Login
| Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige (July 7, 1906 – June 8, 1982) was an American baseball player whose pitching in the Negro leagues and in Major League Baseball made him a legend in his own lifetime. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971, the first player to be inducted from the Negro leagues. Paige was a right-handed pitcher and was the oldest rookie to play Major League Baseball at the age of 42. He played with the St. Louis Browns until age 47 and represented them in the Major League All-Star Game in both 1952 and 1953. His professional playing career lasted from 1926 until 1966.[1]While Paige was playing baseball, many ages and birthdates, ranging from 1900 to 1908, were reported. Paige himself was the source of many of these dates. His actual birthdate, July 7, 1906, however, has been known since 1948 when Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck traveled to Mobile, Alabama and went with Paige’s family to the County Health Department to obtain his birth certificate.[2] Paige’s birth certificate is displayed in his autobiography.[3] In 1959, Paige’s mother told a reporter that he was 55 rather than 53, saying she knew this because she wrote it down in her Bible. Paige wrote in his autobiography, “Seems like Mom’s Bible would know, but she ain’t ever shown me the Bible. Anyway, she was in her nineties when she told the reporter that and sometimes she tended to forget things.”[4]Early life Satchel was born Leroy Robert Page to John Page, a gardener, and Lula Page (née Coleman), a domestic worker, in a section of Mobile , Alabama known as Down the Bay.[5] Lula and her children changed the spelling of their name from Page to Paige in the mid-1920s just before the start of Satchel’s baseball career. Lula said, “Page looked to much like a page in a book,” while Satchel explained, “My folks started out by spelling their name ‘Page’ and later stuck in the ‘i’ to make themselves sound more high-tone.” The introduction of the new spelling coincided with the death of Satchel’s father, and may have suggested a desire for a new start.[6] According to Paige, his nickname originated from childhood work toting bags at the train station. He said he wasn’t making enough money at a dime a bag, so he used a pole and rope to build a contraption that allowed him to cart two to four bags at once. Another kid supposedly yelled, “You look like a walking satchel tree.”[7] A different story was told by boyhood friend and neighbor, Wilber Hines, who said he gave Paige the nickname after he was caught trying to steal a bag.[8] Two weeks before his twelfth birthday, Paige was arrested for shoplifting. Because this incident followed several earlier incidents of theft and truancy, he was committed to the state reform school, the Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, Alabama, until the age of eighteen. During more than five years he spent at the Industrial School , he developed his pitching skills under the guidance of Edward Byrd. Byrd taught Paige to kick his front foot high and to swing his arm around so it looked like his hand was in the batter’s face when he released the ball. Paige was released from the reform school in December 1923, six months early.[9] After his release, Paige played for several Mobile semi-pro teams. He joined the semi-pro Mobile Tigers where his brother Wilson was already pitching.[10] He also pitched for a semi-pro team named the Down the Bay Boys, and he recalled that he once got into a jam in the ninth inning of a 1–0 ballgame when his teammates made three consecutive errors, loading the bases for the other team with two outs. Angry, Paige said he stomped around the mound, kicking up dirt. The fans started booing him, so he decided that “somebody was going to have to be showed up for that.” He called in his outfielders and had them sit down in the infield. With the fans and his own teammates howling, Paige struck out the final batter, winning the game.[11]The early years A former friend from the Mobile slums, Alex Herman, was the player/manager for the Chattanooga Black Lookouts of the Negro Southern League. He discovered Paige and wanted to sign him to a $50 per week contract. Lula Paige did not want any part of it until Herman promised to send her a stipend extracted from Satchel’s salary. Paige was used sparingly in 1926; on June 22, he got the starting job against the Albany Giants and ended up giving up 13 runs in the loss. It was during a game against the Memphis Red Sox that Bill “Plunk” Drake taught Paige the hesitation pitch that Paige would make famous. For the 1927 season, Paige was given a raise to $200 per month and a slick Ford Model A roadster. After just a few games, Paige abandoned the Lookouts for the $276 per month the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro National League (NNL) were willing to pay. Pitching for the Barons, Paige was wild and awkward and did not want to take advice on how to pitch from his manager, Bill Gatewood. During a game on June 27, 1927, against Cool Papa Bell’s St. Louis Stars, Paige incited a riot by beaning three consecutive Stars players. Finally Paige accepted help with his mechanics from Sam Streeter and Harry Salmon. He finished the season 8–3 with 80 strikeouts and 19 walks in 93 innings. Over the next two seasons, Paige went 23–25 while setting the Negro League single season strikeout record in 1929 with 184 including the then record of 17 in one game against the Detroit Stars. Due to his increased earning potential, Barons owner R. T. Jackson would “rent” Paige out to other ball clubs for a game or two to draw a decent crowd, with both Jackson and Paige taking a cut. Cuba When Paige returned to the United States, he and Jackson revived their practice of renting him out to various teams. In the spring of 1930, Jackson leased him to the American Negro League champions, the Baltimore Black Sox, led by their bow-legged third baseman Jud “Boojum” Wilson. Paige, being from the south, found that he was an outsider on the Black Sox and his teammates considered him a hick. Frank Warfield, the player/manager of the Black Sox, made sure that Paige knew he was the number two pitcher behind Lamon Yokely, and that did not sit well with Paige. By the spring of 1931, the Depression was taking its toll on the Negro Leagues. No one team could afford Paige. Tom Wilson of the Nashville Elite Giants in the Negro Southern League thought he could. Wilson then moved the team to Cleveland, as the Cleveland Cubs. By the end of 1931, the Cubs moved back to Nashville. Pittsburgh Crawfords In 1932, Greenlee signed Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston and Ted Radcliffe away from the Homestead Grays to assemble one of the finest baseball clubs in history. Crawford opened up the season on April 30 in their newly built stadium, Greenlee Field, the first completely black-owned stadium in the country. Paige ended up losing to the New York Black Yankees in a tight one but got even with them by beating them twice that season, including Paige’s first Negro League no-hitter on July 16. On July 4, 1934, Paige threw another no-hitter, this time against the Homestead Grays. Only a first inning walk to future Hall of Famer Buck Leonard, and an error in the fourth inning, prevented Paige from chalking up a perfect game. Leonard, unnerved by the rising swoop of the ball, repeatedly asked the umpire to check the ball for scuffing. When the umpire removed one ball from play, Paige said, “You may as well thrown ‘em all out ‘cause they’re all gonna jump like that.” On October 26, 1934, Paige married his longtime sweetheart Janet Howard. During the wedding reception, Greenlee—who paid for the reception—had Paige sign a new long-term contract for the same $250 that he’d been making. On his honeymoon in Las Vegas, which Greenlee also paid for, Paige pitched for Tom Wilson’s Philadelphia Giants in the California Winter League. Paige did particularly well against Dizzy Dean’s all-star team. Later, when Dean was a sports columnist for the Chicago Tribune, he would call Paige the pitcher with the best stuff he’d ever seen. On March 3, 1935, Paige jumped teams again, this time from the Giants to another team in the California Winter League (CWL), the El Paso Mexicans. When Paige returned to Pittsburgh , after going 17–2 in the CWL, he got into a contract dispute with Greenlee and decided to return to Bismarck for the same $400 per month and late model used car that he got before, while his new bride stayed in Pittsburgh . During the 1935 season in Bismarck Ray “Hap” Dumont offered him $1,000 to bring the team to the innaugeral National Baseball Congress World Series at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium in Wichita, Kansas. Paige struck out 60 batters and won four games both of which are still records.[14][15] DiMaggio and Feller Dominican Republic Having little choice because they were all banned from the NNL, the returning players formed Trujillo ’s All-Stars and barnstormed around the Midwest . J. Leslie Wilkinson got around the ban by having promoter Ray Dean schedule House of David games with the All-Stars and then he used his influence to get them entered into the Denver Post tournament. The rift between him and the rest of the players was never more evident than when Paige did not show up for the first six games of the tournament, but did show up for the final, for which the winning pitcher would receive a $1,000 bonus. His team ended up losing to a semi-pro team from Oklahoma. It was a double-elimination tournament—necessitating another game between the same two teams—suspicion persisted that Paige’s teammates threw the game so he would not get the winning pitcher’s bonus. In 1938, Greenlee, who still held Paige’s NNL contract, again made an unsuccessful attempt to sign Paige. Greenlee then sold his contract to the Newark Eagles, but they could not sign him either. Paige instead went to play in the Mexican League.[16] Mexico Three games into the season, Paige’s arm went dead. He could barely lift his arm, much less pitch. In the final game of the season, Paige was matched up against Dihigo. Paige relied on throwing junkballs while Dihigo was throwing blistering fastballs. Through six innings, Paige threw from every angle from overhead to crossfire, even underhanded. He was able to hit the corners of the plate for strikes and the batters, always wary of his fastball, could not dig in properly and take advantage of his lack of velocity. Finally in the seventh, his arm gave out completely. With the game scoreless, Paige gave up a hit and two walks. Rearing back to throw a fast ball, he uncorked a wild pitch that resulted in a run scoring. He managed to retire the side by going back to throwing junkballs. Paige was removed for a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the inning, and Agrario tied it up against Dihigo, taking Paige off the hook for the loss. Dihigo ended up winning the game with a two-run homer in the ninth, but the flood gates were open as Negro League players streamed into Mexico , again forsaking their teams. Paige returned to Pittsburgh a broken man. Kansas City Monarchs Puerto Rico Return from Puerto Rico to Kansas City Monarchs Paige (left) and Jackie Robinson in the uniform of the Kansas City Monarchs, 1945 On October 5, 1941, Wilkinson booked a game in Sportsman’s Park between the Satchel Paige All-Stars and the Bob Feller All-Stars. The Fellers won the game 4–3 with St. Louis Cardinals rookie Stan Musial hitting a Paige fastball over the right field pavilion roof. After the season was over, Paige once again played in the California Winter League, this time he pitched against a team that had Jimmie Foxx and, coming off his .406 season, Ted Williams. With America ’s entrance into World War II, Paige committed himself to pitching in frequent exhibitions to sell war bonds and raise money for war-related charities. One such game was on May 24 at Wrigley Field against the Dizzy Dean All-Stars. The game, which was played to raise money for the Navy Relief Fund, was the first time a colored team ever played at Wrigley. With many of the major league’s best players in the service, including DiMaggio and Ted Williams, Paige, whose income was nearly $40,000, was easily the highest paid athlete in the world. Integration in baseball On October 12, 1947 in Hays, Kansas, Paige married his longtime girlfriend Lahoma Brown in a civil ceremony. They started a family and had seven children. Major Leagues Paige got his first big league victory on July 15, 1948, the night after he pitched in an exhibition game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in front of 65,000 people in Cleveland ’s Municipal Stadium. It came at Philadelphia’s Shibe Park. The Indians were up 5–3 and the bases were loaded in the sixth inning of the second game of a double header. He got Eddie Joost to fly out to end the inning, but gave up two runs the next inning when Ferris Fain doubled and Hank Majeski hit a home run. Paige buckled down and gave up only one more hit the rest of the game, getting five of the next six outs on fly balls. Larry Doby and Ken Keltner hit home runs in the ninth to give the Indians an 8–5 victory. Longtime Chicago Cubs broadcaster Jack Brickhouse once said with amusement that Paige “threw a lot of pitches that were not quite ‘legal’ and not quite ‘illegal’”. American League President Will Harridge eventually ruled the Hesitation Pitch definitely illegal and if thrown again, it would result in a balk. Paige said, “I guess Mr. Harridge did not want me to show up those boys who were young enough to be my sons.” On August 3, 1948, with the Indians one game behind the Athletics, Boudreau started Paige against the Washington Senators in Cleveland . The 72,562 people that saw the game set a new attendance record for a major league night game. Nervous, Paige walked two of the first three batters and then gave up a triple to Bud Stewart to fall behind 2–0. By the time he came out in the seventh, the Indians were up 4–2 and held on to give him his second victory. The Indians were in a heated pennant race on August 20, 1948. Coming into the game against the White Sox, Bob Lemon, Gene Bearden and Sam Zoldak had thrown shutouts to run up a thirty-inning scoreless streak, eleven shy of the big league record. 201,829 people had come to see his last three starts. For this game in Cleveland , 78,382 people came to see Paige, a full 6,000 more people than when he last broke the night attendance record. Paige went the distance, giving up two singles and one double for his second consecutive three hit shutout. At that point in the season, Paige was 5–1 with an astoundingly low 1.33 ERA. He made one appearance in the 1948 World Series. He pitched for two-thirds of an inning in Game Two while the Indians were trailing the Boston Braves, giving up a sacrifice fly to Warren Spahn, got called for a balk and struck out Tommy Holmes. The Indians ended up winning the series in six games. Paige ended the 1948 season with a 6–1 record with a 2.48 ERA, 2 shutouts, 43 strikeouts, 22 walks and 61 base hits allowed in 72 2/3 innings. There was some discussion of Paige possibly winning the Rookie of the Year Award. While technically a “rookie” to the majors, the 20-plus-year veteran Paige regarded such an idea with disdain and considered rejecting the award if it were to be given. The issue proved moot, as both versions of the award (by Major League Baseball and by The Sporting News) were given to other players. The year 1949 was not nearly as good for Paige as 1948. He ended the season with a 4–7 record and was 1–3 in his starts with a 3.04 ERA. After the season, with Veeck selling the team to pay for his divorce, the Indians gave Paige his unconditional release. The St. Louis Browns In 1952, Rogers Hornsby, an alleged former member of the Ku Klux Klan, took over as manager of the Browns. Despite past accusations of racism, Hornsby was less hesitant to use Paige than Boudreau was four years before. Paige was so effective that when Hornsby was fired by Veeck, his successor Marty Marion seemed not to want to risk going more than three games without using Paige in some form. By July 4, with Paige having worked in 25 games, Casey Stengel named him to the American League All-Star team, making him the first black pitcher on an AL All-Star team. The All-Star game was cut short after five innings due to rain and Paige never got in. Stengel resolved to name him to the team the following year. Paige finished the year 12–10 with a 3.07 ERA for a team that lost ninety games.[20] Stengel kept his word and named Paige to the 1953 All-Star team despite Paige not having a very good year. He got in the game in the eighth inning. First, Paige got Gil Hodges to line out, then after Roy Campanella singled up the middle, Eddie Mathews popped out. He then walked Duke Snider, and Enos Slaughter lined a hit to center to score Campanella. National League pitcher Murry Dickson drove in Snider, but was thrown out at second base trying to stretch the hit into a double. Paige ended the year with a disappointing 3–9 record, but a respectable 3.53 ERA. Paige was released after the season when Veeck once again had to sell the team. Paige once again returned to his barnstorming days with Abe Saperstein. They formed a baseball version of Saperstein’s Harlem Globetrotters. Paige then joined the real Globetrotters when he joined one of their most popular “reams”—the “baseball routine”. Paige would “pitch” the basketball to Goose Tatum, who would “bat” the ball with his arms, run around the “bases” and slide “home” safely. Paige never actually played on the team, though.[21] Although he was making a decent living, Paige grew tired of the constant travel. His family had grown with the birth of his fourth child and first son, Robert Leroy. Paige then signed for $300 a month and a percentage of the gate to play for the Monarchs again. Then, on August 14, 1955, Paige signed a contract with the Greensboro Patriots of the Carolina League. He was scheduled to pitch at home three days later against the Philadelphia Phillies farm team, the Reidsville Luckies, but before he could suit up, Phillies farm director Eddie Collins wired George Trautman, president of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, to protest Paige’s appearance. Trautman, dealing with the integration of southern baseball against a Jim Crow backdrop, ruled that the signing was invalid, but the Greensboro team reminded him that the Carolina League had already approved the contract. Trautman then ruled that Greensboro could only use Paige in exhibition games. Unfortunately, Greensboro had already scheduled Paige to pitch in a regular season game which was sold out in advance and could not change it to an exhibition. In the end, the game was canceled when Hurricane Diane hit the Carolinas . Bill Veeck once again came to Paige’s rescue when, after taking control of the Phillies’ triple-A farm team, the Miami Marlins of the International League, he signed Paige to a contract for $15,000 and a percentage of the gate. Marlins manager Don Osborn did not want Paige and said that he would only use him in exhibition games. Veeck made a deal with Osborn that he could line up his best nine hitters, rotating them in from their positions in the field, and Veeck agreed to pay ten dollars to any of them who get a clean hit off of Paige. Paige retired all nine and Osborn agreed to make Paige a roster player. In Paige’s first game as a Marlin, he pitched a complete-game, four-hit shutout. Osborn, a former minor league pitcher, taught Paige the proper way to throw a curveball, which allowed Paige to tear through the International League. Paige finished the season 11–4 with an ERA of 1.86 with 79 strikeouts and only 28 walks. This time, when Veeck left the team, Paige was allowed to stay on, for two more years. Post-playing career In 1966, Paige pitched in his last game, getting some measure of revenge when he pitched for the Carolina League’s Peninsula Grays of Hampton, Virginia, against the very same Greensboro Patriots who had been forced to release him before his first pitch back in 1955. Paige gave up two runs in the first, threw a scoreless second and then left, never to return as a player in organized baseball again. (Interestingly, Peninsula used their backup catcher that day, rather than play their regular starter, young Johnny Bench.) On May 31, 1981, a made-for-television movie titled Don’t Look Back, starring Louis Gossett Jr. as Paige and Beverly Todd as Lahoma aired. Paige was paid $10,000 for his story and technical advice. In the spring of 1981, Paige was made vice president of the Triple-A Springfield Redbirds of the American Association, but this was in title only. In August, with great difficulty because of health problems, he attended a reunion of Negro League players held in Ashland, Kentucky that paid special tribute to himself and Cool Papa Bell. Attending the reunion were Willie Mays, Buck Leonard, Monte Irvin, Judy Johnson, Chet Brewer, Gene Benson, Bob Feller and Happy Chandler. Buck O’Neil, a former teammate and longtime friend of Paige, claimed in the 1994 documentary Baseball that Babe Ruth batted against Paige once. According to O’Neil’s story, the two men opposed each other in a barnstorming game after the Babe’s retirement, and that Ruth hit a 500 foot home run off Paige. O’Neil said that Paige was so awestruck by the shot that he met Ruth at the plate to shake his hand, and later had Ruth sign the ball. However, Paige stated in the 1948 book, Pitchin’ Man by Hal Lebovitz, that one of his greatest disappointments was, “I never pitched to Babe Ruth.” While the Babe Ruth All-Stars did play exhibition games against Negro leagues teams, there is no documented evidence that Paige and Ruth ever faced each other. In addition, there is no mention of this claim in any of Babe Ruth’s autobiographies, which would surely have been worth discussing. |
| From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |