In Major League Baseball’s pre-expansion era, there were minor leaguers who remained with one team for a long time and became local celebrities. Steve Bilko was the last of this breed. As a minor leaguer, he was so beloved in Los Angeles that he had a TV sitcom character named for him. He had many chances to play in the major leagues, but couldn’t stick. Of Polish descent, he liked his kielbasa, sausage, and beer, the latter in large quantities. You might expect such a diet would put some weight on a guy. Indeed, the six-foot-one first baseman’s weight was listed at 230 pounds, and that was believed to be a conservative estimate. Teams didn’t mind what he weighed, until they did. In parts of 10 major league seasons for six teams, he hit .249/.336/.444, 76 HR, 276 RBI, and 103 OPS+ in 600 games while accumulating 5.0 WAR. But that doesn’t begin to tell the story.
This Bud’s for Bilko
Ah, the beer drinking. Pitcher Johnny Klippstein roomed with Bilko in 1954 when both were with the Chicago Cubs. He told author Danny Peary for his book, We Played the Game, “I roomed with him for a while, and no matter when he would come into the room, he would be carrying a six-pack.” Said Billy Moran, who played with Bilko on the Los Angeles Angels, “Bilko would go in the bathroom and turn on the hot water to steam up the place. Then he’d climb into the bathtub with a case of beer beside him. Then he’d sweat and drink the case of beer. That was his routine for getting into shape. . . He wasn’t dangerous when he drank. He was a big old easygoing guy with no temper.” Dick Schofield, a St. Louis Cardinals teammate, agreed, telling Peary that Bilko “was a very easygoing, nice man.”
But Klippenstein also said that when Bilko came up in the Cardinals system, “I couldn’t believe how hard he hit some balls. They were six feet off the ground and would go 350 feet.” In 1950, Robert L. Burnes of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat told of an unnamed Sally League pitcher who hit the dirt just in time to avoid getting hit by a Bilko line drive. The pitcher said, “Someday a pitcher is gonna give that Bilko a fat pitch like that and then be a little slow hitting the ground. When the smoke clears and they go over to the pitching mound, all they’ll find is a pair of shoes.”
“About 30 Pounds Off”
The Cardinals signed Bilko as an amateur free agent before the 1945 season. He immediately joined their B League team at age 16 and worked his way through the system, mashing home runs. In 1949, he hit .310/.410/.596, 34 HR, and 125 RBI at Triple-A Rochester. That earned him a six-game look with the big club. From 1950 to 1952, he was shuttled back and forth between St. Louis, Rochester, and Columbus. Finally, in 1953, he got a shot as the Cardinals’ everyday first baseman. There were concerns about his defense because of his size. Although he wasn’t the most graceful infielder, among first basemen, he led the majors with 1,446 putouts and the National League with 124 assists. According to Baseball Reference, he also led major league first basemen with a 10.56 range factor per nine innings and a 10.19 range factor per game, statistics that indicate he was involved in the most plays, but which weren’t in use in 1953. He also hit .251/.334/.412, 21 HR, and 84 RBI with a 93 OPS+.
Throughout his career, it seemed the press couldn’t write about him without referencing his considerable weight. Adjectives like bulky, hulking, and beefy accompanied his name. Eventually, the media nicknamed him Stout Steve. Even when former President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited the expansionist Angels during spring training in 1961, he told Bilko, “They tell me you’re about 30 pounds off in weight.”
The Cardinals were as obsessed with Bilko’s weight as Ike and the press. They had him run in a rubber suit before games, and he felt tired and weak during the games. In 1954, he broke camp with the big club but was used sporadically. By the end of April, St. Louis sold him to the Cubs. Bilko was with the Cubs for the remainder of the season, but got into just 47 games, during which he hit .239/.320/.478, 4 HR, and 12 RBI. The next season, he told the Cubs brass that he’d rather play every day in the minors than sit on the bench in the majors. The Cubs sent him to their Triple-A affiliate, the Los Angeles Angels.
A Hero in Los Angeles
The Angels, who played their home games at the West Coast Wrigley Field, competed in the Pacific Coast League at a time when it was considered a step above Triple-A and a step below the major leagues. Bilko’s new teammates were many former and future major leaguers. Among them were Sparky Anderson, Tommy Lasorda, and Gene Mauch. If nothing else, the manager had plenty of potential bench coaches with whom to consult. Bilko enjoyed his best stretch of baseball with the Angels from 1955 to 1957, perhaps because he immediately felt welcomed. He was impressed that a team executive greeted him at the airport when he landed in Los Angeles and drove him to training camp. Bob Scheffing, the third of three Angels managers in Bilko’s first season there, told him nobody with the Angels was going to bother him about his weight. That was music to Bilko’s ears.
In 1955, Bilko hit .328/.396/.572, 37 HR, and 124 RBI, and was named the PCL’s Most Valuable Player. That same year, The Phil Silvers Show premiered on the CBS Television Network. Creator Nat Hiken needed a name for the main character, a fast-talking, conniving Army motor pool sergeant who constantly sought get-rich schemes. Hiken and Silvers were rabid baseball fans and named the character Sgt. Ernest Bilko, in homage to the popular Angels slugger. (Silvers was such a knowledgeable fan that he covered the 1964 World Series for several newspapers. After Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson defeated the New York Yankees in Game 7 to take the Series for St. Louis, Silvers and Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Hal Lebovitz compared notes. Both had picked the Yankees to win the Series. Silvers told him, “I’m a comedian. What’s your excuse?”)
Bilko – as in Steve, the Angels’ first baseman – followed up by hitting .360/.453/.687, 55 HR, and 164 RBI in 1956, good enough for the PCL Triple Crown and another MVP award. By 1957, the Angels were property of the Brooklyn Dodgers, although Bilko remained there. He won a third consecutive MVP award when he hit .300/.413/.659, 56 HR, and 140 RBI that season. Bilko and his teammates liked it there. The quality of play was high-caliber, and the pay was good.
And Bilko was Los Angeles’s No. 1 celebrity. Angels publicist George Goodale kept track of how often Bilko’s name was in the paper. “There wasn’t a movie star that could touch him,” Goodale told John Schulian of The Chicago Sun-Times. “I know. I kept count myself.”
Betty White with Steve Bilko, 1957. This was taken when Bilko was on the Pacific Coast League Los Angeles Angels while Betty White was starring in a sitcom called “Date With The Angels.” pic.twitter.com/NnvWUXx544
— Baseball’s Greatest Moments (@BBGreatMoments) March 13, 2026
Good-Bye Angels, Hello LA Dodgers
Alas, all good things must come to an end. The Dodgers were moving from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958, and there wasn’t room for a minor league team there. The Angels would dissolve, and the Cubs sold Bilko to the Cincinnati Redlegs before the 1958 season. As if Bilko wasn’t going to miss Los Angeles enough, the Redlegs cut his pay.
Even so, Bilko was pleased when Cincinnati manager Birdie Tebbetts told him he wasn’t going to harass him about his weight. “I’m not running Slenderella,” Tebbetts told renowned columnist Red Smith, referring to a popular weight loss salon chain that operated during that era. “If he can hit, I don’t care what he weighs. If he can’t hit, he might as well weigh 350.”
Bilko wasn’t with the Redlegs long. In 31 games, he hit .264/.330/.494. Then the Dodgers came calling at the June 15 trade deadline. They wanted Klippstein to bolster their pitching staff and offered Don Newcombe, their No. 1 starter from their glory days in Brooklyn, who was showing signs of wear – and oh, while they were at it, they might as well return the popular Bilko to Los Angeles as a gate attraction. The deal was made, but Dodgers manager Walter Alston had no intention of starting Bilko ahead of his regular first baseman, Gil Hodges. But when Alston gave Bilko a start on July 9 against the Milwaukee Braves at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Bilko celebrated his homecoming by launching a line drive three-run home run off Carl Willey over the high left field screen to jump-start a 10-3 victory.
Unfortunately, Bilko hit .208/.264/.465 for the Dodgers in 1958 and spent 1959 with their Spokane Triple-A club, where he hit .305/.393/.523, 26 HR, and 92 RBI. That impressed Detroit Tigers manager Jimmy Dykes enough to draft Bilko away from Spokane in the Rule 5 draft. According to reporter John Carmichael, Dykes’ fellow managers asked him, “Do you know he gives managers ulcers?” Dykes was said to have replied, “I’ve had ‘em. . . and at least he can hit the ball and catch one and I am not exactly surfeited with gentlemen of those proclivities.” (I can’t believe those were Dykes’ exact words.) Carmichael reported that Bilko’s weight had been fluctuating between 230 and 290 pounds. (Not so, according to the subject himself. In 1975, Bilko told Baseball Digest that his highest playing weight was 270 pounds.)
Los Angeles Encore
Bilko didn’t do much for Detroit, where Dykes settled on Norm Cash as his primary first baseman. Bilko was with the Tigers all season, but got into just 78 games in 1960, hitting .207/.292/.396. At age 31, such a season would have ended his career, but luckily for him, expansion was coming. A new American League team was coming to Los Angeles. It would take the name of the departed PCL Angels and play its home games in the old West Coast Wrigley Field. And they wouldn’t mind bringing back a former hero to serve as a gate attraction. They drafted Bilko away from the Tigers with their second pick in the minor league phase of the expansion draft.
It was only the second time in his long career that Bilko was a regular on a major league team. In 1961, he hit .279/.395/.544, 20 HR, and 59 RBI in 114 games for the new Angels, and even stole his first base in the majors. On the last day of the season, with the Angels losing to Cleveland, 8-4, Bilko pinch hit in the bottom of the ninth inning against Mudcat Grant and fittingly blasted the final home run hit at the West Coast Wrigley Field.
In 1962, with the Angels now borrowing Dodger Stadium as their home ballpark, Bilko was the regular first baseman again until a leg injury cut short his season in August. He hit .287/.374/.500, 8 HR, and 38 RBI in 64 games. His 1963 season was spent at Triple-A Rochester, after which he retired at age 34.
Why didn’t his success in the minors translate to the majors? My theory is that a batter with a big, long swing needs to play every day to stay sharp and keep his timing down. Bilko put up respectable numbers in the seasons when he was a major league regular. “I’ve always said that if Steve had come along in the ‘60s, he would have been a hell of a major league player,” said Scheffing to Schulian. “I think those two years he had in the American League prove it.”
Bilko and his family returned to his native Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a perfume inspector. He died in 1978 at age 49.
