Rocky Colavito: A true hero in the city of Cleveland

It's a name that should be a first-ballot inductee into the Cadence Hall of Fame: Rocky Colavito. The perfect name for a baseball hero. Rhythmic. Melodic. Nostalgic. Perfect. They don't make names like that anymore. The only one better is the one that went onto his birth certificate shortly after he showed up, Aug. 10, 1933, in the Bronx, N.Y.: Rocco Domenico Colavito. Sheer poetry. Some people are born to be stars, and Rocco and Angelina's son was that. He was so anxious to begin his baseball career he dropped out of high school at 17 and signed a contract with the Indians. The home runs started to come immediately: 23 at Class D Daytona Beach in 1951, a combined 19 at Class B Spartanburg and Cedar Rapids in 1952. The next year, as a 19-year-old at Class-A Reading, he hit 28 homers, and met a fire-balling left-hander from Florida who was a year older than him, but they would be baseball roommates for the next seven seasons. His name was Herb Score. Rocky hit 38 homers at Triple-A Indianapolis in 1954, got sent back there the next year and hit 30 more. He exploded on the big-league scene in 1956. In just 322 at-bats, he belted 21 homers, slugged .531, with a .903 OPS and finished tied for second — with Baltimore's Tito Francona! — in the Rookie of the Year voting, which inexplicably went to White Sox shortstop Luis Aparicio, whose 1.5 WAR was dwarfed by Colavito's 2.4. From 1956-59 Colavito was, after Mickey Mantle, probably the most feared slugger in the American League. He averaged 32 home runs per year and hit four homers one glorious evening in Baltimore. In the last 65 years, only two Indians have led the American League in home runs: Albert Belle, with 50 in 1995, and Colavito with 42 in 1959. In many ways Colavito was Belle, but without the rap sheet. In his 14-year major league career Colavito had a WAR of 44.5, a 22.9 WAR with the Indians. In his 12-year major league career (cut short by a hip injury) Belle had a 40.1 WAR and 27.4 WAR with the Indians. Both were wildly popular in Cleveland, Belle as an outlaw slugger, Colavito as a matinee idol/heartthrob of females, in an era when players had their own fan clubs. On April 17, 1960, two days before Opening Day, Indians general manager Frank Lane, whose idea of a good time was to infuriate a fan base, and cripple a franchise for the next three decades, traded Colavito to Detroit for outfielder/infielder Harvey Kuenn. It was a straight-up trade of the reigning AL home run champion for the reigning batting champion. Kuenn led the league in hitting in 1959 with a .353 average. In Cleveland, however, the trade was met with outrage, worse even than the furor raised in 1993, when the Browns traded hometown hero Bernie Kosar. With Colavito, the Indians in 1959 finished in second place, with a record of 89-65. It would be 36 years before they won that many games in a season again. Their home attendance in 1959 was 1,497,976. It would be 34 years before they exceeded that total. Minus Colavito, the Indians' attendance plunged by over half a million in 1960. They brought him back in the mid '60s to help goose attendance, but it didn't work. He led the league with 108 RBIs in 1965 and clubbed 30 homers the next year, but he was basically a one-man show. The thrill was gone. They traded him away again in 1967 and Cleveland's biggest baseball star between the mid-50's and mid-90's ricocheted from the White Sox to the Dodgers to the Yankees in the last two years of his career, which ended in 1968. Today, only fans of a certain age can remember when the towering presence of Rocky Colavito dominated the summer months, when baseball was still king in America, and Rocco and Angelina's son ruled Cleveland. Little Leaguers mimicked his batting stance and unique pre-at bat stretching exercise, in which he would hold the bat horizontal behind and against his back in order to — we were never sure which — loosen his back, or just look cool. The Rock was cool personified. Grown men wanted to be him. Grown women wanted to be near him. Before the internet, cable or satellite TV, Twitter or Facebook, genuine heroes were harder to find. But once located, they had staying power. Rocky Colavito had, and has, staying power. He turned 88 Tuesday, and Cleveland not only threw a party for him, it threw up a statue for him. Not at the ballpark, but in Cleveland's Little Italy neighborhood, which is kind of cool itself, reflecting, as it does, the scope of his impact on a city in which his last at-bat for the Indians came on July 25, 1967. Real heroes endure. Real heroes are not forgotten. Rocky Colavito was a real hero. Contact Jim Ingraham at jingraham4@gmail.com.