Grant, Mudcat,
1935-2021, African-American baseball player, b. Lacoochee, Fl., as James
Timothy Grant Jr. As a teenager, Grant played baseball, football, and
basketball in an all-black high school, and then attended the historically
black university Florida A&M for two years on a baseball scholarship. He
was signed to the Cleveland Indians farm system in 1954, making his major
league debut as a pitcher in 1958. In 1961, he played on the All-Star team.
Grant was traded to the Minnesota Twins in spring 1964; the following year,
he became the first Black pitcher to have a 20-win season, including six
shutouts. In that year’s world series facing the Los Angeles Dodgers,
Grant pitched two complete game wins, losing a third, and also hit a
three-run homer in the series’ sixth game; Sporting
News named him the American League Pitcher of the Year. Facing
discrimination on the road, Grant was an early supporter of the civil rights
movement. Besides baseball, he pursued a singing career, forming a revue
Mudcat and the Kittens in 1965 to play nightclubs during the off-season.
Dropped by the Twins following the 1967 season, Grant played as a relief
pitcher for several other teams before retiring from baseball in 1971, and
then worked as a TV commentator for the Twins through the ‘70s. He
also became an advocate for promoting the important role that Blacks had
played in the history of baseball.
See his Black Aces: Baseball’s Only African-American Twenty-Game
Winners (2006, with T. Sabellico and P. O’Brien).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Sports: Biographies
