TED KLUSZEWSKI

Theodore Bernard Kluszewski came out of Argo, Illinois, in 1924, six-foot-two and two hundred twenty-five pounds, a left-handed first baseman who threw left too. Cincinnati called him Big Klu. The sleeves on the home whites did not last; he cut them off, and the National League spent a decade looking at those forearms.

He arrived with the Reds in 1947 and stayed a dozen summers as the club's first-base anchor. The numbers piled up the way river towns pile up history — quietly, then all at once. In 1952 he hit .320 with eleven triples. In 1953 he hit 40 home runs and drove in 108. In 1954 he hit 49, drove in 141, batted .326, and slugged .642. In 1955 he came back with 47 more and scored 116 runs. Three straight years of forty or better, and the box scores never needed a translator.

He finished with Pittsburgh, the Chicago White Sox, and the Los Angeles Angels, closing out in 1961. The career line reads .298 with a .353 on-base percentage and a .498 slug, 279 home runs, 1,028 runs batted in, 1,766 hits across 1,718 games. He died in Cincinnati in 1988. A first baseman's first baseman, and for a couple of summers, the loudest man in the league.