When I started this writing project (which feels like a blog, but technically isn’t that) at the beginning of the year, I had visions of writing one post a day, all year long. If some players from the 70s had died on that date, I’d tell their story and if others were born on that date and are still with us on this earth, I’d wish them a happy birthday, too.
And until I started travelling in February, I stuck to that plan very well. I’ve shared stories of a few dozen players here, and put a dent into the 500+ players from the Me Decade which are currently sitting in my two boxes of players.
But then came the travels: All four time zones; every direction on the map (counting Cleveland as “North” is a stretch, but it’s a Northern city so that’s close enough); on planes and trains and automobiles, too. I’ve seen the Sphere from within, and listened to Bill Withers and the Beatles in the totality of a solar eclipse. I’ve eaten beignets and watched a variety of blooming trees. I’ve been inside the Supreme Court and listened to writers describe what they do. It’s been a wild two months, and it caused me to re-evaluate what I’m doing here, too.
The bottom line for me is that the average player from the 1970s—at least the ones whose baseball cards I have in my possession—are far more likely to be alive than dead. With the passing of Jerry Grote this week, (and Pat Zachry the week before) the total stands at just under 72% living, with almost 28% passed on into whatever comes next for all of us.
Dozens of these former players from the 70s are now into their 80s, and hundreds more are in their 70s, but it isn’t anywhere near a tipping point just yet. But that trend can only move in one direction, and I will jump in to say a few words whenever my schedule permits. But the daily habit that I once had here is pretty much over now.
So to say a few words about Jerry Grote, it helps to point out that he was there for the first time I ever attended a professional baseball game, in St. Louis during the Summer of 1975. He caught Tom Seaver in the first game of a doubleheader, which the Cardinals won 5-3. Grote went 2 for 4 and drove in a run, and also chased Cardinals starter Lynn McGlothen out of the game in the eighth inning. And no, I don’t remember any of this. I’m just grateful that the internet is there to fill in all the stuff I didn’t understand at the time.
Grote didn’t play in the nitecap of the doubleheader, which the Mets won 11-6. Catching two games on the same day in what was probably a brutal evening in a St. Louis summer (and if you’ve experienced one, you know what I mean) seems like it would be cruel and unusual punishment. Grote was in the tenth season of a 12-year run with the Mets, which included a World Series title in 1969 and another World Series appearance with them in 1973.
Perhaps the best compliment of Grote came from Johnny Bench, the greatest catcher the National League has ever seen. Bench is quoted as saying that if he and Jerry Grote were on the same team, he (Bench) would have played third base, instead.
As it was, Grote’s 15-year career was extended an extra season when the Kansas City Royals lured him out of retirement to catch some games for them in the strike-shortened 1981 season, at the age of 38. He even made (and I’m sure there’s a story behind this) a single-game comeback for the Birmingham Barons in 1985, at the age of 42. He was inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame in 1992.
I’ll be back again when conditions warrant. Until then…..