A portrait of the Negro League pitcher and pioneer in the integration of baseball evaluates the role of discrimination in limiting his career, the Jim Crow biases that prevented his signing with the big leagues until he was in his forties, and his lasting legacy.
A portrait of the Negro League pitcher evaluates the role of discrimination in limiting his career, covering such topics as his near-defeat of a young Joe DiMaggio, the Jim Crow biases that prevented his signing with the big leagues until he was in his forties, and his lasting legacy.
The definitive biography of Satchel Paige, an all-American story of struggle and triumph about the greatest pitcher to ever throw a baseball
In his hometown streets of Mobile, Alabama, Satchel Paige fired rocks with enough power and precision to bring down a bird or a rival gang member. In the Negro Leagues he fine-tuned a pitch so fast that catchers complained it set their mitts on fire. After a young Joe DiMaggio managed a scratch single off of him, a Yankees scout wired his bosses, “DiMaggio all we hoped he’d be. Hit Satch one for four.”
But racial discrimination kept the Yankees and every other big league team from signing Paige until he was forty-two—when he was voted Rookie of the Year. While many dismissed him as a Stepin Fetchit if not an Uncle Tom, this book makes clear that Paige was something else entirely—a quiet subversive, defying Uncle Tom and Jim Crow. He pitched so spectacularly that white writers and fans turned out to watch black baseball. He drew the spotlight first to himself, then to his all-black Kansas City Monarchs, and inevitably to the Monarchs’s rookie second baseman Jackie Robinson.
In the process, Satchel, even more than Jackie, opened the door for African Americans to the national pastime and forever changed his sport and this nation.
