An Appreciation of Jim "Mudcat" Grant, 1935-2021

 

Jim "Mudcat" Grant, firing one in there for the Minnesota Twins.

Jim "Mudcat" Grant, 1935-2021.

Jim “Mudcat” Grant died on June 11, 2021. I never met Mudcat, but he’s always been an important player in the history of the Minnesota Twins. I saw Grant a couple of times, at a reunion of the 1965 Twins in 2005, and at Harmon Killebrew’s memorial service at Target Field in 2011. It was clear that he had a larger-than-life personality, and a charisma that drew people to him.

Mudcat Grant only pitched for the Twins for 3 full seasons, and half of a 4^th, but he’ll always be remembered for his 1965 season, in which he led the American League in wins with 21, and led the league with 6 shutouts. Grant also started 3 games of the 1965 World Series against the Dodgers. In Game 1, in Minnesota, Grant outdueled future Hall of Famer Don Drysdale. (Sandy Koufax famously didn’t start Game 1 because it fell on Yom Kippur.) Drysdale was knocked out of the game in the 3^rd inning, while Grant went the distance, holding the Dodgers to 10 hits and just 2 runs. Game 4 was a rematch of Grant versus Drysdale, this time in Los Angeles. Drysdale emerged the victor, as he pitched a complete game, held the Twins to just 5 hits and 2 runs, and struck out 11. Grant lasted 5 innings and gave up 5 runs. With the Twins down 3 games to 2, Grant came up big in Game 6. On just 2 days’ rest, he pitched a complete game gem, holding the Dodgers to a measly 6 hits and 1 run. In the bottom of the 6^th, with the Twins up 2-0, Bob Allison walked and then stole second base. With first base now open, the Dodgers intentionally walked Frank Quilici, to bring Grant to the plate with 2 outs. Grant made the Dodgers pay, launching a 3-run homer to left-center field. The Series would go to a Game 7. Unfortunately, the Twins had to face Sandy Koufax in Game 7. Working on just 2 days’ rest, Koufax threw his second shutout of the Series, striking out 10 Twins, even though over the last few innings Koufax’s curveball wasn’t working and he was only throwing fastballs.

After the 1967 season, the Twins traded Grant to the Dodgers. Grant pitched all of 1968 for the Dodgers, and then bounced from the expansion Expos to the Cardinals, to the A’s, the Pirates, and then the A’s again. Grant was very effective pitching in relief for the A’s and Pirates in 1970 and 1971, but he was released by the A’s after the 1971 season ended. Grant’s career record was 145-119, with a 3.63 ERA, 18 shutouts and 54 saves.

I knew that Grant won 21 games for the 1965 Twins, but until I read his obituaries, I had forgotten that he was the first Black pitcher to win 20 games in the American League. I thought “That’s a really cool fact.” And then I thought about it more, and it hit me: that was 18 years after Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball. 1965 was the 19^th season played since both leagues integrated in 1947, and it took that long for a Black pitcher to win 20 games in the American League. That’s a very long time.

I’ve known for a long time that the National League was much quicker to embrace Black and Latin players than the American League. This is one of the reasons why the National League crushed the American League in the All-Star Game from 1950-1987, going 33-8-1 over that span. And I’ve known for a long time that it took the Boston Red Sox 12 years after Jackie Robinson’s debut to integrate. Way to go, Boston.

As I was thinking about Grant’s achievement in becoming the first Black pitcher in the American League to win 20 games, I was wondering, who was the Black pitcher who came the closest to winning 20 games in the American League before Grant did it in 1965? I tried to think of Black pitchers in the American League during the 1950’s, and I came up with…not much in the old memory bank. So, I scoured baseball-reference and looked team by team through the AL during the 1950’s. Suffice it to say, there was not a lot of diversity on those teams.

In my searching, I separated players into Black and Latin. This gets a little hazy, especially in the case of someone like Juan Pizarro, a Black Puerto Rican pitcher who won 19 games for the Chicago White Sox in 1964. But I was looking specifically for U.S.-born Black pitchers. What I found was that while there were Latin pitchers like Camilo Pascual and Pedro Ramos who were in the top 10 in the American League for wins, the first U.S.-born Black pitcher to show up in the top 10 in the AL for wins was Connie Johnson, who won 14 games for the Baltimore Orioles in 1957. It was Mudcat Grant himself who was the first Black pitcher in the AL to win 15 games, for the Cleveland Indians in 1961. And that was the closest a Black pitcher in the AL came to 20 wins until Grant won 21 games in 1965.

Reading more about Mudcat Grant made me think a little more about Black players like him, who debuted a decade after Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, but who still had their own barriers to break. Too often with history, we remember the groundbreaking event, but then we don’t follow up on what happened next. “Oh yeah, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and then everything was fine, right?” Nope, not really.

In retirement, Grant wrote a book about the Black pitchers who had won 20 games in a season. The Black Aces came out in 2007, and it tells the stories of Grant, Vida Blue, Al Downing, Bob Gibson, Dwight Gooden, Fergie Jenkins, Sam Jones, Don Newcombe, Mike Norris, J.R. Richard, Dave Stewart, and Earl Wilson. It sounds like a fascinating book, and a fitting tribute to the legacy of the AL’s first Black 20-game winner.

Best Books of 2018

My favorite books that I read in 2018.

I read 22 books in 2018, most of which I reviewed on this blog. Here are my favorites that I read this year. The links will take you to the full review of the book.

Promise Me, Dad, by Joe Biden, 2017. Biden’s heartfelt memoir of losing his son Beau to cancer, and making the decision to not run for President in 2016 is an extremely powerful book. 

The Judge Hunter, by Christopher Buckley, 2018. One of our finest satirists follows 2015’s The Relic Master with another fine historical comedy, this one set in the New World in the 1600’s. 

Summer, by Edith Wharton, 1917. This novel follows eighteen-year-old Charity Royall, who lives in the stifling small town of North Dormer. Things get more exciting when a handsome young architect comes to visit. 

The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, 1905. The novel that put Wharton at the forefront of great American writers, it traces the fortunes of the beautiful Lily Bart as she navigates New York high society. 

Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, by Jane Leavy, 2002. An excellent portrait of Sandy Koufax, one of the best pitchers of the 1960’s, and the hold he continues to have on the public imagination. 

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe, 1968. Perhaps the definitive book on the American Hippie movement, chronicled by one of greatest American writers of the second half of the 20^th century. Are you on the bus or off the bus?

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925. I re-read Gatsby this year, and the novel still has great power. Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, it’s full of beautiful sentences and vivid images.

Book Review: Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, by Jane Leavy (2002)

Paperback cover of Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, by Jane Leavy, 2002.

Sandy Koufax pitching in Game 7 of the 1965 World Series, against the Minnesota Twins. Despite pitching on two days' rest and only using his fastball, Koufax shut out the Twins on three hits.

Author Jane Leavy.

Although Sandy Koufax only played professional baseball for twelve years, he still ranks as one of the most legendary baseball players of the 20^th century. Koufax came up with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1955. He had a blazing fastball, but not much control over it. After the 1960 season, Koufax’s record was 36-40. His ERA was 4.10. From 1961 to 1966, Sandy Koufax simply dominated opposing batters. His record was 129-47, an incredible winning percentage of .733. His ERA had gone down to 2.76. 

Koufax won 3 Cy Young Awards, in 1963, 1965, and 1966, at a time when the award was given to just one pitcher, rather than one in each league. He was the unanimous winner each time. All three years Koufax won the Cy Young Award he also won the pitching Triple Crown, leading the league in strikeouts, wins, and ERA. Koufax was the NL MVP in 1963, and finished second in the voting in 1965 and 1966. He led the NL in ERA five years in a row, from 1962-1966. He led the league in strikeouts four times, setting a new single-season strikeout record of 382 in 1965. Koufax also set a record by pitching four no-hitters, including a perfect game in 1965. During Koufax’s 12 years with the Dodgers, they made it to the World Series six times, and he was the World Series MVP in 1963 and 1965.  

Diagnosed with arthritis in his left elbow, Koufax’s final two seasons, 1965 and 1966, were marked by extreme pain and super-human pitching performances. Rather than risk permanent damage to his elbow and arm, Koufax retired after the 1966 season, just weeks away from his 31^st birthday. 

In her book Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, author Jane Leavy examines Koufax’s career, and his continued hold on the public’s imagination. Koufax has a reputation for being a very private person, and although Leavy communicated with Koufax during her writing of the book, he never sat down for an interview with her. 

Leavy deliberately didn’t try to pry into Koufax’s personal life, and thus she didn’t interview his two ex-wives or any of his former girlfriends. This begs the question: is it right to write a biography of someone without interviewing, or trying to interview, such key figures in someone’s life? It’s up to the individual biographer, I suppose, but anyone looking for dirt on Sandy Koufax won’t find it here. However, you shouldn’t get the impression that Leavy didn’t do her homework on this book, because she certainly did, interviewing 469 people who are connected to Sanford Koufax in one way or another. 

Because Leavy doesn’t closely examine Koufax’s private life, there isn’t much material on his post-baseball life, so the book is essentially about Koufax’s playing career. The book uses Koufax’s 1965 perfect game against the Chicago Cubs as a framing device, and chapters alternate between a chronological look at Koufax’s life, and the innings of his perfect game. Koufax’s perfect game was pretty incredible. At that stage of his career, Koufax basically only had two pitches: a blazing fastball and a devastating, swooping curveball. The only problem was that Koufax also inadvertently tipped his pitches, giving the batters a clue as to what was coming. Even with that knowledge, the Cubs batters, including future Hall of Famers Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, and Ron Santo, were unable to reach base against him that night. 

I learned a lot about Sandy Koufax from Leavy’s biography, and one of the most interesting things is that he didn’t play a lot of baseball in high school. His best sport was basketball, and Leavy tells the story of 17-year-old Koufax dunking when his high school team played the New York Knicks. For whatever reason, Koufax wasn’t scouted by the NBA, and after pitching one season at the University of Cincinnati, Koufax was already being scouted by the Brooklyn Dodgers, his hometown team. 

Koufax was signed by the Dodgers for a $14,000 bonus, and because his signing bonus was over $4,000, he had to spend two years in the major leagues before he could be sent to the minor leagues. The Dodgers never ended up sending Koufax down to the minor leagues, but Koufax only threw 100 1/3 innings for the Dodgers over those first two seasons. Sending Koufax to the minor leagues for more seasoning might have helped his overall development as a pitcher. 

I was surprised when reading the book to learn how muscular Koufax was. Wayne “Doc” Anderson, the Dodgers’ trainer in the 1960’s said Koufax had “extreme muscles, the largest I ever worked on, including Ted Kluszewski and Frank Howard.” (p.148) Maybe it was because so often Koufax was pictured next to his rotation mate Don Drysdale, who stood 6’5” that I never realized how tall and muscular Sandy Koufax was. But Koufax was listed at 6’2”, and numerous people throughout the book testify to his very muscular physique. 

One of the most famous things Sandy Koufax did in his career was to not start Game 1 of the 1965 World Series, because it fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Koufax’s longtime friend Tom Villante said, “When that happened, he transcended being a player and became a symbol.” (p.171) Throughout the book, Leavy highlights the devotion of Koufax fans. People who have just the tiniest shred of a connection to him come up to her, wanting to share their stories. 

From the beginning of his career, Koufax was thought to be different from the average baseball player. An article from March of 1955 carried the headline: “Koufax, Unorthodox, Reads Books.” (p.176) Koufax’s reluctance to seek out the maximum amount of publicity possible has garnered him the label of someone who is aloof. Red Adams, a scout and pitching coach for the Dodgers from 1959-1980, said of Koufax: “Sometimes people are misunderstood for being aloof when they’re really just quiet.” (p.248) I think this is a great point. Koufax’s shyness or aloofness is probably overstated. A recluse would not have worked as a minor league pitching instructor for the Dodgers for ten years, as Koufax did. In some ways, we want to make people like Sandy Koufax more distant than they really are. He doesn’t like publicity? Well, then, he must be an eccentric recluse. On the other hand, he might just be a regular guy who disdains the spotlight of self-promotion—but that’s not as interesting a story. 

There has always been something special about Sandy Koufax. I was born nearly a decade and a half after Koufax last pitched, but yet he’s one of the figures from baseball’s past that fills me with awe. There’s a grace and dignity that Sandy Koufax has had both throughout his baseball career and after his retirement. I remember the surge of emotion I felt when I saw Sandy Koufax in 2004, at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown. I nearly teared up. Why? I can’t really explain it, other than to say there’s something special about Sandy Koufax. At one of my friend’s bar mitzvahs, there was a drawing for a signed photo of Koufax, and I happened to win it. It’s one of my favorite signed photos, even though I’ve never met Sandy Koufax. I’ve even had a dream about Sandy Koufax. It was sometime in the past year, and instead of a baseball player who hadn’t pitched since 1966, Koufax was a novelist who hadn’t written a book since 1966. Somehow I had tracked him down and found his office in the university where he taught. In my dream, Sandy Koufax looked just like he does today, and he was kind and smiled a lot. When I asked him where he had been since 1966, he laughed, spread his arms to indicate his office, and said, “I’ve been here the whole time!” Maybe that’s the secret to the “real” Sandy Koufax—he’s been right in front of us the whole time.