Baseball Guru
10-14-2001, 07:36 PM
Satchel Paige never looked back, much less at his age
Oct. 10, 2001. 08:49 AM
From Associated Press
Pitching is never better than during the postseason.
Everywhere you looked Tuesday, somebody was throwing a masterpiece. In Houston, Greg Maddux scrapped for six innings, and the Braves rewarded him with an eighth-inning, game-winning homer. In Arizona, Curt Schilling went all nine innings to decide the duel between baseball's two winningest pitchers, 1-0. In Seattle, Bartolo Colon fired eight shutout innings at a Mariners lineup that led the American League in batting average, runs and just about every other offensive category.
Satchel Paige did that once - all in the same day.
But winning a tripleheader was hardly his most impressive feat. The greatest pitcher ever would have turned 100 this summer (we think), and a neat little paperback shipping to bookstores now reminds us what we're missing.
And missed.
When Paige was at his flamboyant best, major league baseball was a whites-only game. It wasn't until 1948, the year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, Paige made his big-league debut. He went 6-1 for Cleveland in his rookie season. Leroy Robert Paige was already 48 years old (we think).
Keep that in mind Wednesday night when the announcers make a big deal about 39-year-old Roger Clemens taking the mound in New York.
``Imagine if Tiger Woods wasn't allowed to play on the PGA Tour until he was 48,'' said David Sterry, who co-authored ``Satchel Sez'' with Arielle Eckstut. ``That gives you some idea of what we're talking about.''
Paige had 30 different pitches and a name for each one. Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and Bob Feller all called him the best they ever saw. He made sure of it.
``For Satchel,'' said fellow Negro League great Buck O'Neil, ``making believers out of doubters was sweeter than winning any ballgame. It was as sweet as life itself.''
Not that Paige didn't like winning. While researching the book, Sterry came up with 2,100 victories, 300 shutouts and 55 no-hitters against a variety of opponents.
Paige once struck out 24 batters in a game. In one memorable outing during a barnstorming tour pitting Negro League All-Stars against their major league counterparts, he struck out Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby five times - and ran his mouth the whole time.
It was something Paige did as smartly as he pitched. He might best be remembered for the line, ``Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.'' But as Sterry learned, that wasn't all Satchel had to say about age, and it might not have even been his best line on the subject.
Satchel delighted in having the America that discovered him late in life try to guess his age. He swore his birth certificate was tucked into the pages of a bible eaten by the family's goat. He waved off the controversy another time by saying, ``Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.''
But it mattered to Sterry that few in his generation, and even fewer ballplayers today, know much about Paige. Sterry was a kid himself when he saw the right-hander pitch an exhibition game in the mid-1960s at a small park in the South. Paige had already completed a five-year stint in the majors by then, with three teams.
``But there was still something magical about him,'' Sterry recalled. ``He was part-clown and part-king. He was funny all the time, yet there was something regal about him.''
The men Paige played against knew the feeling only too well. Paige once walked the bases full so he could pitch to Josh Gibson, the black Babe Ruth, then called all his fielders to the mound and had them sit down while he struck Gibson out.
He once greeted every major leaguer he faced for the first time in an exhibition game with the question, ``Is you Mr. Martin?'' When Pepper Martin finally came to bat, Page cackled, ``They tell me you kin hit!'' As Martin waggled his bat menacingly over the plate, Paige called out, ``Then hit this!'' and fanned him with three fastballs.
But his life wasn't all fun and games. The Atlanta Braves put Paige on their roster briefly in 1968 so he could collect a major league pension, but Paige died broke in Kansas City 14 years later. For all the sweet-talking he did about the game he loved, Paige knew only too well how little it had loved him in return.
``I went from a second-class citizen,'' he said, ``to a second-class immortal.''
Sterry would like to do something about that, too. He's been invited to speak about Paige at the Hall of Fame next summer, and he's thinking about asking major league baseball to commemorate Paige's 100th birthday next season with a patch on the ballplayer's sleeves, and maybe a brief ceremony sometime around July 7.
Wait a second - Sterry's own book says Paige would have turned 100 this year.
``I know,'' he laughed, ``but we're going to have a series of birthday commemorations over the next four or five years, anyway, which is exactly the way Satchel would have wanted it.''
Oct. 10, 2001. 08:49 AM
From Associated Press
Pitching is never better than during the postseason.
Everywhere you looked Tuesday, somebody was throwing a masterpiece. In Houston, Greg Maddux scrapped for six innings, and the Braves rewarded him with an eighth-inning, game-winning homer. In Arizona, Curt Schilling went all nine innings to decide the duel between baseball's two winningest pitchers, 1-0. In Seattle, Bartolo Colon fired eight shutout innings at a Mariners lineup that led the American League in batting average, runs and just about every other offensive category.
Satchel Paige did that once - all in the same day.
But winning a tripleheader was hardly his most impressive feat. The greatest pitcher ever would have turned 100 this summer (we think), and a neat little paperback shipping to bookstores now reminds us what we're missing.
And missed.
When Paige was at his flamboyant best, major league baseball was a whites-only game. It wasn't until 1948, the year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, Paige made his big-league debut. He went 6-1 for Cleveland in his rookie season. Leroy Robert Paige was already 48 years old (we think).
Keep that in mind Wednesday night when the announcers make a big deal about 39-year-old Roger Clemens taking the mound in New York.
``Imagine if Tiger Woods wasn't allowed to play on the PGA Tour until he was 48,'' said David Sterry, who co-authored ``Satchel Sez'' with Arielle Eckstut. ``That gives you some idea of what we're talking about.''
Paige had 30 different pitches and a name for each one. Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and Bob Feller all called him the best they ever saw. He made sure of it.
``For Satchel,'' said fellow Negro League great Buck O'Neil, ``making believers out of doubters was sweeter than winning any ballgame. It was as sweet as life itself.''
Not that Paige didn't like winning. While researching the book, Sterry came up with 2,100 victories, 300 shutouts and 55 no-hitters against a variety of opponents.
Paige once struck out 24 batters in a game. In one memorable outing during a barnstorming tour pitting Negro League All-Stars against their major league counterparts, he struck out Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby five times - and ran his mouth the whole time.
It was something Paige did as smartly as he pitched. He might best be remembered for the line, ``Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.'' But as Sterry learned, that wasn't all Satchel had to say about age, and it might not have even been his best line on the subject.
Satchel delighted in having the America that discovered him late in life try to guess his age. He swore his birth certificate was tucked into the pages of a bible eaten by the family's goat. He waved off the controversy another time by saying, ``Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.''
But it mattered to Sterry that few in his generation, and even fewer ballplayers today, know much about Paige. Sterry was a kid himself when he saw the right-hander pitch an exhibition game in the mid-1960s at a small park in the South. Paige had already completed a five-year stint in the majors by then, with three teams.
``But there was still something magical about him,'' Sterry recalled. ``He was part-clown and part-king. He was funny all the time, yet there was something regal about him.''
The men Paige played against knew the feeling only too well. Paige once walked the bases full so he could pitch to Josh Gibson, the black Babe Ruth, then called all his fielders to the mound and had them sit down while he struck Gibson out.
He once greeted every major leaguer he faced for the first time in an exhibition game with the question, ``Is you Mr. Martin?'' When Pepper Martin finally came to bat, Page cackled, ``They tell me you kin hit!'' As Martin waggled his bat menacingly over the plate, Paige called out, ``Then hit this!'' and fanned him with three fastballs.
But his life wasn't all fun and games. The Atlanta Braves put Paige on their roster briefly in 1968 so he could collect a major league pension, but Paige died broke in Kansas City 14 years later. For all the sweet-talking he did about the game he loved, Paige knew only too well how little it had loved him in return.
``I went from a second-class citizen,'' he said, ``to a second-class immortal.''
Sterry would like to do something about that, too. He's been invited to speak about Paige at the Hall of Fame next summer, and he's thinking about asking major league baseball to commemorate Paige's 100th birthday next season with a patch on the ballplayer's sleeves, and maybe a brief ceremony sometime around July 7.
Wait a second - Sterry's own book says Paige would have turned 100 this year.
``I know,'' he laughed, ``but we're going to have a series of birthday commemorations over the next four or five years, anyway, which is exactly the way Satchel would have wanted it.''