Between the 1952 and ’53 season, Cleveland Indians first baseman Luke Easter (r) went into the sausage business with his brother-in-law Raymond Cash (l). The business, Ray’s Sausage still operates in Cleveland. In a Jet Magazine article Easter said they only managed to sell 20 pounds their first week, but by January of 1953 they were selling 2,300 pounds a day. The article said Easter had “taken out a license to place his sausage on sale” at Indians games. He said:
“I can make this business go by hitting lots of home runs (but) even if our sausage makes a million dollars I won’t quit baseball, I’ll stay in baseball as long as I can walk.”
During the fourth game of the 1953 season Easter was hit by a pitch, breaking a bone in his foot, as a result the 37-year-old, who had hit 31 home runs with 97 RBIs in 127 games the previous season, dropped to 7 and 31 in 68 games; his career with the Indians ended after only 6 games in 1954. But while Easter didn’t hit “lots of home runs” in Cleveland after starting the company, he did stay in baseball for almost “as long as (he could) walk.”
Playing primarily in the International League with the Buffalo Bisons and Rochester Red Wings, Easter remained in baseball until 1964, hitting more than 235 homes runs.
Easter was killed in a hold up in Cleveland in 1979. The Cleveland Plain Dealer editorialized the day after his death:
“For all of his huge size and great strength, Luke Easter was a gentle man. It is a contradiction to the way in which he lived that his life should be ended violently.
“He had courage. He played first base for the Cleveland Indians from 1949 to 1954, a time when it was far from easy to be a black athlete in the major leagues…He was shot dead yesterday at age 63, victim of a cowardly attack from ambush outside a bank office .
“It is a wound to the community. Luke Easter, athlete and gentleman, will be missed.”
Luke Easter, 1949
Baseball History Daily 