Jerry Grote Marquee

He caught every inning he could for the 1969 Mets, a club that had never finished higher than ninth and won the World Series, and he threw and blocked well enough that Casey Stengel and later managers built the pitching staff's confidence around him. He was chosen for two All-Star teams, in 1968 and 1974.

Sixteen seasons gave him 1,092 hits, 160 doubles, 15 home runs and a .252 average, with 1,348 games behind the plate. He was not much of a hitter — a .252 average across a long career at a position that did not demand more then — but he called an exceptional game and had one of the strongest arms of his generation.

He also caught for the 1973 Mets that reached the World Series and lost it, and finished with two years for the Dodgers and a final one with Kansas City. He worked as a cattle rancher in Texas afterward. The 1987 ballot gave him no votes of 413. He died in 2024, at eighty-one.