By Richard Goldstein
Rocky Colavito, who was one of baseball’s leading sluggers in his time and a huge fan favorite playing the outfield for the Cleveland Indians, only to be traded away in 1960 in the most infamous deal in the club’s history, died Tuesday at his home in Bernville, Pennsylvania. He was 91
His death was announced by the Cleveland Guardians, as the team is now known.
Colavito hit 374 home runs in 14 years in the major leagues, eight of those seasons in two stints with Cleveland. He finished his career with a return to his birthplace, the Bronx, playing for the New York Yankees. A six-time All-Star, he was just the third player in the majors to hit four home runs in one game in consecutive at-bats, and he had one of the game’s strongest arms.
A sturdy 6 feet 3 inches tall and 190 pounds, Colavito played the game with enthusiasm, although flat feet limited his mobility, and he was happy to sign autographs. Time magazine put him on its cover in the summer of 1959 for a profile of baseball’s young stars, gushing at how Colavito, handsome with curly hair, “makes bobby-soxers squeal.”
“Rocky had tremendous charisma,” Herb Score, Cleveland’s fast-balling left-hander, told Terry Pluto in “The Curse of Rocky Colavito” (1994), a chronicle of the team’s years of floundering after Colavito was traded. “Fans gravitated to him not just because he hit home runs. Rocky relished the clutch situations. He didn’t always come through, but he wanted to be the guy who took that burden on his back.”
When rumors arose that Colavito would be traded in 1958 by Cleveland’s newly arrived general manager, Frank Lane, who had been consumed with making deals in his previous stops, fans chanted, “Don’t knock the Rock!”
Colavito hit 41 home runs in 1958 and 42 in 1959, tying with Harmon Killebrew for the American League lead, while driving in more than 100 runs each of those seasons. Lane told The Saturday Evening Post in July 1959 that Colavito would “easily be the greatest gate attraction in the American League” when Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams wound down their careers.
But Lane thwarted Colavito’s quest for significant salary raises, and, two days before the opening of the 1960 season, he outraged Cleveland’s fans by trading Colavito to the Detroit Tigers for outfielder Harvey Kuenn. The league’s batting champion in 1959, Kuenn was three years older than Colavito and had hit only nine home runs that season.
Gabe Paul, the Cincinnati Reds’ general manager at the time and a future Cleveland general manager, was quoted as saying, “The Indians traded a slow guy with power for a slow guy with no power.”
Colavito went on to hit at least 35 home runs in three of his four seasons as a Tiger. But Kuenn played only one season for Cleveland before he was traded to the San Francisco Giants.
“I loved Cleveland and the Indians,” Colavito told The Plain-Dealer of Cleveland in 2010. “I never wanted to leave.”
And he insisted that he had never put a curse on the team. As he put it: “Frank Lane did.” Either way, Cleveland still hasn’t won a World Series since 1948.
Rocco Domenico Colavito was born Aug. 10, 1933, in the Bronx, the son of a truck driver. He idolized Joe DiMaggio as a boy and dropped out of Theodore Roosevelt High School at 16 to play semipro baseball. After scouting him at a Bronx tryout, Cleveland signed him to a minor-league contract for a $3,000 bonus in 1951.
After four years with Detroit and a year with the Kansas City Athletics, Colavito returned to Cleveland in January 1965 in a three-team trade that involved the A’s and the Chicago White Sox. But Cleveland blundered in getting Colavito back, just as the team had in sending him away. Colavito was still a productive hitter, but by then he was in the twilight of his career. Cleveland gave the White Sox pitcher Tommy John, who would win 286 games in his career, as well as Tommie Agee, who became the 1966 rookie of the year with the White Sox and the center fielder for the New York Mets’ 1969 World Series champions.
Colavito remained with Cleveland until mid-1967, and then finished out his career with the White Sox, the Dodgers and the Yankees, who signed him in July 1968 when he was released by Los Angeles.
In his first game as a Yankee, he hit a three-run homer in his second at-bat against the Washington Senators before a sparse Yankee Stadium crowd of 11,503.
In August, he pitched 2 2/3 innings in relief against the Tigers in the first game of a doubleheader, taking over in the fourth inning with Detroit ahead, 5-0. He yielded no runs and one hit, and got the victory when the Yankees rallied to win, 6-5. He hit a home run in the second game of a Yankee doubleheader sweep.
But Colavito’s short Yankee stint was otherwise unremarkable. He hit five home runs but batted only .220. When the Yankees signed him, he was unsure about his future and asked that they release him once the season was over. They did so, and he decided to retire.
In addition to his 374 home runs, Colavito drove in 1,159 runs (leading the league with 108 in 1965) and had a .266 career batting average. When he hit four consecutive home runs against the Orioles in Baltimore in June 1959, he matched a feat that had been achieved only by Bobby Lowe in 1894 and Lou Gehrig in 1932.
Colavito’s survivors include his wife, Carmen; his sons, Rocky Jr. and Steven; and a daughter, Marisa.
After his playing days, Colavito was a coach for Cleveland and the Kansas City Royals. He was among the Royals who were ejected from a game at Yankee Stadium in 1983, in what became known as the pine tar incident. An umpire nullified a home run by Kansas City’s George Brett because Brett’s bat was coated in too much pine tar, which can improve a batter’s grip. After the call, Colavito had tried to keep the bat away from the umpire.
Cleveland, which inducted him into the team’s Hall of Fame, honored him on his 80th birthday at its ballpark, Progressive Field, where Colavito donned his old No. 6. Eight years later, a statue in his honor was unveiled in the city’s Little Italy. “I’m really thankful and happy,” he told the assembled crowd, “that God chose me to play in Cleveland.”
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