Satchel Paige, a man you could not take your eyes off

The man you see on the mound is no ordinary pitcher. He's about to pitch three scoreless innings for the Kansas City Athletics at 59 years of age and in doing so become the oldest man to ever compete in the major leagues. Let's talk about Satchel Paige, a man you couldn't take your eyes off of. Leroy Robert Paige was born in Mobile, Alabama in 1906. As a child he played bat and ball games using sticks and bottle caps. At the age of 12 he got into trouble and was sent to Alabama's Reform School for Juvenile Negro Lawbreakers at Mount Megis near Montgomery. That is where Paige learned to play baseball. Following his release from Reformatory, Paige went to work establishing himself in semi-pro leagues and then as an elite pitcher for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro National League. At Birmingham's Rickwood Field, Paige dominated hitters with pinpoint accuracy and a peerless fastball. No one threw harder. Deception was another reason for Paige's effectiveness. Slight unpredictable movements designed to disrupt a hitter's timing were key to his success. In this regard, He had a quick delivery and a slow delivery. He threw sidearm and submarine. What would he do next? Paige would bend his knees and wind up with one, two, no wait, three windmills and then deliver a blazing fastball. Spectators arrived early to see Paige warm up because he was known to awe crowds by hurling precise strikes over a matchbox or stick of gum. By the mid-1930s, Paige's electrifying performances meant he could earn big money. On barnstorming tours with white stars such as Dizzy Dean, he routinely earned $1,000 for three innings of work, which is about $20,000 in our time after adjusting for inflation. Joe DiMaggio and Bob Feller said Paige was the best they had ever seen and Ted Williams asked Paige to autograph his bat. Pitching Man, Paige's memoir, is one of the best baseball books I've read. It includes many interesting and funny stories from his career and it is written in his distinctive voice and it is highly entertaining. Like many Negro League stars, Satchel played all over the United States and Caribbean. In fact, it was in Latin America that he experienced a major arm injury that forced him to rely less on speed. After 1939, Paige developed an array of off-speed pitches, including a knuckleball and famously the Ephus pitch demonstrated here by Hugh Darvish. I wanted to show the Ephus pitch because it delights crowds and helps us to understand the appeal of Paige. He threw incredibly hard and then deceptively slow. Men like Satchel demonstrated the tremendous talent of black professional ballplayers and paved the way for integration. In 1948, the Cleveland Indians signed the 42-year-old Paige mid-season and he went on to record six wins, one loss, two shutouts, and become the first African American to pitch in the World Series. Like so many Negro League stars, we're left to wonder what kind of career numbers Paige would have put up had he not faced racial barriers early in his life. That said, it's nice to know Paige was alive to witness his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame as its first African American player. And in the annals of baseball history, he remains unique. The oldest man to pitch in the major leagues, author of a memoir of enduring appeal, and showman par excellence. Here you see 59-year-old Paige doing publicity ahead of his final start in Major League Baseball. Does this look like a man capable of fooling big league hitters? In three innings of work, just one hitter, Hall of Fame outfielder Carl Yastrzemski, got a hit. Until the end of his life, Satchel Paige was a man you could not take your eyes off of. If you like what you just saw, there are more shorts and lectures on this channel. And thanks for watching.