Jerry Grote

I have only one memory of the baseball player featured in the 1979 Topps card above, which was years after the picture for this card - his last, I believe - was made.  The memory involves one swing of the bat, insignificant really, in baseball and in life.  But for whatever reason, the memory remains.  The setting, as were many of my early professional baseball memories, was my bedroom adjacent to the carport.  Over 36 years later I still remember the rush of excitement I experienced hearing Royals radio announcer Fred White relaying to fans throughout the Midwest that the batter, whose image is shown above wearing a Dodger cap, had just hit a grand slam home run for the home team.

Maybe this moment resonates in my mind because the Royals did not hit many home runs in the first place, and Grote, who hit only 39 home runs over 16 major league seasons, was perhaps as unlikely as anyone in the Royals lineup to hit one out on this particular evening.  In my 10-year-old mind, his homer with the bases loaded injected a certain amount of heroism to the occasion.  It was the ultimate feat, better than pitching a no-hitter.  Fans in the larger markets were spoiled, I thought.  Their teams were just as likely to ground out to second as they were to smash grand slams, or so it seemed.  To have the home team pull it off and hear it live as it happened 180 miles away was indeed a special moment.   

With time, memories fade.  I have no recollection what I did on this day other than listen to the Royals game on the radio that evening.  I remember no other details of the game and even the central figure of this post - Mr. Jerry Grote himself - was at some point washed from my memory and replaced with Johnny Oates, even though Oates, I recently discovered, never played for the Royals.  In those days, in Wichita, Kansas, big-league baseball was heard more than it was seen.  For my friends and me, MLB was viewed primarily through our baseball cards.  Because Oates and Grote were both catchers on the Dodgers' roster in the late 70s and I undoubtedly viewed their cards many times over, it is conceivable how Oates could have stolen Grote's identity in my mind.

Thanks to the Internet, I was able to restore Grote to his proper place of prominence in my memory and trace his grand slam to a game against the Seattle Mariners on Wednesday, June 3rd, 1981. Playing in his final season as a professional baseball player, this would be Grote's best performance of the year.  Between the grand slam, a double, and a single, Grote knocked in a total of 7 runs.  The unquestionable star of the game, he also stole a base and threw out Tom Paciorek, who was trying to steal 2nd off of Royals' starter Rich Gale.  Most importantly for me at the time, the Royals won the game 12-9.

Jerry Grote appeared in 1,421 major league contests, primarily as a member of the New York Mets.  Playing in only 22 games as a Royal, his tenure with the team represents little more than a footnote to a career that spanned three decades.  Had I not been listening in the bottom of the fifth when Grote went long with the bases full, there is no doubt I would be oblivious to this bit of meaningless trivia. But with one swing, as described through the tiny speaker of an alarm clock radio 36 years ago, there is meaning still, no matter how trivial it may seem.