Just the Facts

By David Marasco

It's been a while since a Before Jackie column has been seen in the pages of The Diamond Angle. Why? Because Negro Leagues research is very hard. Recently my time has become restricted, and while I might be able to spare an hour or two to write about baseball in general, the Negro Leagues need a bigger magnifying glass. The mysteries are bigger, the sources poorer, and hence more time is needed to do the job right.

Take for example Martin Dihigo and Johnny Mize. Jerry Grillo asked me about their playing days together, so I hit the books. In The Negro Leagues Book Mize is quoted as follows: "The greatest player I ever saw was a black man. He's in the Hall of Fame, although not a lot of people have heard of him. His name is Martin Dihigo. I played with him in Santo Domingo in winter ball in 1943. He was the manager... I thought I was havin' a pretty good year myself down there and they were walkin' him to get to me." This is followed up in The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues. The Encyclopedia states: "Hall of Famer Johnny Mize called [Dihigo] the best player he ever saw and remembered that when they were teammates in the Dominican Republic, opponents would intentionally walk Dihigo to pitch to him."

There's a problem here. Professional baseball collapsed in the Dominican Republic after the 1937 season. After the dictator Trujillo raided the Negro Leagues in 1937 to give the Dominican people some of the best baseball on the planet, the scene went belly-up. A fan remembers the time in Klein's Sugarball, "The 1937 championship stopped baseball. All our money was gone. We were exhausted financially and in enthusiam also." Baseball at a professional level would not return to the Dominican Republic until 1951. Mize and Dihigo could not have been teammates in the Dominican Republic in 1943, the league needed to support superstars of their caliber did not exist.

So now we have a who-done-it. What is the story behind Mize and Dihigo? If not the Dominican Republic in 1943, then where and when? The first thing to do is take the Dominican Republic completely out of the story. The only time Dihigo played there was in the summer of 1937, when Trujillo put together teams made up of the best talent in the Negro Leagues and the Caribbean. He did very well both on the mound and at the plate. According to the Biographical Encyclopedia Dihigo finished second in the league to Satchel Paige for wins, tied for the home run lead, and finished third in batting with a .351 average. Where was Johnny Mize? He was batting .364 as an All-Star for the St. Louis Cardinals. So Mize and Dihigo never overlapped in the Dominican Republic in organized play.

If not in Santo Domingo, then where? Mize claims a winter ball setting, and given that he was a full-time major leaguer, that's the only possible setting. According to Bjarkman's Baseball with a Latin Beat, Dihigo played all of his winter baseball in Cuba. Mize claims a 1943 date. In the 1942-3 season Dihigo hit .267 and went 8-3. OK, but not world-beating. In 1943-4 Dihigo hit .253 and went 8-1. But Mize probably didn't see Dihigo in the winter season of 1943-4, his playing career stops in 1942 and doesn't pick up until 1946. In the winter of 1943-4 Mize was serving his country. It is also unlikely that Mize played in the winter of 1942-3, even if he wasn't already in the service, it would be hard to believe that he would go to Cuba rather than spend his last few moments in America. Another key here is that Mize claimed that he was managed by Dihigo. In both 1942-3 and 1943-4 Dihigo was playing for Havana, managed by Mike Gonzalez.

So this meeting did not occur in the Dominican Republic, nor did it occur in 1943. So what did happen? A close inspection of Dihigo's career shows that he managed Santa Clara to a Cuban League pennant in 1935-6. That year Dihigo hit .358 and went 11-2 on the mound. That was enough to lead the league in both hitting and victories. And it would also impress a young Johnny Mize, who at that point would be getting ready for his rookie year in the bigs.

Is that the proper scenario? Dihigo was inducted in 1977, and Mize died in 1993. Sometime in between Mize gave the quotation at the beginning of this story. Even an early date would place 30 or 40 years between the events and the rememberace. We know they never played together in Santo Domingo, could it have been Santa Clara? Dihigo spent most of his winter career playing for Havana, where he was not the manager. To be consistent with Mize's recollection as Dihigo as manager, Santa Clara makes sense, along with Marianao in the late 1930's. The timing also favors a Santa Clara overlap. Mize was more likely to be getting seasoning in winter ball as a soon-to-be rookie rather than a war-bound vet, and Dihigo's Santa Clara days were much more impressive than his early-40's Havana performances.

What is the real story? I'd lean to to 1935-6 in Santa Clara. Is it for sure? Not at all. That's life when you study the Negro Leagues.