Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige

 Hall Of Fame Induction:  1971

The great Satch was known as much for his crowd pleasing charisma and his phenomenal longevity and resiliency as for his legendary athletic achievements on pitchers mounds all over the Western Hemisphere.  During his heyday of the thirties and forties, he was perhaps baseball’s greatest gate attraction. 

He was born the sixth child of twelve (including a set of twins) to John Paige, a gardener, and the former Lula Coleman, a domestic worker.  At age 12, he was sent to the Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, Alabama, for shoplifting and truancy from W.C. Council School.  There, he developed his pitching skills and, in 1924, joined the semi-pro Mobile Tigers.

On May 1, 1926, Paige made his professional pitching debut with the Chattanooga Black Lookouts of the Negro Southern League.  In 1928, the Birmingham Black Barons purchased Paige’s contract, paying him a phenomenal $275 a month.  He jumped from the Black Barons to the Black Sox of Baltimore to the Nashville Elite Giants and finally the Cleveland Cubs, before settling with the Crawfords of Pittsburgh, in 1932.  Three years later, he teamed with four other future Hall Of Famers:  Charleston, Bell, Johnson and Gibson, to win the Crawfords a league championship.  He stayed with the Crawfords until 1937, when the Dominican Republic dictator, Rafael Trujillo, enticed him and other prominent stars of the Negro Leagues to stock his politically motivated team.

When Paige returned to the United States, his Crawfords contract was sold to one of baseball’s few women owners:  Effa manley of the Newark Eagles.  He refused to report to the Eagles and headed to Mexico, where he promptly developed a sore arm that put his baseball career in jeopardy.

Paige returned to the U.S. and began to rehabilitate his arm by playing first base and pitching short stretches for the Kansas City Monarchs B-team, called either the Stars or the Travelers.  He gradually worked his arm back to good healthy and became the ace of the Monarch pitching staff, leading them to the Negro World Series in 1942 and 1946.  In the first series, the Monarchs swept the Homestead Grays in four games.  Paige appeared in all four contest, winning three.

On Paige’s forty-second birthday, he signed with Bill Veeck, owner of the Cleveland Indians.  A record crowd of 78,383 for a night game watched Paige make his first major league appearance.  Later, in his first starting role, de drew 72,434 fans in Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium.  As the oldest rookie in baseball, he won six times against one loss, helping the Indians to a pennant and earning a World Series appearance against the Boston Braves.

In 1949, Veeck sold his controlling interest in the Indians, forcing Paige to seek employment elsewhere.   When Veeck purchased the lowly St. Louis Browns in 1951, he promptly signed old Satchel again.  Incredibly, the following year, at the age of 46, Paige enjoyed one of his finest major league seasons.  He won twelve games and was selected to the All-Star team, achieving another honor as baseball’s oldest selection.

After Veeck became vice-president of the Miami Marlins of the International League, he signed Paige.  In three years, Paige only walked 54 batters in 340 innings.  Quite a feat for a player over fifty years old.

Paige briefly returned to the baseball scene in 1965, with a three-inning appearance with the Kansas City Athletics.  When his two-month contract for $4,000 expired, the 59-year-old legend retired from baseball.  He was later hired as a coach for the Atlanta Braves to complete the 158 days he needed to qualify for his major league pension.

On June 5, 1982, Paige, 75, suffering from the lingering illness of emphysema made his last public appearance.  Speaking from a wheelchair, he graciously received recognition at the dedication of a $250,000 renovated park, to be called the Satchel Paige memorial Stadium, in Kansas City, Missouri.  Paige died three days later and was buried in Forest Hill Memorial Park Cemetery in Kansas City, Missouri.  He was survived by his wife on nearly 35 years, the former Lahoma Jean Brown, and eight children.

Despite the lack of a formal education, the great Satchel Paige was honored with the dedication of a new magnet school on October 9, 1991, called the Leroy “Satchel” Paige Classical Greek Academy.  The academy promotes the Greek philosophy of “body and spirit,” symbolizing Paige as one of the most physically talented and spirited bodies to play the sport.

His homespun philosophy characterizes his impact on our national pastime:  (1) Avoid fried foods which anger the blood, (2) If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cooling thoughts, (3) Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move, (4) Go very lightly on the vices, such as carrying on in society—the social ramble ain’t restful, (5) Avoid running at all times and (6) Don’t look back.  Something might be gaining on you.

Fittingly, on August 9, 1971, he became the first player from the Negro Leagues elected to Cooperstown’s national Baseball Hall of Fame.  When he accepted his award, he told the admirers that in the Negro Leagues, “there were many Satchels and many Joshes.”  Paige was the ultimate showman whose only major league counterpart was Gashouse Gang Cardinal pitcher, Dizzy Dean.  Dean once boasted, “If Satch and me was pitching on the same team, we’d clinch the pennant by the fourth of July and go fishing until World Series time.”

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