Just a few days after his twelfth birthday, the kid got sent up to reform school because all too often things that were there a minute-or-so ago were gone once the door closed behind him, if you know what I mean. So Satchell Paige had a record when he was eighteen years old, before he'd pitched at all; but in reform school the good Lord blessed him with a coach and a teacher, Rev. Moses Davis, who that same good Lord conscripted to teach Satchell Paige (his father stuck that i in their last name to get a little uppity) to be a chucker.
Seriously, all he'd ever played before the Alabama Reform School for Juvenile Law-Breakers, the honest-to-God name of the place, was a silly game with sticks and bottle caps. Preacher Davis taught baseball as if he were teaching those boys how to breathe, made a team of 'em, if you can believe it, even got a local store to kick in fancy shirts.
That Reform School was in a place called Mount Meggs, Alabama, I mean the place Rev. Moses Davis taught his very special student everything he knew. "I traded five years of freedom to learn how to pitch," he used to say. "At least I started my real learning on the Mount."
The truth? Satchel Paige was not to be believed. When he was touring with an all-black cast of fielders behind him, there were times Paige smiled at 'em and told 'em all to just sit down and take life easy while he turned batters into window fans. Sometimes he'd bet locals he'd strike out the first nine hitters, then proceed to do just that and walk away a winner.
The mythology is endless. On April 29 he struck out 17 Cuban Stars; six days later, eighteen Nashville Elite Giants went down to that blind-man fastball. Things were a little loosie-goosy back then in the Negro leagues, so teams would come knocking to rent Satchel out, because it didn't take long for fans to come out to the ball park just to see this chucker pitch.
His arm had nuclear power. Hack Wilson told reporters that Satchel Paige was so fast the ball looked like a pill when it got to the plate. Bob Feller, the famous Bob Feller, from Van Meter, Iowa, said Satchel Paige was so fast he made Feller's own fastball look like a change-up.
A scout from the Chattanooga White Sox of the Southern Negro Baseball League spotted him in 1926, when he was somewhere between 26 or 34, depending on when he told you he was born. Fans knew right away that Paige was a phenom, a globetrotter before there was a team: eventually he played in Cuba, in Mexico, in the Dominican, and throughout the States, New York to LA. When he was 42 years old--best estimate at least--Satchel Paige signed his very first major league contract. The Cleveland Indians put him on the field for two innings, the oldest rookie ever to tie up his spikes in what had been the white majors.
On June 8, 1982, 80 years old, give or take a few, Satchel Paige, in his home in Kansas City, died of a heart attack. He's buried right there, in the city where, in 1920, the Negro Baseball League was charted, drawn up in an YMCA just up the block from 14th and Vine and the National Negro League Baseball Museum.
Go ahead and visit, say hello to old Satch. You'll find him there--well, a statue of him anyway. He's on the mound in a little ball park in the middle of the museum, surrounded by all-stars, every one, guys like Josh Gibson, a burly catcher who once hit a ball out of Yankee Stadium with only one arm. Get this! Some folks watched Babe Ruth hit, shook their heads, and said, "Oh, my, there goes a white Josh Gibson."
Stop by sometime, the museum is anything but a graveyard. You'll see that odd duck wind up and watch him deliver fast balls. You'll read about dozens of ball players who came out of an impossibly segregated world to become Jackie Robinson and Henry Aaron and change the course of American history in the process.
You ought to visit. It's not that far. The place--I swear--will make you smile.
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