A Brief History
On August 10, 1933, baseball legendary slugger Rocco Domenico “Rocky” Colavito Jr was born in New York. An all-time fan favorite in Cleveland and popular in the other cities he played in, Colavito seems like a perfect match to be in the Hall of Fame, so why is he not enshrined?
Digging Deeper
Here are some of his credentials: 11 consecutive 20 home run seasons (5th AL player to do so), 3 times 40 home run seasons, led the league in RBI’s, home runs, and slugging once each, retired as 3rd highest AL homer hitting outfielder (371 career homers), 9 time All Star, first AL outfielder to post 1.000 fielding percent in a season, hit home runs in 4 consecutive at bats (1959, MLB record tied with 6 others), and pitched in 2 MLB games, winning 1, losing 0 and not allowing a run!
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Pluto, Terry. The Curse of Rocky Colavito: A Loving Look at a Thirty-Year Slump. Gray & Company, 2007.
Sommer, Mark. Rocky Colavito: Cleveland’s Iconic Slugger. McFarland, 2019.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Sherwood Harrington of Colavito batting for the Kansas City A’s during Spring training in 1964, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.