LUSCIOUS LUKE
By Justin Murphy

EARLY LIFE

"I’ve seen a lot of powerful hitters in my time but for sheer ability to knock a ball great distances, I’ve never seen anybody better than Easter—and I’m not excepting Babe Ruth." –Del Baker

Luscious ‘Luke’ Easter was born August 4, 1915 at 8:15 PM in Jonestown, Mississippi. During his playing career and later in life, Easter would equivocate on his birthdate. Indians general manager Hank Greenberg once said, “no one knows how old Luke really is. No one, that is, but Luke himself, and sometimes I’m not sure that he knows”. He first claimed to have been born August 4, 1921 in St. Louis, Missouri, then changed to the same date in 1913 and 1914. On August 17, 1963, on one in a series of Luke Easter Days at Rochester’s Silver Stadium, Red Wings club president Morrie Silver offered Easter $10 for every year of his age, prompting him to announce that “my baseball age is 42, but my real age is 52”, placing his birth in 1911 (and netting him $520). The 1915 date is substantiated by a birth certificate, census research and Easter’s Social Security application, as well as an inscription in the Easter family Bible.

Luke was the fifth of ten children born to James and Maude Easter. At the time of Luke’s death in 1979, he still had six surviving siblings: brothers Robert, Julius (J.C.) and Wilbert, and sisters Minnie (married name Blanks), Ruby (Hayes), Izell (Tillis). Two other siblings died young. His father, who had attended the Tuskegee Institute and who, like his son, cut an imposing figure at 6’1”, 210 lb., was a farmer in Jonestown, a town of 400, but in 1919 the family relocated to St. Louis, where James’ brother found him work shoveling sand in a glass factory. Maude died of tuberculosis in 1922, when Luke was seven. Luke attended St. Louis public schools, and went to the same high school as fellow Negro Leaguer Quincy Trouppe, three years his elder. He dropped out, however, after the ninth grade, and spent his time playing ball. J.C. Easter relates that he and Luke used to play with a broomstick and bottletops.

BASEBALL, 1937-1949: NEGRO LEAGUES

"Luke was powerful; the only dislike I had for him, whenever we played, he used to beat the owner out of his money while we were on the road…they played knock rummy. They used to cheat each other and Luke used to beat him. We prayed that we could get paid before Luke got to see [owner Cum] Posey." –Ray Brown

The first mention of Easter playing organized baseball is in 1937, when he played outfield and first base and batted cleanup for the St. Louis Titanium Giants. The Giants were sponsored by the American Titanium Company. Easter and the other players worked for the company year-round, but were given time off to play ball. The St. Louis Stars had previously been the top black team in the city, having succeeded the St. Louis Giants in 1922 and won three Negro National League championships from 1928-31. In 1931, however, the league was dissolved, and the Stars went with it. In their absence, the Titanium Giants had become an elite club, and indeed, when an attempt was made in 1937 to re-establish the St. Louis Stars under different management in the new Negro American League, the experiment lasted only two years, largely due to competition with the Giants. Luke’s teammates in St. Louis included Sam Jethroe, Jesse Askew and Herb Bracken; the club defeated six Negro American League teams in exhibitions in 1940 and regularly won ninety percent of its games. Askew once said that “Easter was unlucky in not getting an earlier shot at the Negro Leagues, primarily because he played poorly in exhibitions against teams like the Kansas City Monarchs”.

In 1941, Easter and several other teammates were traveling in Jethroe’s car to a road game. The car crashed, and Easter suffered a broken ankle. This ended his 1941 season, and the Giants were disbanded the following year. Later in his career, Luke would deny having played baseball before 1946, claiming instead that he’d only played softball, a claim that some have labeled mythmaking.

By the beginning of 1942, World War II had broken out, and Easter, like many players, was drafted into the war effort. The National Archives and Records Adminstration lists him as being inducted on June 22, 1942, and stationing at Fort Leonard Wood, MO. He spent thirteen months in the army before being discharged on July 3, 1943 because of his ankle injury. He later found work in a “war chemical plant” in Chicago in the summer of 1945. At the end of 1945, however, with the war over, he spoke with ‘Candy’ Jim Taylor, manager of the Chicago American Giants. Taylor directed him to Abe Saperstein, who was a major baseball promoter before founding the Harlem Globetrotters. Saperstein was starting a new team, the Cincinnati Crescents, and he invited Easter to join it. The Crescents did not succeed in gaining admission into the Negro American League, and instead spent the 1946 season barnstorming across the country, competing against many Negro League teams. Statistics are not widely available for the 1946 Crescents, but the March 30, 1949 Sporting News reported that Easter had batted .415 with 152 RBIs; it has also been said that Easter hit 74 home runs, although that number is not verified. He also hit one of his more famous home runs, a ball that reached the center field bleachers of the Polo Grounds in New York against the Cubans. As teammate Bob Thurman said, “he hit it halfway up the stands, about 500 feet. The thing about it—it was a line drive”.

As he was throughout his career, Easter was a fan favorite in Cincinnati, and in 1947, Easter was signed to the Homestead Grays for a reported $1100 a month, making him one of the highest paid players on the team. The Grays sought a replacement in the lineup and at the box office for Josh Gibson, who’d died of a stroke the previous winter. In fact, Buck O’Neil writes that “we [i.e. the Negro Leagues] wanted to get Luke away from the St. Louis Stars [sic] long before he went to the Grays, but he didn’t want to leave home. He had a pretty good job there as a security guard”. The team already featured Hall of Fame slugger Buck Leonard; outfielder Bob Thurman, who would later play five seasons with the Cincinnati Reds; pitcher John ‘Needle Nose’ Wright, who later received a tryout with the Los Angeles Dodgers; and Wilmer Fields, who pitched and played third base, and who won eight MVP awards in different leagues in his career. In 219 at-bats in 1947, Luke hit ten home runs and held a .311 batting average, while playing the outfield (since Leonard was at first base). The following year he recorded a batting average of .363, and his thirteen homers tied him with teammate Leonard for the league lead (Leonard also took home the batting title that season, with a .395 average). He also led the NNL with 62 RBIs. Most impressively, in only 58 games, the 6’4”, 240 lb. Easter legged out a career-high eight triples, helping the Grays to a Negro League World Series championship. After the season, he was chosen to play in the 1948 East-West All-Star Game. 1948 also saw Luke’s marriage to 24-year-old Virgil Lowe, a Cleveland native. Some sources claim that Virgil was his third wife, yet there is no reference to any other wives in any of the available documents. He and Virgil would remain married until Luke’s death, thirty-one years later.

Meanwhile, Easter had also been playing winter ball in Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Hawaii for the past three years. Statistics for these seasons difficult to come by, but over three years playing for Mayagüez in Puerto Rico, he amassed 48 home runs, 145 RBIs and a .330 batting average, leading the league in home runs each season. His best season was 1948-49, when he was named MVP, batting .402 as the team won the championship. Easter also later played for Hermosillo of the Mexican PCL in 1954-55, leading the league with 20 homers,and for Caguas in Puerto Rico in the winters of 1955-56, leading the league in home runs at the age of 41 and in 1956-57.

Click here to read about Easter's ascension to the major leagues.

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