Grover “Pete” Alexander had his best seasons more than 100 years ago. One of the beauties of baseball is that he is still well-remembered as one of the best pitchers of all time. For one memorable stretch between 1911 and 1917, he averaged an astonishing 27 wins per season.
Alexander played primarily in Philadelphia. But he also had memorable years as a Chicago Cub, including leading the National League in 1919 with a 1.72 ERA. That’s an amazing number, but it’s even more amazing when you consider he had just returned from France, fighting in World War I, where he had been gassed during battle and suffered a shrapnel injury to his ear.
Alexander could mix a fastball and off-speed pitch, especially his curve, to devastating effect. “He made me want to throw my bat away when I went to the plate,” Hall of Fame second baseman Johnny Evers said of Alexander. “He fed me pitches I couldn’t hit. If I let them go, they were strikes. He made you hit bad balls. He could throw into a tin can all day long.”
Alexander went into the Hall of Fame in 1938.
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Grover “Pete” Alexander’s Early Life
Grover Cleveland Alexander grew up in Elba, Nebraska. Born on Feb. 26, 1887 during Grover Cleveland’s first term as president, the young Alexander was given the president’s name. His father wanted him to go to law school, but as a teenager Alexander took a job as a telephone lineman so he could play baseball on the weekends.
Growing up on a farm, Alexander had developed the physical strength and endurance that would later become hallmarks of his career. It also helped him get over an injury in 1909 when he got hit by a baseball while running the base path. He recovered and returned to playing the next year.
He played for the Galesburg Boosters in the Class D Illinois–Missouri League and then the Syracuse Stars in the Class B New York State League. In 1911, the Philadelphia Phillies purchased his contract and sent him up to the big league.
Alexander’s Incredible Career
Alexander set the tone for his career in his very first game. Pitching against the Philadelphia Athletics in the pre-season City Series, Alexander pitched five innings of no-hit baseball. He made his first official regular season start on April 15.
At the age of 24, Alexander won 28 games in his first season, leading the league. He also led the league in innings pitched, 367, and struck out 227. He pitched seven shutout games.
He had already established his reputation as a tough workhorse of a pitcher with amazing stuff.
Over the next decade, Alexander proved he was no flash in the pan. From 1911 to 1920, Alexander:
- Led the league in wins 6 times
- Led the league in ERA 5 times
- Led the league in complete games six times
- Led the league in shutouts six times (including throwing 16 shutouts in 1916)
- Pitched over 300 innings in seven seasons (leading the league in each of them)
- Led the league in strikeouts six times
For a while, he seemed to get better with age. In 1920, at the age of 33, he pitched for the Chicago Cubs. In that season, he led the league in wins (27), ERA (1.91), games started (40), innings pitched (363.1), and strikeouts (173).
Traded in 1926 to the St. Louis Cardinals, Alexander dominated in the 1926 World Series won by the Cardinals over the New York Yankees. He won games 2 and 6, and earned the save in the Game 7 victory, coming into the game in the bottom of the 7th inning. With two outs and the bases loaded, he fanned Yankee Tony Lazzeri to get out of the inning.
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Alexander stayed in the game, giving up no hits or baserunners until walking Babe Ruth with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. But Ruth, in a surprise move for the ages, tried to steal second and got thrown out, ending the game and the series.
Alexander had another stellar season for the Cardinals in 1927, winning 21 games. He was 40 years old.
The Famous Trade to Chicago
Alexander pitched for the Phillies through 1917. After that season, Phillies owner William Baker traded Alexander to the Cubs along with his main catcher, Bill Killefer. In return, he got pitcher Mike Prendergast, catcher Pickles Dillhoefer and $55,000. According to Todd Zolecki’s book about the Phillies, Baker later admitted he made the trade because he needed the money.
For the record, Prendergast went 13-14 in 1918 and started just one game in 1919. He retired that year and returned to Nebraska, where he worked in a brewery. Dillhoefer got just 11 at-bats in 1919. The Phillies then traded him to the Cardinals, where he saw some playing time from 1919 to 1921. He tragically died of typhoid fever in St. Louis in February 1922.
Alexander spent the 1918 season fighting in World War I. But he eventually won 128 games for the Cubs.
Nicknames and Personal Demons
During his playing days, Alexander was known as Pete or “Old Pete.” a nickname he picked up when players compared him to cowboys in popular moves at the time. The name has stuck – even the Baseball Reference website refers to him as Pete Alexander.
Alexander died in 1950 at the age of 63, just one month after watching the Phillies in the World Series. Plagued by alcohol use, epileptic seizures and the wounds suffered in World War I, as well as poverty, he died in a motel room in St. Paul, Nebraska.
Considering his personal demons, the Society for American Baseball Research wrote of Alexander: “Never meeting a batter he couldn’t beat or a bottle he could, pursued by demons one can only imagine, Alexander was the cursed pitcher.”
The New York Times ran an article on Oct. 7, 1950, about Alexander’s visit to the stadium during the Phillies-Yankees World Series, less than a month before his Nov. 4 death. Sportswriter Louis Effrat, under the headline “Sic Transit Gloria,” wrote how Alexander stood unrecognized for three innings on the mezzanine level until a veteran reporter who remembered him from his glory days saw him.
The reporter insisted on getting Alexander a chair in the press box. Happy to get off his feet and to be recognized, Alexander took the chair and regaled reporters for the next few innings with stories from the past.
“He told of how much trouble he used to have pitching to Rogers Hornsby and he told of how he held Babe Ruth to only one single in sixteen times at bat,” Effrat wrote. He concluded, “Baseball may have forgotten Grover Cleveland Alexander but he has not forgotten baseball.”
But baseball hasn’t forgotten Alexander. While no one may have recognized him that day in 1950, baseball fans remember him well to this day. He remains regarded as one of the greatest pitchers to ever take the mound.
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