The Pecan Park Eagle

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ''It might have been.'' - John Greenleaf Whittier.

At 6’2″ and 200 pounds, Johnny Grodicki (BR/TR) was another of those young Houston Buff arms from the 1930s who might have been something had fate broken a little differently. It just wasn’t to be.

Grodzicki arrived in Houston late in 1936 at age 19 after registering a 16-12 record for New Iberia of the Evangeline League, a place that saw the start of many future great Cardinal pitchers. Howie Pollet and ed Munger both got their starts there.

Grodzicki got into three games for ten innings of work with the Buffs in 1936, picking up a single loss as his only Texas League mark in that first year, but hopes were high in St. Louis for his success at Houston in 1937.

Grodzicki’s fastball had good heat and his curve was decent enough. As often happened, his problem was control. In 244 innings of work for the 1937 Buffs, Grodzicki walked 174 batters. He still finished the season with a great record of 18 wins against only 11 losses and he complied an attention-getting earned run average of only 2.88 for a Houston club that finished in 7th place with a 67-91 record.

Young Grodzicki also starred in the 1937 Texas League All Star Game at Buff Stadium. In only the second game of its kind in league history, an overlow crowd of over 8,000 Houston fans showed up that day to watch the North and South All Stars square off against each other. Grodzicki came into the game in the fourth inning, bringing form and focus with him. He proceeded to imitate the earlier accomplishments of major league great Carl Hubbell by striking out six of the best hitters in the North lineup as his first item of business. The hitters, all of whom carrying .300+ batting averages with them into the game, included Homer Peel, Red Harvel, Joe Bilgere, Lou Brower, Norman McKaskill, and Ed “Bear Tracks” Greer.

1938 saw Grodzicki post a 12-21 record for a 5th place Houston Buffs (74-84) club. His innings of work increased to 269 and his walks dropped to 169, but his ERA ballooned to 4,25.

1939-1940 saw Grodzicki moving up the Cardinal chain for two seasons at Rochester where he compiled a total record for two seasons of 11 wins and 10 losses. In 1941, “Grod” moved over to Columbus for a record of 19-5, 2.58 ERA and his best season record in professional baseball. His success at Columbus earned Grodzicki a late season call-up to the parent St. Louis Cardinals where he posted a 2-1 record and a drop-dead gorgeous ERA of only 1.35 in 13.1 innings of work.

Then came World War II and a hiatus from the game that finished the future of Johnny Grodzicki. In his first season back, 1946, “Grod” worked only four innings, recording no record, but posting a 9.00 ERA for the Cardinals. In 1947, Johnny worked only 23.1 innings for the Cards, posting a record of 0-1 with an ERA of 5.40. Aging, injury, and ineffectiveness, plus four years of war rust wouldn’t go away. They were collectively the end of Johnny  Grodicki’s stock as a prospect. After 1947, he would never again darken the doorway of an MLB clubhouse.

Twelve years after his first arrival, Johnny Grodzicki returned to the Houston Buffs in 1948 as a an old 31-year old minor league veteran. “Grod” did OK in limited action as a 6-5, 2.05 ERA starter/reliever in 88 innings. Coming off their 1947 Dixie Series championship year, the ’48 Buffs under manager Johnny Keane were only an 82-71 3rd place club. “Grod” was starting to be a fit for mediocrity.

1949 saw Grodzicki go 4-5 for the Buffs before moving up to Rochester again for a 2-1 mediocre finish. Johnny Grodzicki continued to plod his way through the minors for three extra seasons of unremarkable achievement before hanging it all up after 1952 at the age of 36. He finished with a career minor league record of 108 wins, 83 losses and an ERA of 3.65

Johnny Grodzicki passed away in retirement at the age of 83 on May 2, 1998 in Daytona Beach, Florida. As a faded away former minor league prospect, he was the living embodiment of “what might have been.” With a little more control, a tad bit more of good luck contact with the right mentor who never showed up in reality, and with a lot less wear and tear from World War II, who knows what might otherwise have become of Johnny Grodzicki?

Johnny, we hardly knew you.

 Iconic General Manager Branch Rickey of the St. Louis Cardinals had a three-pronged plan for helping himself. (1) He had a deal with club owner Sam Breadon. He got to keep a percentage of the net profits on the club’s operations, which meant, of course, that the less he paid out in personnel salaries, the more he got to keep for himself, as long as the club kept on winning. (2) He counted on the reserve clause and a loaded pipeline of talented players in the farm team system, players with no choice in baseball beyond the Cardinals, to keep him supplied with game-winning material. (3) He needed a few key people in the organization who were capable of doing more than one essential task at one time for the lowest salary he could work out with them for the price of a single employee’s salary.

Branch Rickey hit the jackpot when he met and signed a young pitcher/1st baseman/outfielder/baseball thinker/field manager/accountant/front office businessman named Eddie Dyer.

Born October 11, 1899 in Morgan City, Louisiana, Eddie Dyer’s family moved to Houston when he was still a kid, and he grew up among us as another “got here fast as I can” Houstonian with a talent and love for the game of baseball. After high school, he attended and played baseball at Rice, where he caught the attention of Branch Rickey and the Cardinals. This was around the same time that Mr. Rickey was surreptitiously taking control of the Houston Buffaloes for the Cardinals through a straw man purchaser for the sake of avoiding censure from Commissioner Landis, who thought that major league club control of minor league teams was bad for baseball.

Signed as a right handed pitcher, the Cardinals assigned Dyer to Syracuse of the International League to sharpen his skills.  Dyer’s progress was slow and mediocre. For the next five years, Eddie shuffled back and forth between the Cards and some of their top farm clubs, trying to break through as a more consistent winner. He seemed to be getting things together in 1927 when, again with Syracuse, he won his first six games before running into one of those life-changing events. An arm injury tagged Dyer with his first loss, but that was the small deficit. That 1927 arm injury ended Eddie Dyer’s pitching career.

From 1928 forward, Eddie Dyer became a Cardinals farm club manager, also continuing his playing career as an outfielder through the 1933 season he split between Greensboro and Elmira. Here’s where the Rickey touch/Dyer ability really started coming together. Wherever he went for the Cards as a manager, Dyer also served as business manager or club president – and all for the same money. What a deal!

In 1937-38, Eddie Dyer pulled leave as a manager, taking over in 1938 as Supervisor for Cardinal Farm Team Operations in the Southern and Southwestern Regions of the United States. He returned for three years (1939-40) as Manager of his home town Houstons Buffs . It turned out to be an impressively successful run, one that that would vault Dyer even higher up the Cardinal ladder of managerial plans in the years immediately following World War II. Dyer led the 1939-41 Buffs to three consecutive first place finishes in the Texas Leage, averaging 102 runs per season. His 1940 Buffs club also won the playoffs for the pennant, but then lost the Dixie Series to Nashville in five games. In 1942, Dyer moved up to the then AA Columbus (O) Redbirds of the American Association, finishing first and also winning the league pennant playoff series.

During World War II (1943-45), Dyer performed admimistrative duties for the Cardinals as Farm System Director in 1943 and then spent a couple of years (1944-45) taking care of his personal businesses in Houston. Then, when Cardinals Manager Billy Southworth suddenly departed St. Louis to take over the helm for the Boston Braves after the ’45 season, the wheel passed to Eddie Dyer to take over as Manager of the St Louis Cardinals in 1946. – What a timely move that turned out to be.

With all the big stars returning from military service, Eddie Dyer led the 1946 Cardinals to a first place tie with the Brooklyn Dodgers for the National League pennant. The Cardinals then took the flag by winning the first two games of  a best two of three games series with the Dodgers. They then faced off with Ted Williams and the Boston Red Sox in that “one for the ages” World Series in which Enos Slaughter’s “mad dash” run-scoring, game and Series-deciding tally from first base in Game Seven became one of the iconic moments in World Series history.

Dyer kept the Cardinals close again in 1947 and 1948, but lost out in the end as second place finishers to the Dodgers and Braves. When the Dyer-led Cards again narrowly missed in 1949, finishing only a game back of the Dodgers, things looked bleak. With Branch Rickey now guiding the Dodgers, the Cards no longer had the talent jam in their system that they once enjoyed. Dyer knew that too. He had worked every phase of the Cardinal operations over the years and really needed no “handwriting on the wall” to tell him what was coming soon. If anything, in fact, Eddie Dyer’s next actions were the writer of things to come for the St. Louis Cardinals.

After finishing the 1950 season in 5th place, Eddie Dyer resigned as manager of the Cardinals and retired to tend his considerable business interests in Houston. Dyer was involved in insurance, real estate, and oil. Marty Marion would take over as Cardinals Manager in 1951, but neither he nor any of the many who followed him would have the answer to winning it all again anytime soon. The Cardinals would not win another World Series until another Houstonian, Johnny Keane, got them there for that thrilling seven-game triumph over the New York Yankees in 1964.

Eddie Dyer’s retirement years in Houston were productive – and presumably content. Sadly, Eddie Dyer suffered a stroke in 1963 and then passed away in Houston on April 20, 1964 at age 65. Part of his legacy will live on as a tribute to Branch Rickey. The great Branch Rickey couldn’t have done it quite as renumeratively in baseball without the help he received from people like Eddie Dyer, but, of ourse,  it took a man like Rickey to recognize from early on what he had on his hands in the kid from Houston that he signed out of Rice (now University) Institute back in 1922.