Fans still cherish Big Klu
Thursday, July 16, 1998
BY JOHN ERARDI
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Eleanor, who has always missed Ted, is going to feel his absence again Saturday night. But, this time, in a joyous way. Big Klu, who died of a heart attack in 1988, is coming home . . . forever . . . for the fans. Ted Kluszewski, the Reds' Cold War slugger and batting instructor to the Big Red Machine, will be feted with the retirement of his jersey No. 18 at Cinergy Field. It is the most powerful calling forth of Big Klu's memory since his death. "At first, I didn't think anybody was going to come in for the occasion," his widow said. "If they hadn't, I wouldn't have felt badly. Then, all of a sudden, the phone started ringing. "We're coming in. Can you get us tickets? Can you get us hotel rooms?' It just blossomed. I think it's great. I love it. But it took me totally by surprise."
So far, the count's up to 40 family and friends. And they're coming from as far as California. Marge Schott, the Reds' president, has offered her private box. John Allen, the Reds' managing executive, has offered tickets. "The Reds have been just wonderful," Eleanor said. Nobody knows better than she that Big Klu "belonged" to the to the fans. Going into tonight's game, the Reds are riding a 10-game winning streak. If they win tonight, it puts them in position on Saturday to tie the franchise's longest winning streak of the last 50 years. They won 12 straight in 1957. And what Reds star had his last Reds season in 1957? Big Klu keeps coming back to us. First as the team's hitting instructor in the 1970s. Then in the Terry Cashman song "Talkin' Baseball," with its catchy refrain, "Big Klu, Big Klu, Big Klu." (Which, by the way, the real Big Klu liked, Eleanor said.) .
So many memories of Klu are so easily recalled. The sleeves he scissored off to make room for his bulging biceps. The monster seasons of 1953, '54 and '55, when he bashed 40, 49 and 47 home runs. The bats. Oh, the bats. From the corner of the family den in suburban Cincinnati, Eleanor picks up the huge, commemorative bat that was a gift to Klu from the Findlay Market Association on Opening Day 1955. The previous season, Big Klu had smashed 49 home runs and driven in 141 runs. The bat is made of balsa wood. Despite its exaggerated size, it is actually lighter than the 38-ounce behemoths Klu swung in real life. A visitor picks up one of Klu's bats and tries to swing it.
The bat has the heft and girth of a dining-room table leg. Klu was able to get this around on fireballing Robin Roberts of the Philadelphia Phillies, who threw close to 100 mph . . . and gave up two home runs to Klu one day? The visitor looks at the bat handle. No knob at the end. "Did Klu wear a batting glove?" "No," Eleanor says. "Did he use pine tar?" "No." "Did he ever have one of these knobless bats go flying out of his hands into the stands?" "No."
The man is gone, but his muscles live on. And, the beautiful thing is, Klu didn't swing knobless bats or cut off his sleeves for show. He did it for practicality, for comfort. "We had those flannel uniforms, and every time I'd swing the bat, my arms would get hung up on the sleeves," Klu once explained. "I complained about it, but they (the Reds front office) hemmed and hawed and finally I took a pair of scissors and cut them off. They got pretty upset, but it was either that or change my swing. And I wasn't going to change my swing." And, oh, what a swing. Here's the way a Sports Illustrated writer described Kluszewski's swing in an article on July 16, 1956: "(Klu) holds the bat no more than halfway back, more like a man with a fly swatter who is willing to land heavily on the fly if it comes within reach, but who isn't about to get excited over the chase. When the pitch approaches the plate, he brings the bat down in a short, level swing and meets the ball. There's not much wrist action and comparatively little follow-through. It's all arms . . .
"It's a simple method of hitting home runs, but wonderfully effective: through the past 3 1/2 seasons, no one in major league baseball has reached the fences nearly so often as Ted Kluszewski, not Mickey Mantle nor Stan Musial nor Ted Williams, not Willie Mays, not Duke Snider." Not for one day in his life did Big Klu lift weights. The only thing he lifted was 140-pound bags of corn products, bag after bag, hour after hour, when he worked during high school summers at the Corn Products Co. in Argo, Ill., 14 miles southwest of Chicago's loop. So many people from Argo worked at Corn Products: : Ted; his two brothers, Mitch and John; and his father; and Eleanor's father; and Ted's buddy, Jack Hayes, one of the few students at Argo High who had a car. Ted and Eleanor double-dated with Jack in the Nash, usually going to the movies or White Castle, where they could get five burgers for a dollar.
Two buddies from opposite sides of the track. Jack's retired now from Corn Products. He's coming in Saturday. John, also retired from Corn Products, will be there, too. Their arrival won't be quite so raucous as it was back in the old days when the Reds played at Wrigley Field and so many of Klu's family and friends drove up to Chicago. A favorite story of Ed Burns, the late Chicago Tribune baseball writer, describes the day he unwittingly found himself driving to Wrigley the same time as Klu's caravan. Through his rear-view mirror, Mr. Burns watched apprehensively as the long line of cars rapidly approached and then almost ran him off the road. "Get off the road, Grandpa!" they yelled, as they roared by. Oh, how Klu loved that story. He'd get to laughing so hard he'd have to raise his handkerchief to his eyes to dry the tears.
He'd laugh, too, when he'd tell stories about his brothers. "They agitated pretty easy," Klu would say. "You should hear some of the bets they get wangled into. They tell them to me and I'm thinking they're crazy. Things like me hitting 40 homers in a season. They made that one (during the 1953 season) when the most I'd hit (prior to that) was 25 (in 1951). Funny thing, though, they won the bet." And they probably won a few more when Klu hit 49 home runs in 1954 and 47 in 1955. Klu would have hit 50 in 1954, if the pitchers hadn't stopped pitching to him. "He'd have liked 50, I know," said Eleanor, smiling. Eleanor and Ted's love story began in the 1930s in Argo. They attended grade school together, and began dating as high school juniors. "It was undoubtedly at my insistence," Eleanor said. "Ted was very shy. He was all about sports, not social niceties. I recall we went to the senior prom, and I'm sure it was sheer torture for Ted."
Klu is in the Argo High School Hall of Fame, the Indiana University Hall of Fame, the Reds' Hall of Fame and the Ohio Hall of Fame. He'd have made the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., if his back hadn't begun giving him trouble before the 1956 season. He was only 32 years old. The only thing Eleanor knows for sure that Cooperstown has is one of Klu's gloves. She surreptitiously lifted it from his car one day, had it bronzed and shipped it to upstate New York. Klu would never toot his own horn, but for five consecutive years he led National League first basemen in fielding percentage. Three years later, Klu wasn't so young. He was 35, playing his first World Series as a member of the Chicago White Sox. He hit three home runs and drove in 10 runs and batted .391 (9-for-23). He was proud he'd gotten to play in a World Series. "Not much fazed Ted," Eleanor said. "But that first at-bat in the World Series was special, he later told me. It was "knee-knocking time,' he said. All the regular season games, all the All-Star games, those were great. But the World Series, that's what Ted played for." Ted's brother, Mitch, is gone now. So are Ted's two sisters, between whom he shuttled as a boy after his parents died. His parents never got to see him make the major leagues, never knew he'd gotten a football scholarship to IU or made All-Big Ten as an end, or led IU to an undefeated season and Big Ten title in 1945, or hit .443 in one collegiate season of playing baseball.
But the memory of Big Klu lingers. And so do his bats. Someday, his bats will be housed in a Reds museum next to a new Reds ballpark. The bats shouldn't be displayed in a case. They should be left out in the open where fans can pick them up, feel their heft, swing them. Hey, what's this? The head of a tiny nail is visible in the barrel of one of Klu's batting-practice bats. Maybe this particular bat -- one of three commemorating Big Klu's three straight All-Star Games (1953-55) -- had been chipped or broken and Big Klu decided to prevent further damage by pounding a nail into it. But, then, the next day, the visitor happens upon the explanation in a book titled The Sluggers: "In the 1950s, Big Klu hammered tenpenny nails into his bats to add weight." Nobody needs to add weight to the memory of Big Klu. In many ways, he's never left our memories. "And that constantly surprises me -- it really does," said Eleanor, wearing a gold necklace bearing a "No. 18" pendant at the end, a gift from Ted. "Two or three times a week, people will recognize me or the name and they'll always have something nice to say. That makes me happy."
KLU'S CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
1947: Major league debut with Reds at age 22.
1949: Hit .300 (.309) for first time in his career; did it six more times.
1950: Breakthrough season of 25 home runs and 111 RBI; he would knock in 100-plus runs four more times.
1953: 40 HR -- first of three straight seasons in which he'd hit 40 or more.
1954: Led National League in HR (49), RBI (141) and was fifth in batting average (.326). His .642 slugging average is still the highest ever by a Red in a non-strike season. His 34 home runs at home are still the most ever by a Red.
1955: Led NL in hits with 192.
1956: Despite bad back, hit 35 HR to help Reds tie the NL single-season team record of 221 HR.
1958: Traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
1959: In his only World Series, hit .391 (9-for-23), with three HR and 10 RBI in six games with the Chicago White Sox.
1961: 37-year-old Klu closed out his major league career with the Los Angeles Angels, hitting 15 HR in only 263 at-bats.
1970-1987: Reds major league hitting instructor for most of the 1970s. Served as hitting instructor in the Reds' minor leagues for eight seasons.
