Who Was Satchel Paige?

Satchel Paige was a ground breaking pitcher with one of the longest careers in the history of professional baseball. He was one of the most gifted pitchers in baseball history. He could throw a fastball that was clocked at over 100 miles per hour, and he had a mastery of the knuckleball that was unmatched. But for many years Paige was unable to play in the Major Leagues because of his race. He spent most of his career in the Negro Leagues, where he was a star, playing a brand of baseball that looked quite different from baseball that we know today.

In this podcast, we will explore the life and career of Satchel Paige. We will talk about his early years, his rise to fame in the Negro Leagues, and his eventual induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. This podcast is for anyone who loves baseball, history, or just great stories. It is a celebration of the life and legacy of one of the greatest pitchers of all time.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in. This is DirtNapp City. I'm Kelly. I'm Alex. My uh topic today, I think you're gonna be surprised because I think my topic is gonna be a little out of what you would expect from me, knowing me. Um so that's that's your first clue right there. It's also uh the person that I'm talking about, you could say was sort of one of the boys of summer, you know, if you if you wanted to think about think about that.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Um so um out of so is it a sports uh sports person?

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Well, yes, American sports figure for the first half of the 20th century.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

So boys of summer would mean baseball. You know, I'm a big baseball guy, it's probably my uh favorite sport.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Well, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say this was my mother's suggestion. So, you know, you and I talked about we don't do requests. Uh, I said I would only take one request and it would be from my mom.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

And so my mom suggested this person that this is interesting because my mom texted me last night a request, and I told her no requests, and she got mad. She got mad.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Wow. And and now she's gonna hear this and hear that I actually did a request from my mom. So maybe she well, can you tell me who she requested? Is it somebody you might do in the future or or no way, Jose?

SPEAKER_01 1:27

I mean, everything's on the table. I'm not gonna tell you.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Okay, well, so uh the person my mom suggested was an American sports figure from the first half of the 20th century. Uh, you're correct, baseball player, boys of summer. I'm glad you caught that, not just a Don Henley song. Um, he was born in Mobile, Alabama, but lived all over the U.S., um, including the and and in the Dominican Republic in Cuba during his career.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

So, you know, that's not as big of a hint as you might think because there's actually five Hall of Famers from Mobile, Alabama. It's the most, it's the most popular um city for Hall of Famers. Did you was that one of your uh bullet points, or did you not not know that?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

I actually didn't know that. I didn't know that Mobile was such a hot spot. So you've you've got it narrowed down to five, or maybe you just know that the number is five. Well, I'll tell you another thing about him. His birthday was I'm gonna guess. Well, you go keep going, keep going. His his birth date was reported on a variety of different days, years, and dates between 1900 and 1908. So a little bit of a combination of things. Um, first of all, I don't know that he was 100% sure when his birthday was. Um, and so he would say different times his dates. His mother also had a lot of children, and she apparently got confused and gave different birth dates for him. Uh, but it was verified when he went to the major leagues, another clue, uh, that he was born in 1906 on July 7th. I think I had it a long time ago.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

All right, go for it. I think I hope we're talking about Satchel Page today.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

We are talking about Leroy Robert Sachel Page. Yes. Excellent, nice well done. Nice, yeah, yeah. One of my favorites. My mom's a big fan of his as well. As you know, my mother is a big baseball fan. I grew up around baseball, uh, and really it's kind of funny because Satchel Page died in Kansas City in 1982 and played for the Kansas City Monarchs a number of times throughout his career. And he uh, and but you know, my grandparents always had Royals seasons tickets, and my parents always like to go see the Astros. And so, you know, most of my baseball time was spent with either my my mom or my grandparents, who were all big, big uh fans.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Have you ever had the occasion to go to the Negro League um museum in Kansas City?

SPEAKER_00 3:56

I haven't. I didn't even know it existed until I started doing this research, but I intend to now. I it's really, really cool.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

And um, and when you walk in, there's a huge select uh collection of um baseballs uh donated by Getty Lee from uh Rush.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Really?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

He actually he actually is a big baseball guy, also. I knew that Blue Jays collection. Um, yeah, yeah, now and um so yeah, so he has donated a huge part of the the collection there, but it's it's not a very big museum, and it kind of shares a building with the American Jazz Museum, which is uh which I didn't go to, but uh it's really cool. So and I know you uh have occasion to go to Kansas City from time to time. You should check it out.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

I do, I do, yeah. Um, no, that's good to know. I I like I said, I hadn't realized that connection to um to Sachel Page in Kansas City until I started doing this. Now, my mom is from there, so that's probably part of why she um wanted me to bring this up or talk about Satchel Page. Um, he was the first black pitcher to play in the American League. He was also the seventh black player to join Major League Baseball. A lot of people say he was a little bit um uh not happy about the fact that he wasn't the first because he was older when he finally joined. As a matter of fact, he was 42 when he made his debut with the Cleveland Indians in 1948.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

So that's older than most people are when they retire.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Yeah. Right, right. He was the oldest, um, he was the oldest player to debut in the major leagues at 42. And then uh he was also uh 59 when he played in his last major league game, which is also a record.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Was that a regular season game? It wasn't like some exhibition or anything. He actually played in a game when he was 59. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Um, I believe so, and I believe my my mom, you know, I think that's the game she went to in Kansas City. Awesome. Yeah, so um he played his uh and and the funny thing is actually he continued playing uh professional ball after he retired from the major leagues with um other teams, with semi-pro teams, with um people who did this thing called barnstorming, where they would go from city to city. Are you familiar with that term? Barnstorming with baseball? Yeah, so so you want to explain it to everyone who doesn't know?

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yeah, so these teams, uh, a lot of these teams wouldn't have a home or a home uh field, uh and they would just go around from town to town on on the train um and and and and play against the local the local team, um mostly exhibitions, but there were several kind of teams, kind of like the Harlem Globetrotters were in basketball, how they didn't really have a home, but they'd they'd go around from city to city and wasn't there wasn't their opponent the generals or the or the was it was some military, the the Washington Generals.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Generals, yeah, that's who they played. Well, yes, he was a big barnstormer and very much an opportunist when it came to making a living at baseball. Like he he played, I think a lot of people think of baseball as something that you play over the summer, you know, and you're on one team, you play on the same team for years and years. Satchel Page broke that mold 100% by playing uh for all kinds of different teams. Again, he he played some some in uh Cuba, he played some in uh Mexico, and he basically played year-round so he could he could basically make as much money as possible. This was his career, and this was something he wanted to do to support his family and also live the lifestyle that he wanted to live. So um one of the things that we mentioned earlier was about his birth date kind of ranging from 1900 to 1908. Well, it was determined that his actual birth date was July 7th, 1906, and the final determination was actually made by Bill Vick, who owned the Cleveland Indians, and when he was um when he was recruiting Satchel Page, he wanted to actually get his real birthday. And so he went to Mobile, Alabama and went with Paige's family to the health health department and obtained his birth certificate. So that's how they finally kind of decided. But Paige even said, he had a quote, he said, How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are? And I think what that was referencing was, you know, uh poor black kids at that time weren't paid a lot of attention to. And so the records were sketchy at best. A lot of kids were born at home, and so I don't know. They actually had a legend that his all the birth dates of his siblings and him were kept in a the family Bible, but he said he never saw the Bible and it eventually was eaten by a goat. That was that was what they told people. So he wasn't sure when he was born. So he would just kind of make things up. As a matter of fact, apparently his his uh draft card, his voter ID, uh, you know, later in life, his uh birth certificate, and his, I'm trying to think, several other maybe tax returns all had different birth dates on them.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

So I guess that's just the way things were back then, huh?

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Yeah, he was he was born um Immobile in uh, like I said, in 1906. He was born to John and uh Lula Page, and John was a gardener, Lula was a domestic worker, they lived in a part of town called down the bay, and apparently when um he was born, they actually spelled his last name P-A-G-E. But when uh he was a little older in the mid-1920s, his mother decided to add an I and because she said page, P A G E looked too much like a page in a book, and so um Satchel said later that you know his mom just wanted to be more high-tone, but there was also a thought that that was around the time of his father's death in the 1920s, and that they were looking for a new start, and so they kind of changed their name. Maybe it was conscious, maybe it was subconscious, but they respelled their name uh P-A-I-G-E to change at that time. Interesting. Now, of course, his nickname, Satchel, was not his real name, his real name was Leroy. But do you know how he got the nickname Satchel?

SPEAKER_01 10:23

No, tell me.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

So one of his first jobs was carrying bags at the train station in Mobile, and he was apparently made a dime a bag to carry the bags for people, and he didn't think that was enough, and so he uh rigged up a contraption with a pole and some rope and carried multiple bags, and somebody called him a satchel tree, said you look like a walking satchel tree, and that's supposedly one version of how he got the nickname satchel. Now, another version was from a friend who he grew up with named Wilbur Hines, who said that it was given to him after he tried to steal a satchel, so they called him satchel. But either way, it it came down to him having to do with him carrying a bag or trying to steal a bag. I think I like the first story better. Yeah, yeah. That was the one in his autobiography, so that was the one they they stuck with. Now, at 10, of course, at the time in this neighborhood in Mobile, these kids didn't have real baseballs, they didn't have real bats, so they would play a game called Top Ball, which they used sticks and bottle caps to play, basically a variation of baseball, you know, where they would hit the bottle cap with a stick and run around. And his mother saw that he loved baseball, and she even kind of got a little bit exasperated because he would skip school to go to baseball, you know, to go play baseball, he would not study, he would not go to work, he would just constantly be playing baseball, and she got a little tired of it, but she couldn't really control him. As a matter of fact, uh, when he was uh 12 years old, he got sentenced to go to reform school because he was truant and he was caught stealing something from a store. Now, this reform school was called the Alabama Reform School for Juvenile Negro Lawbreakers in Mount Megs, Alabama. Now that's quite a horrible name. I mean, even the acronym wouldn't really work, but uh apparently it did him a lot of good. He he stayed there for six years, and there was a person there named Reverend Moses Davis, who was a trustee at the school and actually coached all the boys there in baseball. Apparently, also Satchel was so poor growing up that uh when he went to this school, the reform school in uh Mount Megs, he didn't think it was that bad because he actually ate more meals and he already had to share a bed with one of his brothers at home. So he shared a bed there and it wasn't a big deal to him. He said it really wasn't, you know, it wasn't like a move down. And he said after he left in 1923, he said um that his incarceration had basically traded freedom for his ability to play baseball and to become a man. So he he he he left there feeling like it had actually done him some good, which you know you don't often hear about those kind of things, correctional things working, but in his case, it sounds like it did.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Turned them around, huh?

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Yeah, yeah. I think this guy, this Moses Davis was a good guy, uh coaching them and teaching them, you know, responsibility. He actually at that at the school, he uh joined the choir and joined the band and became um more interested in reading. You know, I think he was a pretty um illiterate kid before he went there. And so going there really, you know, forced him to do a lot of things like read and study that he wouldn't have done if he had had any choice. But I think this reform school just made him do it, and so uh in the end, it was good for him.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

And you know, you talk about the poverty and that they didn't have equipment, but I I told you that that town produced all these great baseball players, and even today you see a lot of players, tons of players from the Dominican Republic that come from you know a lot of poverty, and they do the same thing. They don't have equipment, a lot of them have to play with using like um um milk cartons, fashion gloves, and stuff, and that makes you have soft hands, and it makes it gives you the skills that you need to become great. And so improvise. You have to improvise and you have to you have to do things. Uh yeah, improvise is probably the best word there. And uh so you still see that, that that's not a barrier in when it comes to baseball, like it would be maybe in some other sports. I mean, um, I I'm I'm supposing in football you need proper pads, you know, yeah, uh to prevent injury.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

That's one of the beauties of of soccer or you know, football soccer, is you really only need a ball, right? And and you see you see videos of kids playing with a ball made of tape or maybe made of uh old tires or whatever. So I I think I think baseball is probably in the middle between soccer and and football as far as complexity and the amount of equipment. Um but yeah, he just had a natural ability. As a matter of fact, it was said that he threw rocks so well that he would kind of in Mobile before he went to reform school, um, he would get into fights with other kids, and he was known to be able to peg kids with rocks. And, you know, a lot of the fights uh were between blacks and whites, and so there was a lot of you know racial tension going on, and so um who knows what the dynamic was. Well, I'm sure the dynamic wasn't great there, but throwing rocks was one of his defenses that he had and he was known for. And also he would hunt with um rocks, he would throw rocks at birds, he would throw rocks at uh squirrels and often hit them and be able to kill them and eat them. He was a big fisherman, he loved to fish. That was something that I guess Mobile offered, and that was a way that they ate, his family ate, and uh he loved to hunt. And even later in life, he bought shotguns and fishing poles, and that was something that he kind of really valued even after he had a lot of money, was still being able to do those things with better equipment. That's great. Yeah, so when he got out of reform school, he went to play with a mobile semi-pro team called the Mobile Tigers, uh, and his brother Wilson actually played on that team as well, and then he pitched on another team, uh, local team called down down the bay, down the bay boys, and so that was you know, that was kind of the area they lived in. Well, on that team, he actually had one of his first really famous stories. Um, the team was down by one point, uh, zero to one, and it was um the ninth inning, he was pitching, top of the ninth, he was pitching, and the apparently he uh his teammates had some errors, the bases were loaded, there were two outs, and the crowd started booing at him, and he got upset, and so the crowds booed even more, and that made him even madder. And so he called in his outfielders and had them sit down in the infield, and then he struck out the last batter. He was so he was so confident that he would be able to strike the batter out that he called in the outfielders, basically saying, If you hit it at the outfield, it's your game, but I'm not gonna let you.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

I love Negro League stories because you don't know if they're true or not. There's never much video.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

This story, this story was was all over the place. This is one of the stories that was kind of, I think, the beginning of this legend. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Several people in in my research mentioned this, and and that he did it more than once, but this was the first time he was known to do it. The thing is, too, he kind of had this mixed reputation of being a great pitcher, but he also was often late for games. Um, he kind of he switched from team to team. He was like I said, he was very opportunistic between playing and would take whoever was going to give him the most money or the best deal. He actually uh quit and joined a team in New Orleans um with the promise of what they called a jalopy, you know, a car. He had never owned a car, and this team said, Hey, if you come play with us, we'll give you a car. So they gave him this car and he quit. He he just walked out on his current team and went down to play in New Orleans for a while because he got this car. And he said it wasn't even a great car. This was his autobiography again. I mean, he was one of the biggest stars around, too. He was, he attracted crowds, and that's really that's really the thing is when he attracted crowds, people would pay whatever they paid 10 cents, 25 cents, a dollar to get into these games. I don't, I don't know what it was back then, and they made money. The owners made money, the players made money. Um, you want to guess what a typical you know 1920s, 1930s um monthly salary was?

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Wow. I know that uh for baseball. Gosh, it couldn't have been more than a hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Uh it was well, it was about two hundred. Two hundred, really? Yeah, and but by the end of the twenties, satchel was making a lot more than that. He was he was the highest play um player in the Negro leagues at that time, you know, towards the end of his career. So how much was that then if he's getting and that was in the 1920s? It was 700, it would be 700 a month, but he also was going off. Um, what would happen is the owners would actually lend him out for these barnstorming things, and he would make $100,000, $200 a game doing that. So you add that to his $700 a month salary, and it was a lot of money for back then.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Well, but put that into perspective, he's the best player in the Negro Leagues. Babe Ruth, Babe Ruth was the first hundred thousand dollar a year player, and that was in 1927. So he was still not making his worth.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

And when Satchel Page joined the majors in 19 uh in the 1940s, he was only paid like 40,000, 45,000 a year. So you know what I mean. So so that was for the majors, that was a lot of money for him compared to what he was used to making, but it was a lot less money than other players, you know, and that he should have been making, right? Yeah. So he he had a pitching style that was very unique. Um, you know, he was he was very tall, he was a very tall guy, very lanky. A lot of people said he looked like an ostrich, a lot of people said he looked like a crane. Um he used that to his advantage because he was able to wind up in such a way that he had and he had very large feet. I think he had like size 13, 14 shoes. So in his windup, he would lift his leg and put his leg and foot out in front of him in such a way that it actually blocked the view of the batter from his arm. You know, it was like his leg was covering what he was doing, and so the batter couldn't always see when the ball was coming or where the ball was coming from. As a matter of fact, he had a pitch called the hesitation pitch, and it was where he would uh wind up and just pause for a beat while he was winding up and then throw. Now, knowing that he threw the ball really hard and really fast, a lot of batters had to swing early in order to get a piece of the ball. Otherwise, it would just zip right past them. So he used this hesitation and he was able to trick batters into swinging too soon. So essentially what would happen is he would. Do his wind up. He would pitch normal for a while. And then when he went wanted to throw a hesitation pitch, it looked like his normal pitch, but this little beat of a pause caused the batter to swing too early. And even the ones who could check themselves had already kind of started the swing and were just all off balance.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Yeah, that's cool. I can see this in my mind's eye as you're as you're saying it, because his his uh his windup was pretty legendary. Like even even back in the day, you there's still enough enough film from him where I can I can picture this.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Well, and and apparently um the hesitation pitch was eventually outlawed. That was one that they said, no, no, you can't do that. It was uh ticking off too many batters. But um he had a scorching fastball, as I said, and he had names for his uh fastballs, like his pitches. Apparently, they were different, they were all just fastballs, just fastballs. I shouldn't say just they were all fastballs, but he called one the bat dodger. He called one thoughtful stuff, he called one trouble ball. I'm gonna throw my trouble ball. He called one long tom. And there was one that was called, and I think the the batter or the catcher actually came up with this one, it was called the bee ball, because it sounded like a bee buzzing by as it flew past the batter into the into the glove of the catcher.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

So when you say they were all fastballs, does that mean they didn't have movement? They weren't curveballs at all, they were just straight down the middle.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

He didn't really learn uh the curveball until later in his career. He he um for the first 10 years, 12 years, he was just a fastball thrower. And then as he got older and his arm became a little more tired, you know, throwing fastballs is very hard on your body and hard on your shoulder and hard on your arm. And so he had to eventually start doing other types of pitches, and that's where he learned the midnight creeper, the wobbly ball, the whipsy dipsy do, and these were all, and of course, his hesitation pitch, these were all um trick pitches that he learned. So, you know, curves, sliders, uh screwballs, stuff like that. He learned those later, but he didn't he didn't know how to throw this at first, and his fastball was so good he didn't have to.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

But that might be why he had such longevity. If he had been throwing a curveball from the beginning, his arm might have given out. Most pitchers don't last that long because the curveball is what does their arms in there arm injuries. Oh yeah. There's a guy right now um who has a uh who has a pitch called the Bugs Bunny pitch. Do you know what that is? No. You remember Bugs Bunny when he'd throw a ball? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Batter would swing and miss it.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Yeah, it would like stop, and there's people that swear that this pitch looks like it gives the illusion that it stops on the way there.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Wow, yeah. That sound that sounds like a satchel page kind of thing, like something he would do. Well, so you know, talking about the salaries they made, so from 1926 to 1929, um, he played in Chattanooga and Birmingham, and he was making $250 a month, and um he definitely sent money home to his family. As a matter of fact, his mother, very religious woman, she did not like him playing ball on Sundays, and he kind of sent the money to her to gain her approval, you know, because she she was against him playing baseball because she didn't like him playing on Sundays, but when she got the money, she was more okay with it. You know, I'm not saying he bought her out, but you know, that was a little bit of the thing. Um I think you are saying he bought her out. He did buy her out. Uh he also became pretty well known for um brushing back batters. That was something he learned uh to do when they were kind of in the strike zone. He would brush them back. And apparently in 1927, he was they were playing the St. Louis Stars, and he hit um Mitchell Murray, who was actually a friend of his, but it made Murray so mad that Murray uh ran out to the mound with his bat and threw it at Satchel Page, and a near riot broke out, and that was sort of um the Birmingham reporter said uh it was a uh near riot caused by Satchel Page. You know, it was part of added to his legacy of um of who he was. But that year, 1927, he finished um 7-1 with 69 strikeouts and 26 walks, and then over the next two seasons, 1928, 1929, uh 28, he went 12 and 5, and then in 29 um he went 10 and 9. And he he set a record, he had 176 strikeouts in 1929, which is a season record for the Negro League. Negro leagues. By the way, it is Negro Leagues because there were different leagues, you know, it was kind of all bunched together um as a term, but there were it wasn't just one league that played, it was several different leagues. But um, in 176 strikeouts in 1929, which was a record, and then he had 17 strikeouts in one game against the Cuban Stars, which exceeded the major league record of 16 strikeouts at that point. So he he actually had a better uh record or number more strikeouts in one game than major league had at that point. And then six days later, he had 18 strikeouts against the Nashville Elite Giants. And that number was later tied by Bob Fellers in 1938. And and Bob Fellers was a famous pitcher in the majors. He's a white player. Basically, as I said before, he would get rented out by the owner of differ owners of different teams who had him because he could draw a crowd. And you know, that was kind of what he was known for. And barnstorming, you know, he loved to do that, he loved to travel. As a matter of fact, his first uh marriage kind of kind of fell apart because she wanted to settle down and he wanted to travel. And you know, it became they were so at odds with one another at some point that you know it just they got divorced, and he ended up getting remarried. But his first marriage, um, his wife didn't really understand his sort of wanderlust.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

That's quite a life, barnstorming baseball or yeah, just playing in general as part of life and playing in in in the Negro leagues back then. I mean, there wasn't a lot of organization of teams. Teams would fold and then they'd sprout up. And so I don't blame him for not being can't even call it loyal, but not even playing for one team. I mean, those teams were just barely hanging, hanging around.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Some were like that, and and some others were were more organized, better funded, had more money behind them. Um, and we'll get to that in just a second. But you know, as I was saying earlier, a lot of people think of baseball as the boys of summer, as we said. Well, you know, the other way that he made money was to go to Cuba and play in the Cuban League. And uh Cuba, Mexico, a lot of Latin America, big, big baseball places, uh, a lot of gambling that would go on, and they would pay, you know, where he was making $250 a month at that time, or maybe three or four hundred dollars a month playing in his normal teams, they were paying a hundred dollars a game to play winter ball down there.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

And he had freedom of movement way better as a black player or as a black person than he would have in the American South at that time, too, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

That's right. And and there were a lot of cases where barnstorming or playing, even when he was in the majors, um, I think he experienced racism at hotels where they wouldn't let him stay in certain hotels. It was it was certainly, according to his autobiography, it was more punctuated in the south than it was in the north, but it was it was all across the US. And I think the Cuban, the Cuban League, um, you know, these Latin American teams and Caribbean teams were smart to basically take advantage of these players. I say take advantage of, recruit these players that were not being looked at by the US, you know, the the white um major leagues here. They were they were they had this hidden talent, you know. And Satchel Page is is considered one of the best pitchers of all time, period. Not just in the Negro leagues, not in the major leagues, but just period, one of the best pitchers of all time. So for them to be able to get him for $100 a game to come down and play, it was um, you know, it was great for them. They could win a lot of games. And as I said, gambling was big down there. He did get into some trouble in Cuba. Um, there were several stories that were told. One about him um not understanding the language, and basically the mayor of a small town asked him in Spanish if he had intentionally lost a particular game. Page didn't understand what he was saying and just nodded and smiled, thinking he was he was just a green. And it turns out the mayor was furious and was gonna have him arrested for intentionally losing the game, and uh he had to be he had to be escorted out uh of Cuba. There were also some incidents with uh attractive local Cuban women that he he uh got into trouble with. So he he got around. You know, he definitely um he definitely as a matter of fact, there was one where he went out on a date with a local girl in Cuba, and the family thought he was uh getting engaged to her, and so they sent the police to enforce the engagement because they wanted him to marry her, and he didn't want to get married, so he had to be a good one. Was that another language issue? He just said yes. Sure, yeah. I yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

I think the best thing that he could have done was learn Spanish, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Yeah, that would have been smart.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

That would have been smart. Kept him out of trouble.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

He came back to the U.S. in 1930 and played for teams in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, California, North Dakota, kind of all over the place. But his his biggest thing was the um Pittsburgh Crawfords. Have you have you heard of the Crawfords?

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Yes, yes, big they now they were a real successful team.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Yes, and that's kind of where I was going with the well-funded. There was a guy named Gus Greenley. Gus was apparently something of an underworld figure, a gangster, uh a bookmaker, a numbers guy, um, ran a lot of um shady businesses in Pittsburgh, had a lot of money, and wanted to uh build up a black baseball team that could be completely dominant in the Negro leagues. And he also did it because I think he had several businesses that were a little shady and he wanted something that he could be known and respected for. Gus Greenlee did. So um he was the owner of the Crawfords, also known as the Cross, and uh also known as the Crawford Colored Giants. Those were kind of all their names. Um, he recruited great, great players cool Papa Bell, Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson, Satchel Page, of course, and they were one of the greatest teams in the history of the Negro League. Yeah. He played for them for a while. He got to be friends with Gus. Um Satch was not very, you know, it was often called Satch. He was not good with money. Have you ever heard that?

SPEAKER_01 33:36

No, no, but um you know that that's a lot of money, not compared to what he was worth, but uh compared to other people, uh other blacks in the and compared to what he grew up with, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:48

He had grown up, he kind of said in his autobiography several times, he had grown up poor, you know, grown up with holes in his pants, no shoes. So he wanted to buy those things. I think part of it was he could always get work in baseball, and I think that's maybe part of why he worked in baseball for so long, was because he needed the money late in life. But um, this guy, Gus Greenley, kind of took him under his under his wing and paid him well. But unfortunately, he kind of uh screwed Gus Greenley over by disappearing and going to play uh in the Dominican Republic while he should have been playing with the Cross. He he he walked out on him by 1936. He was getting paid $600 a month from Greenley. They played in their own stadium that uh Greenley built. It was called Greenlee Stadium or Greenlee Field, and it was the first completely black-owned stadium in the country. And you know, it was a really good deal. I mean, that was the the pinnacle of the Negro Leagues to be on the cross, and he ended up um splitting to go play in the Dominican Republic because um he ended up getting a couple hundred dollars more per game from them. But then he had a gangster after him. Yeah, it was funny because Gus Greenlee seemed to really like him, and he actually uh banned him from baseball. Like he said that uh he would he would ban uh satchel from playing baseball in the U.S. But that never really stuck. And I don't know, Greenley seemed to have uh soft spot for Satchel Page, from what I could tell. That's good for Schel. Very good for Satchel. Um, but anyway, he had he had some adventures in 1937 in the Dominican Republic. In 1938, he actually joined a team in Mexico. It was good money, however, Mexico was the first time he ever actually felt sick. He had some issues with his stomach. As a matter of fact, he called it the miseries. He'd say, I'd got the miseries, and and uh it was pain in his stomach. He had um issue with his arm that he had never felt before. And uh, you know, he was this was 1938, so he was like 31 years old, 32 years old. He wasn't super old, but had been playing pretty hard for a while. He ended up uh going back to Kansas City in 1939, and he was looking for work as a manager or a coach because his arm was so injured, he was having lots of trouble with it. It was basically that summer in 1939 that his basketball kind of returned. He was able to start playing again, and he was able to actually get better by using some ointments that were given to him by uh chiropractor, and also there were some Native Americans that gave him literal snake oil that he would put in his arm and it supposedly helped it feel better. And and uh they told him it was really hot. Satchel did not like being cold. He he you know grew up in Alabama, so when he was in Latin America, he was very happy with the weather. When he played north, he did not like being cold. He wore extra socks to keep his uh calves uh warm. He wore extra shirts, like he wore a tight shirt underneath his t-shirt, underneath his his uniform. He liked to have lots of layers on all the time, and that helped him to keep his throwing arm warm. And he actually felt like that was part of um part of how he was able to throw for so long.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Maybe it was. Um I wonder if they paid him more to when he played in North Dakota, if they had to pay him more, that seems brutal.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

Uh yeah, he also played in Puerto Rico uh 1940, and yeah, he just kind of was all over the place uh doing these these you know, sort of playing for hire, but never with one team for very long. And then in uh 1940, 41, he joined the um he returned to the Travelers, that was the second rate team in Kansas City, and ended up getting advanced to the Kansas City Monarchs. So he was able to move on and play with the Monarchs, which were the bigger team. Um his first season, he won nine games and lost three, um, which was great. So what one other thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is that while the um uh league, the the major league baseball, was actively keeping black people from playing, you know, they weren't allowed, they did have a lot of exhibition games where they would have white players and black players playing together in some cases. In some cases, they would have them playing uh separate, you know, they would have uh uh like meaning on different teams against one another. So he got to play against really famous people like Dizzy Dean, he got to play with uh Joe DiMaggio, he got to play, you know, with with these sort of famous white players before he joined the major leagues because these guys would go out and do these exhibition games.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

Yeah, and I think when one thing those games showed is that uh the level of play was was was equal.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Oh yeah, it was very, very equal. I mean, there were a lot of times when the if it was an all-black team, they would win, and there were a lot of times when the all-white team would win, you know, it was a very much a back and forth. But the all-white teams, the difference was they they consisted of major league baseball players who were supposed to be the best in the world, right? And these black teams would consist of maybe a few stars and then maybe some more um semi-pro level players, you know, and so it it really it really showed that that the level of play that he had in the Negro leagues was as good or better than it was in the major leagues. And the sad thing that he often heard throughout his career, do you know the phrase? Have you heard this phrase that he was often said to him? If only you were white.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

Ugh. That's infuriating to me. That's infuriating to me. It must have just enraged him when he heard that. Um, that's the feeling you get too when you walk through that museum in Kansas City, is just what a damn shame this whole thing was. And then when you get to the end, kind of the end of the museum and it talks about how the Negro leagues uh kind of folded and went away, you don't know how to feel about that because it was a place for but but by then they uh the the major leagues were integrated, so it was no reason to have it anymore, so you didn't know whether to feel happy that they were gone, right? Kind of wistful. It was it's kind of a weird feeling when you get to the end of that museum because you're glad that it there's no such thing, obviously, anymore. But it was such a useful thing for people who clearly had all this talent, all this athletic ability, and um, because of a stupid gentleman's agreement that they weren't allowed to uh play at the highest level.

SPEAKER_00 40:51

Yeah, you're absolutely right. So he he played, I mean, again, so many games, he played hundreds of games every year because he didn't just play, he didn't just play in the summer, he played in the Negro World Series. Um, he played in all these barnstorming games, he played with Jackie Robinson uh on the Kansas City Monarchs from 1943 to 1946. Um, and you know, the 1940s, um, early 1940s, World War II kind of ravaged a lot of the um players on both in major league and in uh the Negro leagues because of the draft, right? So interestingly, uh Satchel's um selective service record shows that when the war started, his draft status was a 1A. Now, 1A means you're available to be drafted, and then it evolved into a 2A, which is deferred in support of national health, safety, or interest, meaning that you know he was a baseball player, I guess he was above getting drafted. I don't know exactly, but he he got a deferment, and then eventually uh his draft um status changed to 4A, which meant he was too old for service. And what's interesting is when he registered, he gave a birthdate that made him two years younger than his actual birth date. And so when they said he was too old, he was really too old. Like they thought he was two years younger. So he never served. He did not serve in the military, but actually, interestingly, he kind of got into a big debate with uh the owners of Black Baseball's most lucrative event, which was the East-West All-Star Game in 1944. Uh, Satchel Page wanted to contribute receipts from the game to a war relief fund. He did visit wounded soldiers. That was something he did, both black and white wounded soldiers, and it's documented that he went to see them and talk to them. Um he kind of was really touched by that, I think. And so he had this idea that they would contribute money to the war relief fund and it from this all-star game. Well, the owners didn't want to do it. They they thought, you know, he was asking for too much. I think he was asking for like $10,000 from the game to be contributed, and that might have been like who knows how much of the box off of that that was. This was a big game, though. Well, what happened is the owners actually kind of ran a smear campaign, uh, and I think it may have been deserved against him that said he was he was or he had received $800 for for participating in the year before's All-Star game, the East West All-Star Game in 1943, where most players had received $50 for that. And so they were saying he was greedy and that you know he should put his money where his mouth was and not just um demand that they give the money to it. But what happened was eventually uh he threatened for the players to go on strike, and they came to an agreement where they would raise every player. Player's salary to $200, and they would um donate some portion, not as much as he wanted, but some portion of the box office from the 44 all East West All-Star Game to the War Relief Fund. So, you know, he kind of, I mean, it was a political statement. It was who who knows what his motivation was, but I'd like to think it was sincere. After in his autobiography, he says he came back from meeting those wounded soldiers with this idea.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

Yeah, and but he was still not making anything close to what he was worth at the time. So I don't blame the guy for trying to give as much as he could.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

Absolutely. And and and you know, again, he was the reason these crowds came out. They they in in in both the books I read, the documentation was that when he came out, the um the crowds were just much bigger, you know, more more people wanted to see him pitch, and he was famous for it. And he kind of he kind of um became famous not only with black audiences, but a lot of white people came out to see him because they had heard about him and heard he was, you know, just a great player regardless of race. And so they wanted to see what it was all about. Um, in 1946 to 47, he went back to barnstorming with Bob Feller. As a matter of fact, uh they had two DC three airplanes where they traveled because they had such a tight deadline. They were trying to do 35 games in 31 cities in 17 states in 27 days. So you know, a lot of it was doubleheaders, and sometimes they were doubleheaders in different cities, like one in one city and one in another. So they had two DC three airplanes, uh, and one was the Bob, one was painted with the Bob Feller All-Stars, and one was painted with the Satchel Page All-Stars, and they competed against each other. Essentially, that was the draw. It was kind of like the generals and the globetrotters, you know, you mentioned that earlier. Um, but Bob Feller and Satchel Page were in business together for this. So so it wasn't like there was rivalry when they played, but they did it to make money, and they both knew they could draw big crowds together, you know. So um that was that was 19 uh 46 and 47, and then finally in 1948, he was given the opportunity by owner Bill Vleek, Vick. Um Bill Vec. Oh, okay. In 1948, he was given the opportunity by owner Bill Vec to try out for the uh Cleveland Indians, and he was 42 years old. He got signed for a contract for $40,000, and that was in fairness, that was just to finish out the season. It was only three months remaining in the season, so he got paid that amount, which was made more than he had ever made before, to finish out the season. Uh he was the first black pitcher in the American League and the seventh black player in the you know in the majors overall.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

Wow, that was 47. 1947?

SPEAKER_00 47:02

1948, 1948.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

And he was born in 1910.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

He was born in, I have to go back and look. I think it was 1908. Oh, yeah, 1908. No, sorry, 1906. No, maybe 1906. Well, no, his birth certificate said 1906, but he did put on his draft card in 1908. So he was 41. Uh yeah, I think they said on his 42nd birthday is when he actually got signed. So coincidentally. And and so, you know, because of that, um, he was the oldest player to be in to join the major league, uh, major league baseball. Yeah, so he did pretty good in 1948 with a six-and-one record and an ERA of 2.48. He kind of uh went downhill in his second uh second year at the uh uh Cleveland Indians, but he did get to play in the World Series, and the Indians did win the World Series while he was on the team, and so that was kind of a and he got to pitch in the World Series, so that was kind of a dream. 5050, right? Uh yes, and so he very much um kind of lived that dream. And after that, he sort of his his playing got not as good. You know, he kind of went downhill. Um, he was part of several other clubs. Um he went back to barnstorming a little bit. Now he did um, as I said, get married in 1934 to a woman named Janet Howard, and that ended up in divorce. Um, basically, you know, she she really wanted a somebody to stay home, and he didn't want to stay home, and so they they didn't last too long, and then he got remarried in 1947 to Lahoma Gene Brown, and they had seven children together, and they stayed together until his death, which was in 1982. He died of a heart attack.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Wow. When you said you listened to his autobiography, he didn't happen to read that. They didn't probably that was too early for the guys to read their own autobiographies.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Yeah, it was read by somebody different.

SPEAKER_01 49:19

Not somebody famous or anything.

SPEAKER_00 49:21

No, I don't think so. I don't think so. Um yeah, it was it was uh it was interesting though, because it was his words, you know, and he had a lot of cool he actually had a lot of cool, cool quotes that he would say, but the the big thing was he was considered controversial because of the stunts he pulled. And the stunts not only included those things where he would have the outfielders come in and sit down in the infield, you know, and basically strike out the batter, or taunting other players, or uh being late for games. He was often late for games, he sometimes didn't even show up for games. He he he he like literally wouldn't show up because he either didn't mean to miss it or just didn't care enough about that game to go go play it. He knew how good he was, right? And I think that in some ways tainted his attitude a little bit, perhaps. Well, there's players today that are like that too, you know. There are he was he was groundbreaking in that way as well. Um, he also um liked to brush back um batters, you know. He was kind of known for that. Another thing is he didn't like to run, he hated running, as a matter of fact. He was very slow to walk up to the mound. He had a chair in the bullpen, like the coach actually gave him a chair to sit in. And later in life, later in his career, it was a very fancy padded chair, like it wasn't an uncomfortable bench. Um, he considered sitting and walking versus running, conserving his energy, and he thought those things actually helped him perform better. You know, is what he said. Yeah, other people saw it as laziness, but he would say his quote was, I never rush myself. See, they can't start the game without me.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Yeah, that's true. That's true. Um he wouldn't like today's game where they have uh a clock to speed up the game. He would hate that.

SPEAKER_00 51:12

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was probably one of those things that he might have been an indirect cause of, right? Over the years. Um, but yeah, I mean, it was one of those things where some people saw him as just uh having his own style, some people saw that as disrespectful, you know, again, moving from team to team, taking the biggest check, not showing up for games. Um he also, as I said before, he had these problems with his stomach sometimes called the miseries, or at least that's what he called it. And he mentions that quite a few times in the book, uh, in the autobiography. Um, which one of the quotes says, If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts. You ever had your stomach dispute you? In Mexico, for sure. Did you know he was in a movie in 1959? No, what movie was that? It was called The Wonderful Country, and it starred Robert Mitchum. It was a cowboy film, and he served as a cavalry sergeant, and he said it was the first non-baseball job he'd ever had. Was it like a cameo a cameo? Yeah, I think it was a cameo. I think it was a cameo. Um, he, you know, he was pretty famous at that point, well known, and and uh got to be in that movie, and then uh in the 1960s, they began pushing for him to be the first Negro League player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He won a selection in 1971, but then it was announced that there would be a segregated part of the um baseball hall of fame. Basically, it would be its own section. Oh my god. People got upset, and uh I just got upset. Well, Sanity, Sanity, I guess, uh rate rose to the surface, and they actually um they actually didn't do a separate section, you know, as they were talking about doing, and they uh built a statue of him in Cooperstown, New York, to to um to honor him. And you know, during his acceptance speech into the baseball hall of fame, he actually said in his battles with racism and philosoph his philosophy on life, he said, Don't look back, someone might be gaining on you.

SPEAKER_01 53:26

Yeah, that's a that's a famous quote.

SPEAKER_00 53:29

Yeah, and so in 1981, there was a uh movie, uh ABC made for television movie starring Lou Gossett Jr. uh called Don't Look Back, the story of uh Leroy Satchel Page. 1962 uh was when his autobiography was uh published. It's called Maybe I'll Pitch Forever, and that's what that was the main source of a lot of this content. Um and then in 2010, there was a book called Satchel, The Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Ty. In 2013, there was a book called If You Were Only White. The Life of Leroy Satchel Page by Donald Spivey. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:11

Well, man, thanks for teaching me about Satchel Page.

SPEAKER_00 54:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:17

Nice job.

SPEAKER_00 54:17

Like I said, my mom's idea, not really my not really my specialty. Um you did great. We should do a baseball podcast together. No. His his uh, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna finish with this. Um, some of the people who proclaimed him to be the best pitcher of all time ever were uh Dizzy Dean, I mentioned him earlier, uh, white player, Bob Feller, another white player, Ted Williams, and of course Joe DiMaggio, all all claim Satchel Page was the greatest pitcher of all time. So yeah, he had fans.

SPEAKER_01 54:53

And the shame of it was that in his prime, um it didn't get to be tested at the highest level. That's a damn shame.

SPEAKER_00 55:01

To play the as well as he did under the duress and the traveling conditions and the racism, they often had to sleep in their cars because they weren't allowed to sleep in hotels. And it was funny because a lot of times people who would want their autographs at the ballpark wouldn't serve them in town, you know, wouldn't serve them a meal later. That was what they put up with. But you know, sports is one of those unifying things between different people of different backgrounds, different races, etc. And I think the fact that he stuck it out for so many years and ended up being a star uh across all the leagues is telling of where we were and where we are today. I'm not saying we're where we need to be, but we're getting better, I hope.

SPEAKER_01 55:42

No, you're right. And it's a great point. Maybe he was in the at the highest level. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 55:47

I hope everybody enjoyed this uh little look at one of the uh not too long residents of Dirt Knap City, Satchel Page. He's only been there since the 80s. Um, and if you're more interested in learning about, or if you're interested in learning more about him, check out those movies and books. Um, I particularly recommend the Maybe I'll pitch forever book from 1962, his autobiography. It's quick, it's easy, it's it's fun. You know, there's a lot of little stories in there that I didn't mention that are just kind of like, did this really happen? But they're fun stories nonetheless.

SPEAKER_01 56:20

And check out that uh museum in Kansas City. It won't disappoint.

SPEAKER_00 56:24

Awesome. All right, Alex, thanks for being on. We'll see you next time. Join us in two weeks for another great episode of what, Alex?

SPEAKER_01 56:33

The uh podcast about interesting dead people.