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Red Wings slugger wowed fans with legendary power The 1963 Rochester Red Wings had three of minor-league baseball's best-known sluggers: Joe Altobelli, who had led the International League in HRs and RBI with the Montreal Royals in 1960. Luke Easter, who had a combined 113 HRs for the Buffalo Bisons in a three-year span (1956-57-58). Steve Bilko, who had a combined 148 HRs for the Los Angeles Angels in a three-year span (1955-56-57). That was a lot of HRs and a lot of legend on one Triple-A team. Unfortunately, it also was a lot of years and too many pounds. Altobelli was the pup at 31. Luke was believed to be 48. Bilko was 35 and appeared to weigh at least 275 pounds (a Los Angeles Times headline years earlier read “NOT EVEN MRS. BILKO KNOWS HIS WEIGHT” ). First-year Red Wings manager Darrell Johnson had the unenviable task of finding sufficient at-bats for the trio of crowd-pleasing first basemen to justify keeping them all on the roster. “In spring training, he (Johnson) called us into his office and said one of us would have to switch to the outfield,” recalls Altobelli. “I looked at Luke, then I looked at Bilko, and I knew it was time for me to find an outfielder's glove.” Altobelli's unselfish move to the outfield still meant Easter and Bilko couldn't play simultaneously. It was a frustrating summer having to watch weak-hitting pitchers such as Nelson Chittum, Billy Short, Buster Narum, John Miller and Dave Vineyard bat for themselves while Altobelli, Easter and/or Bilko were sitting on If ever a team needed the designated rule, it was the 1963 Red Wings. They finished 75-76 and missed the playoffs. Altobelli hit .244 with 15 HRs in 97 games, Easter hit .271 with 6 HRs and 35 RBI in 77 games, and Bilko hit .261 with 8 HRs and 37 RBI in the final 101 games of his career. Bilko, who died in 1978, will be inducted into the Red Wings Hall of Fame with fellow big boppers Johnny Mize and Mike Epstein on Sunday night. Bilko's first tour of duty in Rochester was much more successful than his 1963 swan song. His first full season with the Wings was 1949, when he hit .310 with 34 HRs and a league-leading 125 RBI. Teammate Russ Derry had a team-record 42 HRs and 122 RBI. They were the main attractions as manager Johnny Keane's team finished second. Bilko spent portions of the next three seasons in Rochester before the Cardinals gave him a full-time shot at first base in 1953. In 154 games, he batted .251 with 21 HRs and 84 RBI. He also struck out 125 times (the record at the time was 134). Bilko's physique worked against him in the pre-DH age. He was not graceful defensively, partly because he wasn't designed to be a gloveman. He once was described as “a man built like a packing crate for farm machinery.” In 1954, he was back in the minor leagues with the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League, and he was the toast of the town. Here were his numbers for his three MVP seasons with the Angels:
He enjoyed his best big-league season, hitting .279 with 20 HRs and 59 RBI in 114 games and only 294 at-bats. Bilko's final major-league season was with the Angels in 1962. He hit .287 with 8 HRs and 38 RBI in 64 games and 164 at-bats. Rochester Community Baseball figured Bilko would help at the gate in 1963, but he didn't have much left to give. He hit worse than he had the year before in the American League. He retired after the season and died March 7, 1978, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., after a long illness. He was 49 years old. When Russ Derry learned of his old teammate's death, Rochester's all-time HR leader told a newspaper writer, “Bilko was one of the best right-handed hitters I ever played with or ever saw. He didn't get the chance he should have in the big leagues. Too many baseball men looked at him as too big and too fat. They'd put him on reducing diets and he'd get weak. If they'd just turned him loose, he would have made a name for himself.” Steve Bilko “made a name for himself” in Rochester as a young slugger early in his career. The 1963 version was worn out. In portions of six seasons with the Red Wings, Bilko hit .292 (496-for-1,698) with 77 HRs and 328 RBI in 516 games. I wish I had seen Bilko in his prime and I wish more baseball people had focused on his power-hitting ability than on his shape. He would have had a much better shot at a long big-league career had there been a DH rule. Sunday he'll become a Designated Hall of Famer and I'll be thinking how lucky fans were in Rochester's summer of 1949 to watch Bilko and Derry crushing baseballs for the Red Wings.
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