Check Out Satchel Paige, as we Celebrate BHM

From the last 80 years of the 19th Century into the first 40 years of the 20th Century, the state of Missouri had been right in the center of National attention ranging from the Civil War to the 1904 World’s Fair and Summer Olympic Games to the establishment of the Negro Leagues to professional sports’ first female owner.

The “Show Me State” has been a land of opportunity and had welcomed some of the greatest players the history of baseball had ever seen.

Through the next 30 years, Missouri would say goodbye to some of the state’s most beloved teams, welcome new teams and new sports, move into new stadiums, see the most iconic monument in the Midwest go up, and would host championship games in all four of America’s major sports, while still witnessing some of the greatest athletes of their respective leagues.

In 1926, the Chattanooga Black Lookouts, a minor league Negro baseball team had signed a right-handed pitcher for $250 a month.

The pitcher’s name was LeRoy ‘Satchel’ Paige.

He was born on July 7, 1906, in Mobile, Alabama the son of a gardener and domestic worker. He earned his nickname ‘Satchel’ as a child when he was toting bags at a train station as a worker.

In July 1918, Paige was sentenced to five years of reform school at the Alabama Reform School for Negro Juvenile Law-Breakers in Mount Meigs because of shoplifting as well as the rock throwing battles that he and his friends had engaged in against the white kids of his neighborhood.

It was while he was at the institution that Reverend Moses Davis, an African American trustee at the school, had devoted long hours to teach him how to pitch and coached baseball to the young men.

“It was there,” Paige said “That I truly learned how to pitch. I had traded five years of freedom to learn how to pitch. At least I started my real learning of the game on the Mount. They were not wasted years at all. They had made a real man out of me.”

After his release in December 1923, Paige played baseball for several Mobile semi-pro teams, and three years later was signed to play in the Negro minor leagues.

His pitching had drawn national attention around the Negro Leagues, and in 1927, less than a year after starting in the minor leagues, Paige was sent up to the Negro Leagues where he started his professional career with the Birmingham Black Barons.

Through the next 12 years, Paige would play for the Black Barons, Baltimore Black Sox, Cleveland Cubs, and Pittsburgh Crawford’s before landing on a team where he would then spend the last eight years of his Negro League career, the Kansas City Monarchs.

J.L. Wilkinson, the owner and founder of the Monarchs, was the only Negro League owner that had sparked interest in Paige while his injured arm had scared away the others, those believing that his playing days were over.

They were not.

With months of rehabilitation on his throwing arm, Paige’s fastball came back to life in 1940 in his first year with the Monarchs. In his first start with the team in September 12, Paige struck out 10 batters in a complete game victory that lasted just five innings due to darkness.

But do the math. 10 strikeouts in five innings… 15 batters out and only five of them put the ball in play.

“The denizens of baseball were impressed enough with that and all Satchel’s other achievements that they inducted him into the Hall of Fame in 1971, the first vintage Negro Leaguer to be voted into this most exclusive club.”

-       Larry Tye, Society for American Baseball Research

On Opening Day 1941, J.L. Wilkinson had arranged for Paige to pitch a game for the New York Black Yankees in front of 20,000 fans at Yankee Stadium. Paige made the most of the opportunity, striking out eight batters while pitching his team to a 5-3 complete-game victory. The game brought extensive coverage from both black and white media outlets, including a pictorial by Life Magazine.

He would play in exhibition games against white teams during the offseason, and that’s where he really shined. He faced the great Rogers Hornsby and struck him out five times in one afternoon.

The great Joe DiMaggio, who was a legend for the Yankees, said that Paige was the greatest pitcher he had ever seen as he just amassed a single in five games over the hurler.

Even the legendary Dizzy Dean dueled against Satchel Paige in a 13-inning 1-0 affair, in which Paige had prevailed. Dizzy paid a big tribute to Satchel saying, “If Satchel and I were on the same team, we’d go on to win 60 games together.”

In 1942, the Monarchs won the Negro American League pennant again, and faced off against the Homestead Grays in the Negro League World Series, this time with the series being a best-of-seven game contest.

Paige took the mound in the first game, and matched zeroes through the first five innings, before he was relieved in the sixth. The Monarchs began a parade of scoring in the sixth inning and took the opener 8-0.

In game two, with the Monarchs leading 2-0 in the sixth, Paige was called in to record the final 12 outs, which he did, snuffing out a Grays rally in the bottom of the eighth and preserved the four-inning save as the Monarchs won 8-4.

The Monarchs won game three in convincing fashion 9-3, and in game four, Paige again was called in to relieve their struggling starter Joe Matchett in the fourth inning with his team trailing 5-4. His teammates took the lead in the seventh inning and added three insurance runs in the eighth inning to extend their lead to 9-5. Paige closed out the game with five and a third innings without allowing a run or a single hit.

The Monarchs swept the Grays to claim the Negro League World Series title, with Paige being the star of the series.

Through his eight years with the Monarchs, Satchel Paige was the pride of Kansas City, and his ferocity and confidence could not be denied.

Nor could his confidence as a pitcher.

In September 1942 during the second game of the Negro League World Series, Paige faced Homestead Grays catcher Josh Gibson, and the two were the two greatest of all Negro League stars.

“And here’s how the story goes. Satchel thought he was the greatest in the game, while Josh thought he was the greatest in the game, then Satchel is pitching with two outs in the ninth inning, the next hitter tripled but we weren’t phased by it. Then ole’ Satch comes over to me and said that he’s going to walk the next batter, and then the batter after that to load the bases with two outs to face Josh Gibson. I said, don’t be facetious! What happens next? He tells Josh that I’m going to throw you a fastball, boom strike 1. Again, he calls his pitch before throwing it, boom strike two. Last one, he throws and boom strike three! Satchel walked off the mound and said to me ‘nobody hits Satchel!’ That was the end of that story.”

-       (Ken Burns, Baseball, Buck O’Neil 1990)

After the integration of baseball in 1947, Paige would be called up by the Cleveland Indians the following year and helped propel them to the World Series championship.