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Luscious "Luke" Easter (August 4, 1915 – March 29, 1979) was a professional baseball player in Major League Baseball and the Negro leagues. He batted left-handed, threw right-handed, was , and weighed 240 lb. The birth year listed here is drawn from census data. Easter himself listed multiple birth years ranging from 1911 to 1921 on different occasions, so some ambiguity as to the correct year exists. ==Early life== Luke Easter was born in Jonestown, Mississippi to parents James and Maude Easter. His father was a graduate of the Tuskegee Institute.〔Christensen, Lawrence O. ''Dictionary of Missouri Biography'', University of Missouri Press, 1999. Pg. 269〕 His mother Maude died in 1922 and the family moved to St. Louis, Missouri where his father worked in a glass factory. Prior to that time, the Easters had been farmers in the Mississippi Delta. Luke Easter attended the same high school as fellow Negro league star Quincy Trouppe before dropping out in the ninth grade.〔 For the next few years Easter worked a variety of jobs such as shoeshiner, hat making, and for a dry cleaners. Although Easter was good enough to be a professional player, there was no Negro league franchise in St. Louis. So, in 1937 Easter joined the top team in the area, a semipro outfit called the St. Louis Titanium Giants. The team was made up of African-Americans employed by the National Lead Company.〔 Players would work their factory job during the week, often with time off to practice, then play baseball for the company on weekends. Easter earned twenty dollars ($20) per week plus another ten to twenty on the weekends for baseball games.〔 Luke Easter was a very large man for his, or any other, time standing in height and weighing around . A left-handed hitting first baseman, he was known for towering home runs. During his five years with the Giants they fielded a very competitive team. Also featuring Sam Jethroe, they went 6–0 in exhibitions against teams from the Negro American League in 1940. With World War II raging and America soon to enter the fray, Luke Easter planned to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1941. However, while returning from a trip to Memphis, Tennessee with Sam Jethroe, they were involved in an auto accident that left Easter with a fractured leg.〔 Luscious "Luke" Easter, serial number 37 368 805 was finally inducted into the Army of the United States at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis on June 22, 1942. Assigned to the Quartermaster Corps after basic training he was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, about one hundred miles southwest of St. Louis. Easter was separated from the Army at Fort Leonard Wood on July 3, 1943〔National Archives and Records Administration〕 and thereafter worked in the defense industry. Following the wars end in 1945 Luke Easter had try-outs with two Negro National League teams, the Kansas City Monarchs and the Chicago American Giants. Both teams felt he was too big and awkward to be a good ballplayer despite his previous success with the Titanium Giants.〔 Manager "Candy Jim" Taylor of the American Giants elected not to sign Easter, but referred him to promoter Abe Saperstein—famous as the founder of the Harlem Globetrotters. At that time Saperstein was founding a new touring baseball team, the Cincinnati Crescents.〔 Saperstein signed Easter, and after a successful 1946 season, sold him to the Homestead Grays. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Luke Easter (baseball)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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