Luscious "Luke" Easter was born on August 4, 1915 in Jonestown, Mississippi, United States. He was the son of James Easter, a farmer, and Maude Williams.
In 1922, Easter's mother died and in 1924 his father sold his farm and moved the family to St. Louis, Missouri, where he remarried and worked as a shoveler in a glass factory.
Easter dropped out of Vashon High School in St. Louis in the ninth grade to work in a dry-cleaning store.
Luke played semi-professional baseball in the 1930's for the St. Louis Titanium Giants, a team sponsored by the National Lead Company, while working on the Titanium plant's rigging crew. In 1941, Easter suffered a broken ankle in an automobile accident, which delayed his induction into the military. He served in the United States Army at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, between 1942 and 1944 and received a medical discharge because of ankle problems. He then worked for a time in a Portland, Oregon, shipyard before returning to St. Louis in the spring of 1945. Easter tried out unsuccessfully with Negro League baseball teams but was spotted playing in a Chicago industrial league and was offered a contract to play with a barnstorming baseball team. Easter rapidly acquired a reputation for long-ball hitting.
He was noticed and signed by sporting impresario Abe Saperstein, who ran the Cincinnati Crescents, which was affiliated with the Negro League. With the Crescents, Easter amassed impressive batting statistics capped by a 1946-1947 exhibition series in Hawaii in which he hit twelve home runs in nineteen games. Easter's hitting gained the attention of the Washington-Homestead Grays, the premier Negro League team.
In the spring of 1947 the Grays acquired his contract and paid him $700 per month. Playing first base and in the outfield for the Grays in 1947 and 1948, Easter became one of the league's leading sluggers. He continued his long-ball heroics while playing in Venezuela and Puerto Rico in the winters of 1947-1948 and 1948-1949. Easter's growing repute prompted the owner of the Cleveland Indians, Bill Veeck, to make a special trip to Puerto Rico to scout him.
Veeck purchased Easter's contract for a reported $5, 000 in 1949 and sent him to San Diego in the Pacific Coast League, where he became the league's most feared slugger and greatest drawing card, hitting long home runs and displaying surprising speed and defensive ability around first base. At the time, Easter claimed his age was twenty-seven, although in reality he was thirty-three years old. Easter injured his knee in a spring-training collision and later suffered a broken kneecap after being hit by a pitch, but he continued playing despite increasing pain.
In less than half a season with San Diego, before going to Cleveland for knee surgery, he hit. 363 with 25 home runs and 92 runs batted in as attendance figures soared. After surgery he was sidelined for six weeks, his weight ballooned to 256 pounds, and he hit poorly in limited appearances with Cleveland late in the season. In 1950, after a slow start, Easter hit . 280 with 28 home runs and 107 runs batted in. That included a 477-foot home run, the longest ever hit in Cleveland's Municipal Stadium.
In 1951, Easter suffered a torn elbow muscle and torn knee cartilage, yet he still hit . 270 with 27 home runs and 103 runs batted in. Easter underwent another knee operation in the winter of 1951-1952. An accumulation of injuries and vision and sinus problems plagued him early in 1952. After a terrible start, he was sent to the Indianapolis farm team in late June. Recalled by Cleveland after two weeks, he finished the season with 31 home runs, 97 runs batted in, and a . 263 average.
He was named the Sporting News American League player of the year.
In 1953, Easter signed a $20, 000 contract, his highest ever. Early in the season he was hit by a pitch, suffering a broken foot that sidelined him for over two months. The next year he was sent to Ottawa in the International League and was generally considered to be finished as a player. Yet he played in the minor leagues until 1964 with Ottawa, San Diego, Charleston, and, most memorably, with Buffalo (1956 - 1959) and Rochester (1959 - 1964), becoming a fan favorite and hitting 113 home runs in a three-year span (1956 - 1958). After struggling early in the 1959 season, he was released on May 14 and signed a few days later by Rochester as player-coach.
He retired in 1965.
After retiring, Easter returned to Cleveland and worked as a metal polisher at a plant that manufactured aircraft components. Earlier business ventures operating a hotel restaurant and a sausage company had been unsuccessful. Easter became the chief steward with the Aircraft Workers Alliance Union and established a reputation for honesty and sincerity in dealings with fellow workers and management.
He returned to baseball briefly in 1969 as a coach with the Cleveland Indians to qualify for a major league baseball pension. Easter often cashed employee paychecks as personal favors. On the morning of March 29, 1979, he left the Cleveland Trust branch in suburban Euclid with over $40, 000 in cash. He was approached by two armed men and shot and killed by a single shotgun blast.
As a player, Easter was best known for his powerful home runs, colloquially known as "Easter Eggs". While with the Grays in 1948, he became the first player to hit a home run into the center field bleachers at New York's Polo Grounds during game action, a section that was 475 feet from home plate. Easter was one of the most popular players in baseball and one of its greatest drawing cards. He took the time to assist younger players, to sign autographs and talk to fans long after the game, to appear before adult and youth groups, and to make friends for the franchise. He was a community fixture in Cleveland, actively involved in civic causes and worker-management relations within his union responsibilities. More than one thousand people, including the mayor of Cleveland, attended his funeral. He became a 2008 inductee in the International League Hall of Fame.
Easter was a gregarious, warm-hearted man. He was a big, powerful man (at six feet, four inches tall and 235 pounds).
Easter was married three times and had four children. One of his first two wives was Mildred Squires, whom he married on March 19, 1948. He married his third wife, Virgil Love, on December 10, 1950. They had three children.
