In the list of no-hitters against pennant-winning teams (and their rough equivalents), I mentioned Bob Groom as having pitched one against the White Sox in 1917, and that Mr. Groom seemed to be a pretty good hurler who got stuck on some bad teams.
I received an e-mail from Catherine Groom Petroski, Bob's granddaughter, who plans to give a presentation about him at the annual convention of the Society for American Baseball Research, July 26-29 in St. Louis. I wrote back that I'd love to attend, but I'm waiting until next year, when the convention is just up the road in Cleveland.
At any rate, Mrs. Petroski mentioned, "In the material I’ve amassed for the biography I’m writing, I would have to agree that BG’s teams were not, all around, very good, except for the 1912 and 1913 Senators."
The record shows that Groom, indeed, had his best season in 1912, when the traditionally lowly Senators rallied behind Bob and another pitcher named Walter Johnson to rise all the way to second place. Groom won 24 games that year, with a 2.62 earned run average.
His ERA rose the following year, and his record leveled out at 16-16. Perhaps seeing the opportunity for something better, he signed with the St. Louis Terriers when the Federal League achieved brief status as a major league in 1914. The Terriers turned out to be the doormats of the FL, though, and poor Bob lost 20 games. St. Louis jumped to second place in 1915, and Groom improved to 11-11, but the Federal League went out of business after the season and his contract was acquired by the St. Louis Browns.
He did OK in '16 (13-9, 2.57 ERA) as the Browns finished fifth, but as St. Louis took a nosedive to seventh in '17, so did Groom. The no-hitter was pretty much his last hurrah in a career that probably could have been much better.
If you're going to be in St. Louis for the SABR convention, Mrs. Petroski's presentation is at 12:30 p.m. on the event's opening day.
SABR has an ongoing Baseball Biography Project, and the latest entry is Jose Morales, whom I remember as a great pinch-hitter who burned my favorite team at the time, the Phillies on quite a few occasions in the '70s.
Click here to read the biography by Rory Costello, who is an expert on major-leaguers who hailed from the Virgin Islands.
Trivia question 38: Jose Morales set a major-league record with 25 pinch-hits in a season. Who now holds the mark with 28?
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