Lefty Grove may have been baseball’s best pitcher. He was certainly one of its most interesting. A three-hundred-game winner during 1925–41, he captured an unmatched nine ERA and five winning-percentage titles. While starring for the Philadelphia Athletics he was known for “a fastball and a mean disposition,†qualities best exemplified in 1931, when he won thirty-one games and wrecked a clubhouse. Grove finished his career with the Boston Red Sox, where he injured his arm and reconstructed himself as a fabulous control artist.
