Grover Clevelend Alexander
From the time he arrived in the big leagues in 1911, Grover Cleveland Alexander—dubbed, “Old Pete,” by his best friend and catcher, Bill Killefer—was a star. His rookie year with Philadelphia went well: He led the National League with 28 wins, 31 complete games and 367 innings. He went a respectable 41-25 over the next two seasons and, by his fourth season in the big leagues, he seemed ready for greatness.
From 1914-17, Aleck had four of the most impressive consecutive years of any pitcher in baseball history. He led the league in wins all four years, racking up a record of 121-50. He led the league in strikeouts, innings and complete games in all four seasons, and led in ERA for two of the years. Throwing from his customary sidearm motion, he had one of the best fastballs in the game, and was able to mix in his breaking balls at great speed, too. Killefer would later recall, in an article in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, “Pete was a natural—keyhole control, that sinker fastball and a curve that didn’t break much but was so fast it just left you standing there. … The fastball was fit to tear the mitt off a catcher.”
But after the 1917 season, Philadelphia owner William Baker sought to trade Aleck. He had a handful of reasons. For one thing, America’s entry into the Great War had begun to hurt attendance for baseball games, and Baker did not want to keep losing money in the coming season. Also, Alexander was an unmarried man with no dependents, which meant he was Class 1A—the first group to be called—for the army’s draft. And, later, Baker would supposedly accuse both Alexander and Killefer of being crooked (to a private investigator, not to the public.) In November 1917, Baker found a trading partner. He would send both Aleck and Killefer to the Cubs for cash and prospects.
Baker knew that trading Aleck and Killefer would not go over well in Philadelphia, so he asked Cubs president Charley Weeghman to keep it a secret until the N.L. meetings took place in December. Baker did not even tell manager Pat Moran about the impending deal.
Grover Cleveland Alexander returning from war in 1919. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.) When the news broke, the Chicago Daily News reported, “It was pathetic to see Moran after the announcement. He actually wept when asked to discuss the deal and what it meant to him. He looked as if he had lost his entire family.”
What was bad for Moran was a joyous coup for the Cubs—they’d landed the National League’s best pitcher, and seemed on their way to building an instant contender. But 1918 would turn out to be a strange year for Aleck.
It started with a holdout in spring training. Aleck felt Baker owed him a cut of the money he was receiving from the Cubs and was asking for $10,000. Baker had no intention of paying Aleck a bonus, and so it fell to the Cubs to come up with the money. They refused. For much of the Cubs’ March stay at Pasadena, Aleck—labeled a “prima donna” in the papers—sat out, watching practices, chatting with Cubs stockholder William Wrigley, hanging out at the Hotel Green and playing golf. On March 19, finally, the two sides came to agreement, and it was guessed that the deal was $5,000 up front and $5,000 in 1919. Shortly after landing the bonus, though, there was sadness. Aleck’s brother, George, died.
Just as the Cubs were finishing up their spring trip, there was more bad news. Aleck had been drafted. He had supposed that, because George’s death left his mother dependent on him, his local draft board in St. Paul, Neb., might excuse him from the draft. But, no. On April 12, he was chosen. “I am ready to go at once if I am called,” he told the Daily News. “No one will have a chance to call me a slacker. However, I hope they give me a chance to pitch the opening game in St. Louis, as I would like to win one game before going away to join the colors.”
He did get the chance. His orders were to report to Camp Funston in Kansas for basic training on April 30, giving him time to make three starts. He lost his first, Opening Day in St. Louis, but easily won his second over the Reds. He made his final start for the Cubs on April 26, 1918, the only game he would pitch in front of home fans that year. “[Alexander] went to the firing line amid a thunder of cheers,” The Sporting News reported, “was fairly smothered with flowers and … in a few hours was speeding on his way to join the Army with the plaudits of a cheering multitude ringing in his ears. … No man has made greater sacrifice than Grover Alexander.”
War wasn’t kind to Alexander. When he got to Camp Funston, he was placed in the 89th Division of the 342nd Field Artillery, a unit that was ready to disembark for France but was only awaiting a few replacements. Aleck was one of the replacements, and after just a couple of weeks training, he was off to the Western front. By July, as his Cubs teammates were struggling to hang on to first place in the N.L., Alexander was in the teeth of the final Spring Offensive of the German army.
He survived the war, but was deafened in one ear by exploding artillery, and he likely was shell-shocked. When he returned from Europe, he was an alcoholic and suffered from epileptic seizures—his wife, Aimee, whom he married just before shipping out, would say that he took up drinking to hide his epilepsy. He put together two good seasons with the Cubs, in 1919 and ’20, but wasn’t the pitcher he had been before the war. His drinking made him increasingly unpredictable. “Everybody knows,” Killefer said, “that Pete was his own worst enemy.”
Aleck had one last brush with glory—playing for the Cardinals in the 1926 World Series, he struck out Yankees star Tony Lazzeri with two out and the bases loaded to preserve a 3-2 win—and pitched until he was 43. But his struggles with alcohol worsened, and most of the rest of his life was spent broke and indigent. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1939, and said, “They gave me a tablet up at the Cooperstown Hall of Fame, but I can’t eat any tablet.”
He died in 1947, at age 63.
