Thank you University of Nebraska Press for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Mr. Book just finished Big Cat: The Life of Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Mize, by Jerry Grillo.

Johnny Mize was one of the greatest first basemen in baseball history. One of the great unsolved mysteries in baseball history was how it took him 28 years from his time of retirement to get into the Hall of Fame—other than the fact that the HOF has made just so many mistakes over the years. This biography finally gives him the credit he deserves.

The stories about Mize’s childhood helped to humanize him. I had never heard of the different variations of the stories about Mize originally signing with Branch Rickey and the Cardinals. Mize later revealed that his signing was illegal under baseball rules, since he was underage, and I definitely would not put that past Rickey, or any of the MLB execs and scouts at the time, if there was a player he wanted.

The chapter about the brief time that Mize spent with the Reds, as well as a leg injury prior to the start of his MLB career, was one of the highlights of the book. The Cardinals had originally agreed to loan him to the Reds, but that deal was vetoed by Landis. They then reworked the deal so the Cardinals sold him to the Reds, but the Reds had a full money back guarantee. Mize injured his leg in spring training and the Reds got cold feet about keeping him, so they ended up getting their refund. Then, his leg injury became so serious that he was placed on the voluntarily retired list. That appeared to be done against his will and he sought a second opinion, which resulted in him continuing his career.

I did find an error in the book. The author said that, in 1938, Mize became the first and only player to have two 3 HR games in the span of eight days. Doug DeCinces (August 1982) and Adam Duvall (September 2020) both subsequently achieved that feat. However, it is important to note that this appears to be an isolated incident. This book did successfully pass several random fact checks.

I especially enjoyed this line in the book: “He was the most feared hitter in the National League— pitchers intentionally walked him twenty- four times, a new Major League record. And of course, there were the two three- homer games. At twenty-seven years old and in his prime, Johnny Mize was probably the best player in baseball in 1940. So naturally, Frank McCormick of the Reds was named Most Valuable Player in the National League.” That’s a great way to sum up one of the very frequent errors in MVP voting.

The events of December 7, 1941 were one of the interesting stories in the book: how Mize found out about Pearl Harbor and the fact that Cardinals were looking to trade him (which they did four days later). Mize had been asked by Leo Durocher if he was interested in being traded to the Dodgers, but instead, he was sent to the Giants. Stan Musial said that trading Mize and Walker Cooper to the Giants cost the Cardinals another five pennants.

I had not known that in spring training 1949, Branch Rickey convened a meeting of Dodgers players and coaches and told them he had a chance to get a power hitting 1B who could win the pennant for the team, but he’d leave it up to them whether he should do it. The team unanimously vetoed the trade, as show of confidence in the young Gil Hodges. Later that year, the Yankees claimed Mize off waivers. I find that story to be both credible, but also highly suspect. There is no way that I can see Rickey delegating the decision to the others, but I can see him already deciding he wasn’t going to trade for Mize, then coordinated things with Durocher and key players for the “vote” to be unanimous as a ploy to try to boost Hodges’s confidence.

This was an excellent biography on Mize. I give this book an A. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

Mr. Book originally finished reading this on July 5, 2024.