Days before he passed back in April, Dick Groat had an unexpected visitor. It was Steve Blass, who came to share the news that Groat was about to be inducted into the Pirates' Hall of Fame.
“That was wonderful because Steve and him had a nice conversation in the living room," Groat's daughter, Allison DeStefano, said. "It was just really special. He called him Stevie Blass. That was really an awesome afternoon. He had no idea."
On Saturday, Groat was one of four new inductees to the Pirates' Hall of Fame, with the ceremony taking place just inside the center field gate at PNC Park. Joining Groat were Bob Friend and Elroy Face, both teammates of his for the 1960 World Series winning team, and Kent Tekulve, who recorded the final outs of the 1979 World Series.
Groat, the National League Most Valuable Player in 1960, played nine of his 14 major-league seasons with the Pirates, won a batting title in that championship season and was named to six All-Star games while with the team. Before this honor, he had previously been named to the College Basketball and Baseball Halls of Fame.
"The first thing he would say about Dick was he was probably the best athlete he ever met," the late Bob Friend's son, Bob, said. "There wasn't really anything Dick Groat couldn't do."
Groat's candidacy spoke for itself, which is why he was part of the team's second Hall of Fame class. Before leaving that afternoon in April, Blass and Groat made plans for the ceremony.
“Steve said, ‘We’re going to have a Budweiser together,' " DeStefano said. "He said, ‘You can count on it, Stevie.’ Then they shook on it."
While Mr. Groat is no longer around, his family had a six-pack waiting for them for the game, sharing it while watching the Pirates fall to the Cubs, 10-6.
"We’ll all have a little sip of Budweiser in his honor," DeStefano said.
Here are some more stories from Saturday's ceremonies:
FACE'S LEGENDARY PITCH
In 1955, the Pirates sent Face to the minors in New Orleans to work on an offspeed pitch. He had a slider and curveball already, and after half a season of work, he developed a forkball, an offering that often frustrated hitters.
“I don’t know if it was frustration, but I’d been cussed at a lot," Face joked.
The forkball is an extinct pitch at this time in baseball history, but Face is confident it would still play today. “They still wouldn’t hit it like they didn’t before," he said.
One of the game's first great relievers, Face's best years came in 1959 -- when he went 18-1 out of the bullpen -- and in 1960, when he closed out a league high 61 games. He spent 15 of his 16 major-league seasons with the Pirates, and at the time of his retirement, his 802 games with the Pirates were tied for the most between any pitcher and club with Walter Johnson and the Nationals/Senators. That has since been broken, first by Trevor Hoffman in 2007.
Now a member of the Hall of Fame, Face and Tekulve take their places as the team's two greatest closers.
“It means I’m one of the best Pirates who ever played here," he said.
Last year's inaugural class featured Roberto Clemente and Bill Mazeroski, and Face is now joined with fellow 1960 World Champions Friend and Groat. He's hoping that team will continue to be celebrated.
“We’ve still got some guys from the ’60 team that haven’t been elected yet and will be like Vernon Law and [Bill] Virdon, guys like that," Face said. "In the future they will be."
FRIEND'S AWARD
In 2021, the Pirates renamed their minor-league pitcher of the year award to the Bob Friend award as they honor the team's history.
"Any accolade that he received, he received them with humility and he was very gracious," Friend said about his father. "He would probably be surprised of all the attention he's garnering."
Friend is usually regarded as one of the top pitchers in the franchise's history, if not the top starter. He won 191 games with them over his 15 years pitched as a Pirate, the fourth-most in franchise history.
"Knowing my dad, he probably would have been a little bit embarrassed by all of the attention," Friend said. "He was a very humble guy. Literally, you could be in a room with him for two hours, and unless you knew what he did for a living, baseball would never come up. He was extraordinarily proud to be a Pittsburgh Pirate."
A big reason for his success was that Friend never spent a day on the injured list, something he credited to what he referred to as a God-given athletic body and a "heavy ball," a natural sinking fastball.
He also had a unique conditioning routine, throwing every day rather than taking rest days.
"So from the first day of spring training to the last day of the season, [he] threw a baseball every day," Friend said. "He could have thrown a nine inning game against the Cubs, thrown 150 pitches, nobody knows. The next day, he'd be out in the field with his battery mate and probably throwing 50, 60 pitches, 30 of them probably at full speed."
Friend grew up in West Lafayette, Ind., but after joining the Pirates in 1951, he stayed in Pittsburgh the rest of his life, with the exception of pitching for the Mets one year in 1965.
"He was a hometown Pittsburgh guy. Loved the fans, loved the town," Friend said. "He would be extraordinarily proud to have this opportunity."
AND THE CLOSER
Tekulve's 158 saves as a Pirate are second in the team's history behind Face, and none have lived on in history as much as him closing out the 1979 World Series.
But when he was asked to speak and represent the new inductees at the ceremony, he, ironically, had trouble finding a way to finish it.
Starting it? That's easy. He started with the families. Acknowledgments for wives and children are usually reserved for the end, so call it a speech opener.
"It’s not as glorious as you might think, them making a sacrifice to do that allowed us to be able to live out our dreams and play baseball as a profession for as long as we did," Tekulve said at the podium.
Next up, the teammates.
"One of the things that I’m most proud of is everyone in this group was responsible for bringing a championship to the city of Pittsburgh," Tekulve said. "We might’ve been good. We might’ve been real good. But one, two, three or four people can’t win a world championship. It takes 25 contributing every single day to whatever degree is asked of them to put together a world championship ball club. I want to thank all of the players from all the years that we played with that allowed us as a group to be as successful as we were."
Batting third, the fans.
"The first day that we showed up here, you Pirates fans accepted us and supported us. You didn’t know anything about us. But yet you supported us. You didn’t know if we would be here for 15 games or 15 years, if we were gonna be good or bad. But you supported us because we were on your team. That was very special to all of us.
"But what was really amazing and makes Pittsburgh so much different from other places is the day we weren’t able to play anymore. In a whole lot of places, the day you can’t play anymore, you’re forgotten by the fans because you can’t help the team win a game. Pittsburgh is just the opposite. Pirates fans honor us. They remember us. They treat us as if we’re royalty. That really is not usual."
But how does one close this out?
Fortunately, Tekulve remembered a piece of advice he once got: If you hear something great, use it, but give credit where it's due. He put that into practice and borrowed and tweaked the words of Jack Lambert's Hall of Fame induction speech.
"Jack concluded his Hall of Fame speech by saying that if he had his life to live over again, if we had our lives to live over again, you can be sure that we would be professional baseball players. Getting to play into our late 30s or, in my case, early 40s, and continuing to play a game that we love since the age of 8 or 9, is just an unbelievable life. And you can be daggone sure that if we got a chance to live this life again and be professional baseball players, we would be Pittsburgh Pirates."
