Top 106 Baseball Players: #31 - Grover Cleveland Alexander

Grover Cleveland Alexander

Grover Cleveland Alexander was one of the greatest pitchers of the dead-ball era, then continued to have success for a decade afterward.

Alexander joined the Philadelphia Phillies in 1911, and was immediately a superstar, leading the league as a rookie with 28 wins (still the rookie record), 31 complete games, 7 shutouts, and 367 innings pitched, and he finished #3 in the MVP voting. He pitched well over the next two seasons, but then he became truly dominant.

In 1914 he led the league in wins and strikeouts, then had one of the best seasons in history in 1915, winning the Triple Crown with 31 wins, a 1.22 ERA and 241 strikeouts, to go along with 36 complete games and 12 shutouts. He repeated the feat in 1916 and 1917 as well, winning over 30 games and posting an ERA below 2.00 and basically beating down everyone in his path.

He led the Phillies to the World Series in 1915, and won Game 1 against the Red Sox, but they lost the next 4, and the Phillies would not win another World Series game until 1980. The Phillies traded him to the Cubs following his 3rd Triple Crown, fearful that he would be drafted into the military for World War I and be lost.

Their fears turned out to be partially founded, as he was drafted after pitching just 3 games for the Cubs, but he survived the war, though exposure to mustard gas did cause some hearing loss and epileptic seizures. When he came back, he was still the best pitcher in the league, winning his 4th Triple Crown in 1920.

After years of dealing with his epilepsy and his alcoholism that resulted from it, the Cubs decided to trade him to the Cardinals in 1926. The Cardinals won the pennant that year, and Alexander pitched complete game victories in games 2 and 6 against the Yankees, followed by a save to finish off game 7 and take the championship. At age 39, he had pitched over 20 innings with a 1.33 ERA and 17 strikeouts against one of the greatest teams in history, still one of the 5 greatest World Series performances in history.

Alexander finished his career with 373 wins, tied for the most in NL history and #3 among all pitchers. He also hold the NL record with 90 shutouts, and is only behind Walter Johnson on the all-time list. He is the only pitcher to win the Triple Crown 4 times, had one of the greatest World Series performances of all time at the tail end of his career, and is obviously one of the greatest to ever play the game.