Dick Groat long has been considered one of Western Pennsylvania’s greatest sports figures. Which sport depended on the generation, as the Swissvale native was a two-sport star at Duke, one of only 13 people to play in both the NBA and MLB and later spent four decades calling college basketball games for the Pitt Panthers.

Groat was an All-American basketball star at Duke who played for the NBA’s Fort Wayne Pistons before becoming the starting shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he won the National League batting title and MVP honors for the 1960 World Series champions. Groat returned to his first love after retiring from his playing career, spending 4o years as the radio color analyst for the University of Pittsburgh men’s basketball team.

Groat recently was informed he would be inducted into the Pirates Hall of Fame Class of 2023. He had to be hospitalized later that day, where he ultimately died from complications related to a stroke.

Groat died early Thursday morning at UPMC Presbyterian hospital, his family announced. He was 92.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of such a beloved member of the Pirates family and Pittsburgh community,” Pirates chairman Bob Nutting said in a statement. “The National League MVP and World Series champion in 1960, Dick remained a very active and cherished member of our Alumni Association. We were honored to have just recently informed Dick and his family that he had been selected to the Pirates Hall of Fame. He was a great player and an even better person.”

A multi-sport standout long before Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders, the 5-foot-11, 180-pounder was a two-time All-American in basketball at Duke and also starred on the Blue Devils’ baseball team. He became the first player inducted into both the college basketball and baseball halls of fame.

The No. 3 overall pick in the 1952 NBA Draft, Groat played one season of professional basketball before switching sports. He amassed 2,138 hits, won two World Series rings and became a five-time All-Star during a 14-year major league career, first with the hometown Pirates (1952-62) before joining the St. Louis Cardinals (1963-65), Philadelphia Phillies (1966-67) and San Francisco Giants (1967).

“He’s one of the greatest athletes we’ve ever seen in Western Pennsylvania,” said his late Pirates teammate Bob Friend, who died in 2019. “He had some of those qualities that you just don’t get in athletes.”

The youngest of five children, Richard Morrow Groat was born Nov. 4, 1930, in Wilkinsburg and later starred at Swissvale High School. Basketball was his first love, and he always maintained it was his best sport. For sure, he helped put Duke basketball on the map. He scored a then-NCAA single-season record 831 points as a junior in 1950-51 and, as a senior, finished second in the nation in scoring and assists.

“Every time I thought about Cameron Indoor Stadium, when I walked in there in the spring of 1948 as a visiting basketball player from Swissvale,” Groat told the Tribune-Review in 2017. “I remember looking at that place and saying, ‘Wow, this is the place where I want to play my basketball.’ There was nothing like it back then, when I was graduating from high school.”

In his final home game at Duke, he scored a career-high 48 points against arch-rival North Carolina, a school record that stood for 37 years and remains the most points ever scored against the Tar Heels. Groat batted .375 for the Duke baseball team, leading the Blue Devils to their first College World Series in 1952.

“He was one of the finest individuals I’ve ever known,” said Dick Crowder of Asheville N.C., who played with Groat at Duke for four seasons. “He was just a tremendous person, and I cherish being a friend of his.”

Groat’s 23 points per game average ranks second in Duke history, and his 1,886 career points ranks 19th all-time. Duke retired Groat’s No. 10 jersey, making him the first of 13 players to be so honored. Mike Krzyzewski, who coached Duke from 1980-2022, called Groat a “true multi-sports icon” who represented both Duke and Pitt “with the utmost class and dignity, which resulted in universal admiration.”

“The world lost an absolute treasure with the passing of Dick Groat, a historically significant athlete and even better person,” Krzyzewski said. “As much as our family appreciated his marvelous basketball and baseball career, we admired how he carried himself after it ended even more.”

But his greatest achievements would come in baseball.

Pirates general manager Branch Rickey signed Groat while he was still a student at Duke. Having never played in the minor leagues, Groat hit .284 in 1952 for a Pirates team that went 42-112-1 and finished eighth in the National League. In his first game, Groat had two hits and two RBIs. In his fifth game, he started a triple play. On a team that featured a Hall of Famer in Ralph Kiner, Groat led the Pirates with a .284 batting average.

“Ironically, I only played two years in baseball, and we won the conference both years and went to the College World Series,” Groat said. “I came home on Sunday, signed with the Pirates Monday and joined the team Tuesday in New York, pinch-hit Wednesday and started every game after that. We lost 112 games. They were so bad, it’s no wonder I was a starter right out of college.”

Groat played part of the 1952-53 season with the NBA’s Fort Wayne Pistons, averaging 11.9 points and 2.7 assists in 26 games before putting sports on hold to serve two years in the Army. He returned to the Pirates in 1955 and focused on baseball. Groat teamed with Hall of Fame second baseman Bill Mazeroski to form one of the game’s best double-play combinations, leading the National League in double plays a record five times.

“Him and I had a pickoff move together,” said teammate and relief pitcher Elroy Face, who also is part of the 2023 Pirates Hall of Fame class. “We picked a few guys off at second base. One time, we were playing the Cardinals in 1960. They were battling us for the pennant. They put a pinch runner in, and I picked him off and we ended up winning the ballgame.

“He just played the hitters. He knew the hitters. He didn’t have a lot of range, but he was always in position for that particular hitter and came up with the ball most of the time. At the plate, he was the No. 2 hitter. He was a good curveball hitter. He loved the curveball.”

Groat hit an NL-best .325 in 1960 for the world champion Pirates, and Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn said he was “the player the Pirates can least afford to lose.” But general manager Joe L. Brown traded the shortstop to the Cardinals for right-handed pitcher Don Cardwell following the 1962 season, a decision that caused a rift between Groat and the club for three decades.

Groat was second in the NL MVP voting to Sandy Koufax in 1963, won a World Series with the Cardinals in 1964 — beating the Yankees again in seven games — and ended his career ranked ninth in MLB history in games at shortstop (1,877) and fourth in double plays (1,237). All told, he was a career .286 hitter with 39 home runs, 829 runs scored and 707 RBIs.

“I guess basketball is his favorite sport,” Friend said, “but he was pretty good at baseball, too.”

Where Mazeroski was an eight-time Gold Glove winner more famous for his walk-off home run against the Yankees to win the ‘60 World Series, Groat might be better known in certain corners of the country for his success on the hardwood than he is for what he did on the diamond.

“It’s amazing,” Groat told the Trib in 2017. “I’m remembered in North Carolina as a basketball player much more than anyplace in the country. I’m remembered more as a baseball player everywhere else because I played 16 years in the majors. I always felt I was a much better basketball player than I ever was a baseball player. And I had more fun in half a season in the NBA than the guys have today, with all their money.”

Groat said he made $10,000 playing for the Pistons, coached by Homestead native Paul Birch, which was double his rookie salary for the Pirates while finishing his degree at Duke.

“They got me a private plane, flew me into where they were playing,” Groat said. “I had class Monday, Wednesday and Friday and played Saturday and Sunday and Tuesday and Thursday for the Pistons.”

Groat was inducted into the Duke Athletics Hall of Fame in 1975, National College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007, WPIAL Hall of Fame in 2008 and the National College Baseball Hall of Fame in 2011. An avid golfer, he was part-owner of Champion Lakes Golf Club in Ligonier, where he lived in an apartment in the same building as the pro shop from April to November since 1966. He spent the rest of the year at his home in Edgewood.

In 2018, Groat was honored by Westmoreland County leaders, friends and the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg with “Dick Groat Day” at Totteridge Golf Club.

“For all of his accomplishments and despite all of his accolades, he’s a very modest man,” said Bill Hillgrove, Groat’s longtime on-air partner for Pitt basketball. “He’s just a humble man. It’s an incredible mixture of great talent and humility that he wears very well.”

Groat was wildly competitive, as he displayed during the annual Children’s Hospital charity basketball game between the Pirates and the Steelers in the late 1950s. The Pirates, led by Groat, had dominated the exhibition in recent years, so the Steelers recruited Pitt all-American guard Don Hennon to even things up.

In the final seconds, Pirates broadcaster Bob Prince, refereeing the game, called a phantom foul against Groat, allowing Hennon’s free throw to send it into overtime and give the fans five more minutes of action.

When the Pirates lost in overtime, a livid Groat wouldn’t talk to Prince for weeks.

“Fun, hell,” Groat said at the time. “I’m trying to win.”

Groat was preceded in death by wife Barbara, whom he met in 1955 at the Polo Grounds in New York. He is survived by three daughters, Tracey, Carol and Allison, along with 11 grandchildren.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)