Issue link: http://latinschool.uberflip.com/i/246730
Background: Field hockey team from the 1950s. JOHNNY GROTH '45 Latin baseball in the 1940s When seventh grader Johnny Groth threw a 40-yard pass in a Junior Bears halftime exhibition football game at Wrigley Field in 1939, Latin football coach Frank Rokusek and athletic director Bill Hoffman watched in awe. Later that day, after a visit from Headmaster James O. Wood, Groth's parents agreed to transfer him to Latin. As a high school student, he earned 15 varsity letters in football, basketball, baseball and track. He was named Best All-Around Athlete at Latin for 1943, 1944 and 1945 and after a stint in the military, was recruited by the Detroit Tigers. Groth hit a blazing .340 for Buffalo in 1948, and had a rookie year in Detroit that reminded many of Ty Cobb and Joe DiMaggio. He later played for the St. Louis Browns (1953), the Chicago White Sox (1954-55), the Washington Senators (1955) and the Kansas City A's (1956-57) before returning to the Detroit Tigers (1957-60). Groth worked as a scout for the Atlanta Braves until his retirement in 1990. The Sportsmanship Award in baseball at Latin is named in honor of Groth, Latin's most famous athlete. additional sports were added to the program, including squash and wrestling. Later in the '30s, bowling and crew were also offered. In the years after the purchase, the board of trustees hoped eventually to move the entire school to the Kersey Coates Reed campus, creating a country day school. Those plans never came to fruition. Instead, for nearly three decades Latin athletes took the bus from Latin to the Northwest Side in the afternoons for practices and games. Among Latin students, the campus was known as "The Field." "It was a wonderful, bucolic place, a sea of green grass on the east side of California Avenue stretching north more than a quarter of a mile," Bob Katz '50 recalled in the 1992 Latin School Bulletin. "The playing fields were at the south end of the property. Then there was the field house, the custodian's house and some tennis courts." The facility was sold to Gordon Tech in 1959 after it became too expensive to maintain. Funds from the sale were later used to complete the new upper school at North Avenue and Clark Street, and the roof gymnasium which was officially dedicated as the Kersey Coates Reed Gymnasium in 1992. LATI N SCHOOL OF CHI CA GO 63