I know itÕs Martin Luther King Day and everything, but this week I want to write about another great man who happened to be black. A guy who was, in my view, the first great man I ever met. Not the first great black man, mind you, but the first great man.
Despite my involvement in it, I tend to think that politics is ultimately pretty small beer when it comes to the way people relate to each other in this country. In 35 years in the newspaper game, starting in Ohio, going through Pennsylvania, to New York City and a bit in Ireland and then Niagara Falls, IÕve never met a politician whom I would call a great man.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was surely a great man, but was he any greater than Robert Johnson, Jesse Owens, Langston Hughes, Charlie Parker, Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Muhammad Ali or any of the other writers, musicians and sporting champions who pulled otherwise prejudiced white people toward greater understanding over the length of the turbulent last century?
Maybe, maybe not.
Luke Easter will never get a big monument in Washington, D.C. He is remembered, when he is remembered at all, as a big-hearted first baseman in Buffalo and Cleveland, Ohio, where I grew up. Most people say he was born in Jonestown, Miss., in 1915, but Luke himself pegged the date as anywhere from 1911 to 1921.
DidnÕt matter much. He played most of his career in the Negro Leagues and, in 1948, led the Homestead Grays to victory over the Birmingham Black Barons in that yearÕs league World Series, batting .363 and leading the league in home runs and RBI.
He caught on with the Cleveland Indians of the American League the next summer, and along with the handful of black baseball players who saw action with the Major Leagues during the 1940s, endured his share of racial abuse at the hands of bigoted teammates and fans.
The newspapers dubbed his massive home runs "Easter eggs," and he hit the longest ones ever recorded at the old Polo Grounds in New York and ClevelandÕs old Municipal Stadium.
He hit them longer than Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron or any of the other long ball specialists of the pre-Steroids era, and did it with a humble "just glad to be here" attitude that is the antithesis of the way todayÕs spoiled athlete-children are taught to act, seemingly from infancy.
After he left Cleveland during the American League championship season of 1954, he came up to Buffalo and played with the Bisons. He founded a sausage business here in Western New York, did a lot of charitable work with kids, and is today remembered on the Hall of Fame wall at BuffaloÕs Coca Cola Field or Dunn Tire Park or whatever the hell theyÕre calling it these days.
I interviewed him in 1978, during my time as sports editor for a broken-down suburban Cleveland weekly called the Euclid News Journal.
By then he was out of sports altogether, and was working as the union steward at TRW, a local plant that did a lot of work for our governmentÕs Defense Department, but which previously had made axel systems for all sorts of General Motors automobiles.
Luke, whoÕd never made more than $12,000 a year in professional baseball, told me he couldnÕt kick about the million-dollar contracts that were being handed out then, even by second-rank clubs like the Indians, for banjo-hitting second basemen or shortstops.
He did hate the fact they were weak -- "petunias," he called them -- and went on the disabled list every time they had a hangnail.
He was a man, a great man, as IÕve said.
A little while after I interviewed him, he was murdered. Cut down by a couple of punks who happened to be of the same race he was.
As union steward, heÕd gotten to spending his Friday lunch hour cashing the checks of his men at a local bank branch. The two punks jumped him, he didnÕt give the cash up easily, and they shot him to pieces with a sawed-off shotgun and a .38 caliber revolver.
They were young punks, likely still out on the street today. Luke probably would have said they deserved a second chance. Not me.
Poor Paul Dyster. With Republicans John Ceretto and Mark Grisanti sitting in the state Assembly and Senate offices representing the city, and city voters themselves having voted for Carl Paladino at the expense of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, he has been stripped of any illusion he might once have had of being influential in Albany. He makes our great Congresswoman Louise SlaughterÕs flesh crawl, and even U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer -- whose proclivity for the easy television photo ops available in Western New York are the stuff of legend -- pretty much treats him like a clown.
And while the Niagara Falls Reporter has ample photographic evidence of President Barack ObamaÕs deep regard for Western New York politicos like Steve Pigeon, DysterÕs pull at the White House amounts to sheer fantasy. Niagara Falls is screwed for the next four years because of fewer than 500 voters who went to the polls and stupidly pulled the "Democrat" lever.
Shame on them.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Jan. 17 2012 |