In the history of baseball, among players who made their major league debut at the age of thirty-one or older, no one hit more career home runs than the 104 hit by Luke Easter. And most of his homers aren’t even in the record books.
One of ten children born to his parents in Mississippi, Easter grew up around St. Louis after his family moved there when he was just four years old. He dropped out of high school after the ninth grade, and played a lot of amateur ball as a young man, but nothing terribly organized until he went to work for the American Titanium Company in 1937. The company happened to field a baseball team, known as the St. Louis Titanium Giants.
There was no St. Louis team in the formal Negro Leagues at that point. The St. Louis Stars had be a solid franchise during the years the Negro National League existed, winning two pennants with such famous members as Willie Wells, Cool Papa Bell, and Mule Suttles. But the Stars folded with the league after the 1931 season, and no professional team replaced them.
That left an opening for the Titanium Giants to thrive as an amateur squad in the area, and they captured the attention of the city’s Black population. There aren’t any published statistics for those clubs, but Easter was one of their main attractions, and they became so popular that when the Stars tried to re-form, first in 1937 and again in 1939, they failed and had to either disband or move elsewhere.
Easter was twenty-one when he began playing for the Titanium Giants, and, despite being an enormous man (6’4”, 240 pounds), he flew below the radar of the professional Negro Leagues teams of that era. In 1941 he was still an excellent player, but was still playing only amateur ball when he broke his ankle in a car accident, robbing him of much of the little speed he had. Shortly thereafter he was drafted into the Army during World War II and served a year before being discharged because his ankle still wasn’t right. The next two years were spent working in a chemical plant in support of the war effort, and not even playing amateur baseball.
He got a couple of opportunities to catch on with prominent Negro Leagues teams once the war ended, but by now he was thirty and didn’t move well because of his size and bum ankle, so the Kansas City Monarchs and Chicago American Giants both passed on him after tryouts. He was referred to Abe Saperstein, the famed founder of the Harlem Globetrotters, who happened to be starting a new baseball team, the Cincinnati Crescents.
The Crescents weren’t in an organized league, didn’t record any statistics, and would spend the 1946 season touring, but it was professional baseball, and Easter played well enough for them that he finally gained the notice of a team in the Negro National League. His contract was sold to the famed Homestead Grays before the 1947 season. After a decade of playing baseball, Luke Easter finally became a major leaguer at the age of thirty-one.
He was immediately a very good big league player.
Easter hit .269/.348/.439 for the Grays in 1947, good for an OPS+ mark of 113. He was in the league’s top-10 in games, plate appearances, runs, hits, total bases, doubles, triples, home runs, RBI, and walks, while mostly playing the outfield since the legendary Buck Leonard was still the Grays’ regular first baseman.
In 1948, he was even better, hitting .319/.434/.549 and making the All-Star team. That slugging percentage was the best in the league, as was his 6 home runs (in only 41 games), .982 OPS and OPS+ mark of 183.
His performance prompted Bill Veeck, the owner of the Cleveland Indians, to sign Easter before the 1949 season. Assigned to San Diego of the Pacific Coast League, Easter wrecked PCL pitching to the tune of 25 homers and 92 RBI in just 80 games, while batting .363/.460/.722. He was called up to the Indians that August, but got only 54 plate appearances and had trouble adjusting to American League pitching at first.
That called into question whether he’d have a place on Cleveland’s roster for the 1950 season, but after a great Spring Training he was named the team’s starting right fielder on Opening Day. Moved to first base a couple of weeks later, by the All-Star break he was hitting .302/.409/.573.
He finished the season with 28 homers, 107 RBI, and a batting line of .280/.373/.487, and hit pretty much at that level through 1953. For those four seasons in Cleveland, Easter averaged 32 homers and 118 RBI per 162 games, a batting line of .275/.351/.487, and an OPS+ of 127. His WAR per 162 games was 3.3, making him an above average big league regular despite being 34 to 37 years old in those seasons.
Because of his age, size, and the lingering leg injury, Easter never played more than 141 games in a major league season, and only exceeded 500 plate appearances in a season twice. After six poor pinch-hitting appearances in 1954 he was sent back to San Diego in the Pacific Coast League and then to Ottawa of the International League, where he hit a combined 28 homers and batted .315 at the age of thirty-eight.
And thus started the final, glorious chapter in the saga of Luke Easter’s baseball career. He never again played a major league game, but Easter spent eleven seasons at Triple A after his final games in Cleveland, and was an offensive force for most of that time.
1955: Hit 30 homers and drove in 102 for Charleston of the American Association, batting .283/.408/.545.
1956: Hit 35 homers and drove in 106 for Buffalo of the International League, this time batting .306/.433/.578 at the age of forty.
1957: Hit 40 homers and drove in 128 for Buffalo, batting .279/.394/.562.
1958: Hit 38 homers and drove in 109 for Buffalo, batting .307/.415/.600.
1959: Now forty-three, he split the season between Buffalo and Rochester, hitting a combined 22 homers and driving in 76 while batting .259/.377/.475.
After that he didn’t play full-time anymore, but continued with Rochester for a remarkable five additional seasons. From 1960 to 1963, Easter hit 45 more home runs in part-time duty, and batted a combined .287/.365/.492 despite being forty-seven at the end of the 1963 season. After 10 more at-bats in 1964, forty-eight year old Luke Easter finally retired.
Along the very long road of his career, Easter played with a dozen Hall of Famers; Buck Leonard, Minnie Miñoso, Joe Gordon, Lou Boudreau, Bob Feller, Bob Lemon, Early Wynn, Satchel Paige, Larry Doby, Hal Newhouser, Bob Gibson, and Pat Gillick, not to mention such baseball lifers as Cal Ripken, Sr., Al Rosen, Boog Powell, Davey Johnson, and Tim McCarver.
He had hit those 104 big league homers, but hit another 247 in Triple A, and an untold number in the decade he spent playing for amateur teams before someone finally gave him a chance.
It’s fair to say that Luke Easter, if not for racism, World War II, and the lack of a couple of lucky breaks, might have been one of the most prolific major league home run hitters in history.
But, even without that claim to fame, he lived a helluva baseball life.
An amazing article. Great to read
So Cleveland signed Easter in 1949, which means he just missed winning the 1948 World Series with the club. Luckily he won the Negro Leagues WS in 1948 anyway, with the Hometown Grays.