Only this one Hall of Famer starred with just a fast ball
Only one pitcher ever succeeded in the Big Leagues with just a fastball. It’s accepted wisdom that, no matter how hard you throw, Major League hitters will time you after they’ve seen you once or twice. Unless they have to worry about an alternate pitch or two, they will clobber your fast ball. So the one Hall of Fame pitcher who only had a fastball must have been pretty fast.
Was it Smokey Joe Wood of the 1912 Red Sox, Walter Johnson, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan, or Roger Clemens? Those are the usual suspects when someone asks who was the fastest pitcher of all time. The name Robert Moses Grove almost never comes up any more.
But in the book Baseball When the Grass Was Green, an oral history of players from the 1930s and 1940s, the answer most hitters give is Lefty Grove. “Everybody knew just what he was going to throw every time, and they couldn’t hit it anyway,” one said. Most fans today know Grove’s name, and that he’s in the Hall of Fame, but nothing else.
Between 1925 and 1941, Grove won 300 games, lost 141, stuck out 2,271, walked 1,187, and averaged 3.06 runs allowed every 9 innings. It would have been less than 3 if he had quit in 1939 instead of staying two more years trying to win 300, which only the most dominant, durable pitchers in history have done.
So the “incompetent” hitters who could not hit Grove’s fast ball when they knew it was coming included Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Williams, all in their best years – and everybody else in between. Grove never developed a curve or change-up because he didn’t need to.
Grove pitched for Connie Mack’s Philadelphia A’s when they were one of the greatest teams in history. They won three pennants in 1929, ’30, and ‘31. Then, Mr. Mack went broke in the stock market, and had to sell all his great players to survive. Grove came to the Red Sox along with the great slugger Jimmy Foxx.
Doc Cramer, Grove’s teammate with the A’s, who also came to Boston in Connie Mack’s “fire sale,” said in the book, “I’ve seen Koufax. You’ve got nothing today as fast. Just one instance: We were in New York and we had them up by a run. They loaded the bases in the 9th inning, and Mr. Mack called Grove in to relieve. On 10 fast balls, he struck out Ruth, Gehrig, and [Tony] Lazzeri, and we were in the locker room. Lazzeri hit a foul.”
Any single, even a ground ball through the infield, would have won that game for the Yankees. A fly ball or a walk would have tied it, and the winning run would still be on base in scoring position. Even some infield ground outs could have forced in the tying run.
Cramer faced Grove once, in a meaningless spring training game between the starters and the scrubs. “I hit a home run off him. [Catcher] Mickey Cochrane told me to be ready next time. Sure enough, he hit me in the ribs, and I thought it would go through and come out the other side. Knocked me right down. But he wouldn’t throw at anybody’s head.”
In those days, intimidation and retaliation were part of the game. There are rules against it now. All pitchers tried to keep batters on the defensive, prepared to bail out. Many aimed at the head, unlike Grove.
Grove was a hard loser, Cramer said. When he lost, the players stayed out of the locker room to avoid the flying furniture, baseball bats, and lockers, until the noise subsided. Why have we forgotten one of the greatest, most colorful players of all time?
