Grover Cleveland Alexander was born on February 26, 1887 at Elba, Howard County, Nebraska, United States; youngest of thirteen children, twelve boys and a girl. His parents were William Alexander, a native of Clinton County, Iowa, and Maggie (Cooty) Alexander, born in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Alexander attended public school in the neighboring town of St. Paul.
At the age of nineteen Alexander took a job as a telephone lineman to help support the large family. He also began to play baseball on local town teams and with independent Nebraska clubs, where he developed his skill as a pitcher. Alexander signed his first contract in organized baseball in 1909, with the Galesburg, Illinois, club. Toward the end of the season Galesburg sold his contract to the Indianapolis club, a member of the American Association; it in turn sent him to Syracuse in the New York State League.
The Philadelphia club of the National League drafted him for the 1911 season, paying his former club $750 for the privilege. He stayed with the Philadelphia club until the end of the 1917 season, when he was traded to the Chicago Cubs, but after pitching in only three games, he was drafted into the army in April 1918.
During World War I, Alexander served in France as a sergeant in the 342nd Artillery.
After his discharge in 1919 he resumed pitching for the Cubs. He often broke training rules, was addicted to alcohol, and by 1926 had become such a disciplinary problem that the team's new manager, Joe McCarthy, disposed of his contract in mid-season to the St. Louis Cardinals for the waiver price of only $4, 000. Alexander pitched well for the Cardinals. Without the nine victories he turned in during the second half of the season they could not have won the 1926 pennant, and his successes against the New York Yankees in the World Series that fall were vital in bringing the world championship to St. Louis.
The following season Alexander received $17, 500, his peak salary. He enjoyed another good year in 1928, winning sixteen games, but in the following year, because of his drinking, the club paid him off in full and sent him home six weeks before the close of the season. That winter he was traded to Philadelphia, where for the first time he lost more games than he won. When the club released him in mid-1930, his major-league career had come to an end. From then on Alexander drifted downhill. He played briefly for the Dallas club of the Texas League, pitched for various semiprofessional outfits, including the well-known House of David team in Benton Harbor, Michigan, and, when he could no longer pitch, took various jobs such as selling tickets at a racetrack and working in a flea circus on 42nd Street in New York.
His health declined; on two occassions he was found lying unconscious in the street; and he suffered a heart attack after watching a World Series game in 1946. He finally settled in a rooming house in St. Paul, Nebraska, subsisting on his meager war pension and small sums provided by the National League. He died there, probably of cardiac failure, at the age of sixty-three, and was buried at Elmwood Cemetery in St. Paul.
Alexander ranks among the best pitchers of American baseball history. From 1911 to 1930 he won 373 major league games. The ninety shutout games he pitched (sixteen in the 1916 season alone) set a National League record. He set the major-league record for the lowest lifetime average of runs earned against him in games where he pitched--2. 56. He also led his league five times in this category, thus establishing a record matched only by Sandy Koufax. Seven times Alexander led in innings pitched and strikeouts six times, setting another major-league record, and he pitched 440 complete games. He won twenty-nine games for Syracuse in the New York State League in 1910. In 1911 Alexander won twenty-eight games for the Phillies, a record for a major-league freshman pitcher. He won 37 games for St. Louis. Alexander was among the first players chosen for the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York. He was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938. A movie based on his life, The Winning Team, appeared in 1952.
Alexander was a member of the American Legion and the Masons.
As a pitcher, Alexander was an artist who relied upon skill more than brawn. His delivery was smooth and effortless, and he possessed remarkable control that enabled him to throw his sinking fast ball, his sharp, quick curve, and his screwball with pinpoint accuracy and economy of pitches. Rather than try to strike batters out, he concentrated on forcing them to hit the kind of pitch he wanted them to. He wasted no time between pitches, and often he would retire the side on five or six pitches in an inning; once he finished a game in fifty-eight minutes.
Alexander was easily distinguishable on the field in those days before players wore identifying numbers on their uniforms. He was six feet one inch tall and weighed about 175 pounds; he had reddish-brown hair and a freckled red face, prematurely seamed. He walked slightly knock-kneed, and wore his cap, which always seemed too small, perched on the top of his head like a peanut shell. In private life he was softspoken and kindly.
On June 1 of 1918 Alexander married Aimée Arrant of Omaha, a childhood friend. They were divorced in 1929, later remarried, and were again divorced; they had no children.
