he led the AL in wins, won-loss percentage, strikeouts, complete games, shutouts, ERA, and a host of other categories. Lefty Grove was named the American League MVP in 1931, only the second hurler to win the award, Walter Johnson having done it twice.
The A’s lost the 1931 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games that year, despite Lefty Grove winning games one and six. The A’s placed second to the Yankees in 1932 and then to the Senators in 1933 and as the Great Depression tightened its noose around Connie Mack he began to sell off his stars for cash. Lefty Grove was sent to the Red Sox at the age of 34 in 1934, but he was basically damaged goods. An arm injury ended his streak of wonderful seasons, and Lefty Grove finished 1934 at 8-8. He had to learn how to pitch by guile instead of overpowering batters, and he did it well enough to post one more twenty win year in 1935, followed by several more strong seasons. Lefty Grove’s Red Sox record was 105-62, as his starts decreased as he aged. His winning percentage of .680 currently ranks Lefty Grove ninth all-time, but none of the pitchers ahead of him on that roster have 300 wins.
As good as Lefty Grove was as a pitcher is how bad he was as a hitter. He struck out 593 times in his 1396 at-bats, hitting only .148 lifetime. But he was not being paid to hit. Lefty Grove, who was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1947, passed away in 1975. Of the man who led the American League in strikeout seven years in a row, fellow Hall of Fame member Charlie Gehringer once said, “His fastball was so fast that by the time you’d made up your mind whether it would be a strike or not, it just wasn’t there anymore.”
