Rocky Colavito, Cleveland All-Star and curse namesake, dies at 91

Rocky Colavito, a Cleveland baseball All-Star popular enough that his trade led to a fan uproar and speculation of a curse, died Tuesday, the club announced. He was 91 years old.

No cause of death was announced, but per Tim Graham of The Athletic, Colavito had recently battled pneumonia, in addition to various other health issues.

Colavito made his MLB debut a month after turning 22 years old in 1955. It wasn’t long before he was a fan favorite for Cleveland, which was enjoying a stretch of prominence that included the franchise’s most recent World Series title in 1948 and another appearance in the Fall Classic in 1954.

The next few years would be less successful, through no fault of the kid from the Bronx. Colavito developed into one of the best power bats in the league, leading the AL in slugging (.620) in 1958 and in home runs (42) in 1959. On June 10, 1959, Colavito became one of only 18 players in history to hit four homers in a game.

However, the move that ended up defining Colavito’s career and much of the franchise’s history arrived in 1960. Two days before Opening Day, general manager Frank Lane shocked baseball and the city by trading Colavito to the Detroit Tigers in exchange for reigning batting champion Harvey Kuenn.

The trade was not popular in Cleveland, and it became even less so when Kuenn was traded away after one season. Colavito initially struggled with his new team but regained his All-Star form, hitting 45 homers in 1961 and 37 in 1962.

After four years in Detroit and one with the Kansas City Athletics, Colavito was sent back to Cleveland via another trade in 1965. The return was triumphant, as he led the AL in walks and RBI that year. Colavito finished his career with abbreviated stints on the Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees, but his name developed into Cleveland infamy, for flattering reasons.

Between the first Colavito trade in 1959 and 1995, the team did not make the playoffs once. The Guardians remain the team with the longest World Series drought in MLB, having come up short in the Fall Classic in 1995, 1997 and 2016. Those struggles made for plenty of fuel behind The Curse of Rocky Colavito, which was formalized via a book by Terry Pluto in 1994.

The curse even includes Colavito, as the trade that brought him back to Cleveland sent away a young pitcher named Tommy John and a young outfielder named Tommie Agee, both of whom went on to have standout careers.

After retirement, Colavito worked as a television color commentator and a coach with Cleveland and the Kansas City Royals. He is one of the better players to not reach the Hall of Fame, but he was enshrined with a statue in Cleveland’s Little Italy in 2021.