LEFTY GROVE

Robert Moses Grove came down from Lonaconing, Maryland, with a left arm that made the American League keep its distance, six-foot-three of mountain coal-town temper they shortened to Lefty because the full name took too long when the fastball was already past you. Connie Mack's Athletics gave him the ball in 1925, and for the better part of a decade Philadelphia had an answer for every batting order in the book.

The peak years stacked like unpaid bets. In 1930 he won twenty-eight and struck out two hundred nine. In 1931 he went thirty-one and four with a 2.06 earned-run average — complete-game weather that did not ask the bullpen for favors. Even 1929 threw twenty wins, and 1926's 2.51 ERA announced the storm before the pennants arrived.

He finished at three hundred wins against one hundred forty-one losses, a 3.06 ERA over nearly four thousand innings, two thousand two hundred sixty-six strikeouts, two hundred ninety-eight complete games. Boston got the late chapters. The Hall of Fame vote came in 1947. The arm stayed famous longer than the temper.