Big Klu: The Baseball Life of Ted Kluszewski

During the mid-1950s, an unlikely star stood alongside baseball standouts Mickey Mantle, Henry Aaron and Willie Mays--a slugger with a funny name and muscles so bulging that he had to cut the sleeves off his uniform to swing freely. Ted Kluszewski played little baseball in his youth, making a name for himself instead as a hard-hitting football player at Indiana University before showing potential on the diamond and being signed by the Cincinnati Reds. Between 1953 and 1956, no other player in major league baseball hit more home runs than Kluszewski. If not for a back injury, he may have gone down in major league history as one its greatest players. With detailed statistics from both his football and baseball careers, this biography chronicles the unusual odyssey that took Kluszewski to the big leagues and ultimately made him an icon during the 1950s.