Dick Groat died today. He was 92 years old. I never saw Groat play basketball; I’m not that old. And I never saw him play baseball in person. But I saw him play on TV. A lot. Including twice when he helped his team beat my beloved Yankees in the World Series.
Technically, Groat wasn’t Duke’s first basketball All-America. That distinction goes to Bill Werber, at least in Duke’s telling. Werber was one of 11 players named to the 1930 All-America team by the Christy Walsh Syndicate.
Walsh was best known for being Babe Ruth’s agent. We don’t have much in the way of stats for 1930 but Duke went 18-2 in 1930 under Eddie Cameron, so someone was doing something right.
As an aside, that 1930 All-America team also included Purdue’s John Wooden and Indiana’s Branch McCracken, both of whom became coaches of some distinction.
And, of course, Werber also had a long and distinguished major league baseball career.
Groat grew up in Pittsburgh. Not surprisingly he was a pretty big deal in the Pitt prep scene. Pitt coach Doc Carlson coached at Pitt for 31 years, is a member of the Naismith Hall of Fame and won one of those long after-the-fact Helms titles, 1928.
But Carlson wasn’t all that fond of that new-fangled fastbreak basketball and Groat excelled in the uptempo game. And Duke had a great baseball program and hoops coach Gerry Gerard and baseball coach Jack Coombs were more than happy to share the talents of an athlete as gifted as Dick Groat.
There was one other thing. Duke Indoor Stadium.
I wrote a lengthy profile of Groat for Basketball Times magazine back in 2007 upon Groat’s selection for the College Basketball Hall of Fame and I’m going to borrow liberally from that article for quotes.
“I had never seen anything like it,” Groat told me, recalling the first time he saw Duke Indoor Stadium. “I fell in love with it the first time I saw it and I never stopped. I used to get chills standing there in line to get my class schedule so you can imagine how I felt playing there.”
Groat only played 19 games as a sophomore (1949-’50) before being suspended for plagiarism.
He owned the mistake. He cut corners, got caught and did his time.
He didn’t do it alone. Groat had averaged 14.5 points per game, pretty good but not jersey-in-the-rafters good. He set about improving. Duke head coach Gerry Gerard had terminal cancer and Duke wanted to have a replacement in hand when the time came.
Duke didn’t have an assistant coach at the time--few programs did--so they hired a recently fired NBA coach named Red Auerbach and parked him in the P.E. department.
Auerbach didn’t last long at Duke. He was uncomfortable waiting for Gerard’s failing health to provide him a job and he left after a few months.
And yes, he had some success after leaving Duke.
But while he was at Duke Auerbach helped Groat develop a jump shot and taught him all the tricks of the NBA trade.
Groat told me that Auerbach was the “greatest teacher I’ve ever been associated with. We went one-on-one every day for months. He taught me lots of little tricks. It was hard work but it gave me a huge advantage.”
Groat was returned to the school’s good graces at the beginning of his junior year and quickly established himself as one of the nation’s top players.
Gerard had retired by then; he passed away on January 17, 1951.
He was replaced by Harold Bradley, whose fast-break style was perfectly suited to Groat’s game.
Groat was a modest 5-11 and wasn’t super quick; he only stole 14 bases in a 14-year major league career. But he had great hand-eye coordination, a high basketball IQ and was always in attack mode.
“I wasn’t very fast,” he told me “but I had a real quick first two steps. Sometimes, in basketball, two steps is all you need.”
And he never got tired. Teammate Rudy Lacy told me “Bradley emphasized the fast break. We didn’t have much of a half-court offense. We’d set picks for each other and wait for something to develop. Dick was the one guy who could create. Bradley would play 8-10 men, substituting frequently to keep fresh players in. But Dick never came out. He just didn’t get tired.”
When he wasn’t playing games, he was finding other ways to get on the court.
Groat set up scrimmages with his teammates, outlasted them all and stayed on the court when everyone else had given up.
“I had a deal with the maintenance man at Duke to let me stay while the gym was supposed to be closed. An hour by myself, night after night, shooting and dribbling. It all adds up.”
Groat averaged 25.2 points per game as a junior. No other Blue Devil averaged more than 8.3 points per game.
On December 30, 1950 Duke played Tulane in the Dixie Classic. Tulane led 54-22 late in the first half, 56-27 at intermission.
Groat led what might be the greatest comeback in college basketball history. He scored 24 points in the second half, making one big shot after another as Duke surged from behind for a 74-72 win. A few teams have overcome bigger deficits than 32 points since then but all had the benefit of a shot clock and a 3-point shot, both of which were decades in the future in 1950.
He was even better as a senior. He scored 40 or more points three times that season. He and J.J. Redick are the only Blue Devils to have three 40-point games. Groat scored 48 points in his final home game, a 94-64 win over North Carolina. This lasted as a school record until Danny Ferry scored 58 in his senior season and it still ranks second in Duke annals.
Groat ended the season at 26.0 points per game. Only Bob Verga in 1967 and Redick in 2006 have surpassed that in a Duke uniform.
Groat was second-team AP All-America in 1951 and first-team in 1952. He was Helms Foundation national player of the year in 1951 and UPI player of the year in 1952. His 23.0 career scoring average ranks second in Duke history, trailing only Art Heyman’s 25.1. Duke went 24-6 in 1952, a school record for wins that lasted until 1963.
Despite Groat’s brilliance Duke could never get past Everett Case’s NC State Wolfpack when it counted. Duke made the title game in the Southern Conference Tournament in both 1951 and 1952 but lost both times to State, despite Groat’s 31 points in 1951.
Despite that runner-up status Groat was named tournament MVP both years.
Of course, when basketball ended, Groat hit the diamond. Duke won the Southern Conference title in 1951 and 1952 and advanced to the College World Series in 1952. Groat was first-team All-America at shortstop. Interestingly, Duke had another All-American, first baseman Bill Werber, Jr.
Groat batted .386 in 1951 and .370 in 1952.
Duke beat Oregon State 18-7 to open the 1952 CWS but fell to Penn State 12-7 and 5-1 to Western Michigan.
That loss to Western Michigan ended Groat’s athletic career at Duke. But Duke received an indirect benefit for years to come. I had a conversation once with Bernie Janicki, a native of Ambridge, Pa. Janicki came to Duke two seasons after Groat and told me that he and many other natives of that state thought that if Duke was good enough for Dick Groat, it was good enough for them. Bradley benefited from such Keystone Staters as Janicki, Ronnie Mayer, Joe Belmont, Rudy D’Emilio, Paul Schmidt and Doug Kistler.
Groat tried to play basketball and baseball professionally. The talent certainly was there. He averaged 11.9 points per game in 26 games for Fort Wayne in 1952-’53. He also played 95 games for the Pittsburgh Pirates, straight out of Duke.
Why only 26 games? Well, those were weekend games. Groat was coming back to Duke during the week to finish up his degree.
For those of you keeping score at home, in the 1952 calendar year Dick Groat was a basketball All-American, a baseball All-American, a major league player and an NBA player.
The United States Army then grabbed Groat for two years. When he got out Pirates GM Branch Rickey told Groat that the Pirates didn’t really have much use for part-time players.
Groat took the hint and gave up hoops.
“I stopped playing basketball,” he told me. “It was my biggest disappointment.”
Of course, baseball worked out pretty well. Groat didn’t have much power and was an ordinary defender. But he batted over .300 four times and was named an all-star five times. He led the National League with a .325 batting average in 1960 and was named NL MVP. That was the year Bill Mazeroski homered off Ralph Terry in the ninth inning of game seven of the Fall Classic.
Pittsburgh thought they had Groat’s replacement in a career mediocrity named Dick Schofield and traded the 31-year old Groat to the Cardinals following the 1962 season. Groat batted .319 in 1963 and led the NL with 43 doubles and finished second in the MVP voting, trailing only Sandy Koufax and finishing ahead of Willie Mays and Hank Aaron at their peaks.
Groat’s last hurrah was 1964, when he batted .292 for a Cardinals team than captured the World Series in seven games, again against the Yankees.
Groat finished up his career with the Phillies and the Giants, before retiring after the 1967 season, with a .286 batting average and 2,138 hits. And remember, he lost two seasons to the military.
He added a third sport after retirement, getting into golf course ownership and management back in Pittsburgh. And, of course, he was a member of the Pitt men’s basketball radio network for four decades.
Groat is a member of the college basketball, college baseball and Duke athletics halls of fame, among others.
He checked a lot of boxes in a life well led. But he made it clear to me where his allegiance laid.
“Basketball is the greatest game in the world. It’s something special. It always was my favorite sport. Nobody remembers that I played basketball except in North Carolina. But basketball was always my first love and I always felt I was better in basketball.”
I hope to get something up about spring football this weekend.
Amazing career and great tribute! RIP Dick Groat