Roy Exum
Last Wednesday, on what would have been the 115th birthday of the legendary Satchel Paige, writer Mark Inabinett with the Alabama Media Group (AL.com), wrote a most delightful story on the legendary baseball star. Satchel grew up in Mobile, Ala. and got his start in pro baseball with the Chattanooga White Sox, which morphed into the Chattanooga Black Lookouts in Negro Southern League in 1926.
Satchel rolled like a rock on slick moss until 1948 when he entered the major leagues after 22 years in purgatory. At the time he was 42 years old - which remains as the oldest player to ever be signed in MLB. It was then Paige become immortal. According to Wikipedia:
“Paige was 59 years old when he played his last major league game, which is also a record that stands to this day. Paige was the first black pitcher to play in the American League and was the seventh black player to play in Major League Baseball. Also in 1948, Paige became the first player who had played in the Negro leagues to pitch in the World Series; the Indians won the Series that year.
“He played with the St. Louis Browns from 1951 to 1953, representing the team in the All-Star Game in 1952 and 1953. He played his last professional game on June 21, 1966, for the Peninsula Grays of the Carolina League, two weeks shy of 60. In 1971, Paige became the first electee of the Negro League Committee to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.”
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“HOW OLD WOULD YOU BE IF YOU IF YOU DIDN’T KNOW HOW OLD YOU WERE?”
Name any year from 1901 and 1909, and there’s a news source that, at some point, has listed it as Paige’s birth year. As he pitched well past the end of most players’ careers, Paige capitalized on the mystery. Paige’s 1948 autobiography, “Pitchin’ Man,” has a chapter titled “About My Age,” which starts: “Now about my age. That’s usually a subject for women, but I guess we got to go into it because the way everybody is fussing, it seems it’s as important as the secret of the atomic bomb.” Paige then cites a variety of people - his mother, ex-wife, a judge who fined him for a speeding ticket, the guys he played bingo with - who all had different ages for him, without confirming any as correct.
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CREED: “YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. WHEN YOU BELIEVE, YOU DO.”
Paige spent nearly six years in the Alabama Reform School for Juvenile Negro Law-Breakers, sentenced while 11 years old. At Mount Meigs, coach Edward Byrd taught Paige the game of baseball. “You might say I traded five years of freedom to learn how to pitch,” Paige said.
“Satch” is best known for his “Six Rules of Life” and the list is still as delightful as it was 75 years ago…
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RULE NO. 1 -- “AVOID FRIED MEATS, WHICH ANGER UP THE BLOOD.”
Paige started his pro career with the Chattanooga White Sox in 1926 and ended it with the Peninsula Pilots in 1966. He pitched for dozens of teams from Alaska to South America in between. He is most closely identified with the Pittsburgh Crawfords of the 1930s and the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. Paige played for the Monarchs from 1940 until he joined the Cleveland Indians in 1948.
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RULE NO. 2 – “IF YOUR STOMACH DISPUTES YOU, LIE DOWN AND PACIFY IT WITH COOL THOUGHT”
Paige became a household name even while excluded from the big leagues because of his race. But players on the white side of baseball knew what Paige could do. “The pre-war Paige was the best pitcher I ever saw,” Bob Feller said. Ted Williams called him “the greatest pitcher,” and Joe DiMaggio labeled Paige “the best I’ve ever faced, and the fastest.”
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RULE NO. 3 – “KEEP THE JUICES FLOWING BY JANGLING AROUND GENTLY AS YOU MOVE”
During the offseason, top baseball players sometimes would supplement their incomes with barnstorming tours to stage exhibition games outside the 10 cities where the American and National leagues played. Paige headlined traveling teams that opposed squads of big leaguers led first by Dizzy Dean and then by Feller. “My fastball looks like a change of pace alongside that little pistol bullet ol’ Satchel shoots up to the plate,” Dean said.
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RULE NO. 4 – “GO VERY LIGHT ON THE VICES SUCH AS CARRYING ON IN SOCIETY. THE SOCIAL RAMBLE AIN’T RESTFUL.”
Satchel Paige became the first African American pitcher in American League history in 1948, while helping the Cleveland Indians become World Series champions that year. Paige pitched another season with Cleveland and three for the St. Louis Browns, representing the team in the MLB All-Star games of 1952 and 1953.
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RULE 5: “AVOID RUNNING AT ALL TIMES.”
Paige still was pitching regularly at age 52 for the Miami Marlins of the Triple-A International League in 1958, going 10-10 with a 2.95 ERA. Paige’s final MLB outing in 1965 was a publicity stunt by Kansas City Athletics owner Charles O. Finley, who two nights before Paige’s return to the Majors had staged Bert Campaneris Appreciation Night, during which the Kansas City shortstop played one inning at each of the nine positions on the field. But Paige did serious pitching as the starter for the Athletics against the Boston Red Sox. In three innings, he allowed one base runner - future Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski on a ground-rule double. Paige threw 28 pitches - a number less than half his age.
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RULE 6: “DON’T LOOK BACK; SOMETHING MIGHT BE GAINING ON YOU”
This rule landed Paige in “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.” His exploits on the diamond landed him in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971, the first player to be enshrined for his performance in the Negro Leagues. He’s one of the five players in the Baseball Hall of Fame who were born in Mobile, along with Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, Ozzie Smith and Billy Williams.
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Never anger up the blood.
royexum@aol.com