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.