SSTN Interviews Jerry Grillo

By Paul Semendinger

April 3, 2025

***

Today we bring my interview with author Jerry Grillo.

Please tell our readers a little about yourself and your latest book

I’ve been a journalist in one form or another for more than 40 years, first in newspapers as a sportswriter, later in magazines as a writer and editor, and I now work for the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) as a science writer (while freelancing on the side for a variety of magazines). I’m also an occasional playwright and author.

My latest book is “Big Cat: The Life of Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Mize,” from the University of Nebraska Press (2024). I’ve been describing it as a baseball adventure story, the biography of a mostly forgotten slugger who lived a remarkable life. Related to both Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, he seems to have been born to play ball. He spent 15 seasons in the big leagues, first as one of the game’s most feared hitters (for power and average), and for his last five years, as a key role player on the Yankees five-year dynasty (1949-53).

The book includes comments from interviews with Yankee legends like Whitey Ford and Bobby Brown, in addition to other Mize teammates, sportswriters, authors, and members of the Mize family. 

What do you most enjoy about writing?

The storytelling part, the intimate part. It’s such a naturally human thing to do, storytelling, and the connections you can make with a reader are authentic and intimate without being invasive. It’s such a pure way to communicate and share.

I love research and learning new things — even if I’m writing fiction, I’m researching and learning. But then taking what I know, or what I’ve learned, or what seems interesting, and putting all of that together as a story is the best job I can think of, best I’ve had. 

Do you have any current writing projects you are working on?  Can you tell us about them?

Working on a few ideas now, including two that are baseball related. Most of my energy away from family and my job at Georgia Tech has been focused on working on a documentary based on “Big Cat” (and the story behind “Big Cat”).

It’s something that happened completely organically. Atlanta filmmaker Hal Jacobs reached out to me last year after he read the book (which took 20 years to finish). I was blown away by this opportunity, because I really love Hal’s previous documentaries. I’ve had a chance to learn even more about Johnny Mize during this process, revisit his old home and haunts, make new friends and catch up with old friends. We’re making more connections through a different kind of story telling! 

Why are people so drawn to baseball and its stories, legends, and people?

I wish more people were drawn to baseball stories, ha ha!

But seriously, I think so many Americans are drawn to the game and the stories, the legends and all, is because it feels so ingrained, so natural, and so far-reaching, that it’s endlessly fascinating, and so old that and foundational that we can keep digging and learn something new. Also, baseball is so much a part of our country’s existential landscape that it makes a wonderful backdrop for all kinds of great fiction.

What is your favorite baseball book?

Ball Four

That is also one of my favorites. I re-read Ball Four every few years. Even when I know some funny lines are coming, I still laugh.

Outside of baseball, what is your favorite book and/or who is your favorite author?  (You can list as many as you wish.)

Bill Bryson, Stephen King, Paul Hemphill, Kurt Vonnegut, David Halberstam, Tom Wolfe 

There's a lot of talk about baseball needing to be "fixed."  Is baseball broken?  If you were the Commissioner of Baseball what change(s) (if any) would you make to the current game?

If I was Commissioner of Baseball, I’d get rid of the extra-innings ghost-runner rule for starters. As a fan, I don’t mind 16-inning games. Lose the ghost runner. 

I love to talk about the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Which former Yankee most deserves to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame?

Well, I’ve always been a fan of both Bernie Williams and Don Mattingly. I'd like to see both of them get into the Hall of Fame. 

What is the greatest baseball movie of all time?  (Yes, you can list a few!)

Long Gone is my all-time favorite baseball movie (and novel).

Then I’ve got to go with Bull Durham, A League of Our Own, Field of Dreams, The Natural, 42, Major League, Moneyball, Eight Men Out, 61*, Pride of the Yankees, Bang the Drum Slowly, a couple of others. 

What is your favorite baseball memory?

So many great memories, but hands down, it was the day my father took me, my older brother Steve, and cousin Matt to an old-timer’s game at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, where we got to meet Stan Musial (and I saw for the only time in my life, Johnny Mize). Dad met one of Stan’s friends up in Pennsylvania while on business, and he got the woman’s business card and told us, “Give this to Stan Musial.” We begged one of the guys on the field crew to give the crumpled card to Stan, who was sitting in the dugout. He did, and Stan looked at the card, looked at us standing at the first-row railing near the end of the dugout, and he loped over to see us. Shook our hands, talked with us, signed autographs (and a bunch of other kids, of course, showed up like squirrels, and Stan stayed to sign every autograph). We walked back up to our seats, about 30 rows up, and Dad was beaming. When my father was dying, almost 15 years later, that day was the last thing we talked about.

Following that, it’s gotta be Sid Bream scoring on Francisco Cabrera’s base hit in the 1992 NLCS — I was working on the sports desk that night and the newsroom went insane. Tied with that is Game Six of the 1995 World Series, when the Braves beat the Indians for the championships, in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The same place my father used to take me and my brothers, to so many great games (and not so great games). I was there as a sports writer, and you better believe that I was thinking about my old man, and Stan Musial, and all of the memories we had in that goofy, saucer-shaped ballpark.

Please share anything else you'd like with our audience.

Mize was an interesting and somewhat mysterious dude. He was notoriously tight lipped. My book breathes three dimensional life into this mountain man of the deep South. While he was still in the minor leagues, he spent a winter in the Dominican Republic playing on a team made up of great Negro League and Latin American stars — he was 20, a big kid from the Appalachian Mountains, on a grand adventure in a foreign country. Then he played record-setting baseball in the big leagues, lost three prime years serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and ended his career as the top pinch hitter for five straight Yankees World Series championship teams, bridging the gap from DiMaggio to Mantle. Then he all but disappeared. I hope you’ll pick up a copy of “Big Cat” and rediscover this amazing Hall of Famer. It’s available wherever you buy books. 

Thanks Jerry. Please keep in touch! One of these days I'll get down to Georgia and will stop by to say hello.