Fall 2024 is coming — a breath of coolness in the morning air.
The early weeks of spring are great, but after another oven-baked summer with mosquitos buzzing around every time we step into our bushy underlandscaped yard, this first little snap of fall always catches me by surprise.
It’s a good time to jump into action on a new doc, too.
We’ve been prepping, researching and scheduling for the last couple of months in between screenings of our most recent docs (“Saving the Chattahoochee,” “Just Another Bombing?”).
It’s a story about a Georgian from the Appalachian foothills of Demorest who made headlines in the sports pages in the 1930s through the early 1950s.
His name, even his nicknames “Big Cat” and “Big Jawn”, have been mostly forgotten now.
Johnny Mize.
Fortunately, author Jerry Grillo has written a book (Big Cat) that brings this “Bunyonesque slugger” back to life along with that Golden Age of New York baseball in which he often played a leading man role.
Grillo also has his own story about writing the book that we’ll be looking at.
And we’ll be looking at another all-star first baseman from Georgia who played in this same era.
James “Red” Moore was a defensive wiz for the Atlanta Black Crackers. Because of segregation and the Color Line enforced by major league baseball, he and others in the Negro Leagues never received the attention — or money — they deserved.
Fortunately, Red Moore lived long enough, age 99, to be recognized for his playing days. And we were fortunate to meet him and even interview him when he was in his mid-80s.
We’re bringing the Big Cat and Red together in a way they never experienced during their playing days.
An interesting part of the story is that both men crossed the Color Line to play barnstorming games. As a small-town white Southerner, Mize played on the same field as Black athletes and even on the same team in Puerto Rico in the early 1930s. In fact, he cites the Cuban-born Martin Dihigo as the greatest player he ever saw—and bragged that Satchel Paige never struck him out. . . although he never got a hit off him either. This from a man who saw action with Joe DiMaggio and a young Mickey Mantle.
See Jerry’s thoughts on this as well.
Filming and interviews are set for fall 2024. Editing for winter 2025. Screenings begin in late spring 2025.
p.s. Stay tuned… We’ll be doing a crowdfunder soon to underwrite this indie documentary. Drop me a line if you’d like to get involved and contribute in a bigger way — associate or executive producer level.