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Dick Groat acknowledges the crowd after being honored by Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski and Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon at the Petersen Events Center in 2014.
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Ron Cook: Remembering Dick Groat — an even better person than athlete

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Ron Cook: Remembering Dick Groat — an even better person than athlete

High on my list of thrills was getting to know Dick Groat and calling him my friend. I always considered him the greatest athlete to come from western Pennsylvania. I still do even though our little corner of the world has produced world-class athletes — Hall of Fame athletes — including Stan Musial, Dan Marino, Joe Montana and Tony Dorsett, as well as other sports stars such as Tom Clements, LaVar Arrington and Terrelle Pryor.

Groat, who grew up in Swissvale and became a basketball legend at Duke and a National League MVP in baseball, is at the very top of that incredible list.

My regret is I didn’t know Groat, who died early Thursday morning at 92, when he was one of the best players in Pirates history. He was a Pitt basketball broadcaster when I first met him in 1979. I learned quickly he was an even better man than athlete.

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Kind.

Pittsburgh Pirates players and fans observe a moment of silence in memory of former Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Dick Groat, who passed away at the age of 92 early Thursday morning, before a baseball game between the Pirates and the Los Angeles Dodgers in Pittsburgh, Thursday, April 27, 2023.
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Humble.

Gracious.

We all should be remembered so well.

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Four memories of Groat stand out for me:

• One happened just 10 days ago when Pirates icon Steve Blass informed Groat that he was being inducted into the franchise’s Hall of Fame. I’m so thankful he lived long enough to get that news. I still want to cry that Franco Harris died on Dec. 20, only four days before the Steelers retired his No. 32.

A Pirates Hall of Fame would be considerably less without Groat. He won that MVP award in 1960, the season he hit .325 as a shortstop and helped the Pirates win the World Series by beating the powerhouse Yankees. He would beat the Yankees again in the 1964 Series with the St. Louis Cardinals and finished his career as a five-time All-Star.

“I didn’t have speed, power or the greatest arm,” Groat told Sports Illustrated. “Baseball was work, every day.”

The Pittsburgh Pirates celebrate following a 6-2 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers during the game at PNC Park on April 27, 2023 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
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• During Pitt’s 80-65 win against North Carolina-Asheville in the 2011 NCAA tournament, Pitt’s Gilbert Brown went over the scorer’s table after a loose ball and knocked Groat, then 80, to the ground. Groat immediately eased the fears of long-time broadcast partner Bill Hillgrove by telling him, “I’m OK. I took charges harder than that.”

• The date was Jan. 27, 2014. Pitt played Duke at the Petersen Events Center in its first season in the ACC. Groat was honored with the game ball during a terrific pre-game ceremony. It was presented to him by Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and Pitt’s Jamie Dixon. It was hard to tell which of the three was happiest.

“The thing that struck me was how much Mr. Groat loved basketball,” Dixon said late Thursday afternoon from Fort Worth, Texas, where he is coach of TCU. “He loved how we played. He loved how we passed the ball. He loved our teamwork. ...

“I’d go see him once a year at his [Champion Lakes] golf course. Everyone knows I hate golf. I just wanted to hang out with him. I wanted to talk baseball with him. He wanted to talk basketball.”

Did I mention Groat was a basketball legend at Duke? More on that in a moment. But on the night he was honored in 2014, he was better known around here for his broadcast work. He was the ultimate homer, if you will, regularly criticizing officials’ calls on the air. It made him a beloved figure with Pitt fans. It was the same style that made Bob Prince, Myron Cope and Mike Lange so popular with the city’s sports fans.

Jeff Capel, who took over the Pitt program in 2018, knew of Groat from his days at Duke, first as a player and then as long-time assistant to Krzyzewski. He gave Groat a shout-out at his introductory Pitt press conference and remembered him on Thursday.

“There have been very few people that have done it at a high level, and he’s one of them,” Capel said. “That I can remember off the top of my head, you had Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders. That’s it that I can remember that played [two sports] at a professional level.”

What a nice tribute from Capel.

But Groat was better than Jackson and Sanders.

If you want to call Groat the best two-sport star, I won’t argue.

How many athletes do you know who were a two-time All-American in baseball and basketball and are in both the College Baseball and College Basketball Hall of Fames?

• Duke students learned just how great Groat was in basketball when he was honored at Cameron Indoor Stadium at halftime of the Pitt-Duke game in January 2018. It was no surprise Duke rolled out the red carpet for him. His No. 10 jersey was the first to be retired in school history and hangs in the Cameron rafters. He still has the second-highest career scoring average at Duke — 23 points per game — despite playing before the introduction of the one-and-one free throw and long before the advent of the 3-point shot. He was the Helms National Player of the Year as a junior in 1951 when he led the country in scoring. He scored 48 points in his final collegiate game against rival North Carolina in 1952, the most-ever against the Tar Heels. The Duke students carried him off the floor after that 94-64 win.

“I love this place,” Groat said when he returned to Cameron for that 2018 game.

“This place loves you,” responded Capel, who was in his final season as a Duke assistant.

“The world lost an absolute treasure with the passing of Dick Groat,” Krzyzewski said in a statement.

Groat was the third overall pick of the Fort Wayne Pistons in the 1952 NBA draft and played in 26 games for them in the 1952-53 season, averaging 11.9 points per game. The team thought so much of him that it offered use of a private plane to get him to more games.

Red Auerbach, who later won nine NBA titles as coach of the Boston Celtics and seven more as their general manager, was an assistant on the Duke staff during Groat’s sophomore season. “If he sticks with the big ball instead of the little ball, he’d have had a great career in the NBA,” he once told Hillgrove.

But the Pistons couldn’t convince Groat to give up baseball. He signed with the Pirates in 1952 in part because he was a Pittsburgh kid who dreamed of playing in Forbes Field. He played in 95 games for the Pirates in the 1952 season, never playing even one game in the minor leagues.

Hillgrove confirmed on Thursday what Groat told Sports Illustrated all those years ago.

“He always said he loved basketball but had to work at baseball,” Hillgrove said. “Then he would say, ‘Of course, I worked at baseball pretty well.’ ”

Typical Groat.

So understated for an absolute superstar.

Ron Cook: rcook@post-gazette.com and Twitter @RonCookPG. Ron Cook can be heard on the “Cook and Joe” show weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on 93.7 The Fan.

First Published: April 28, 2023, 9:30 a.m.

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Dick Groat acknowledges the crowd after being honored by Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski and Pitt head coach Jamie Dixon at the Petersen Events Center in 2014.  (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
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