Satchel Paige

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns's Baseball is a twenty-hour tribute to the sport, broken up into nine "innings," or chapters, and narrated by John Chancellor, joined by testimonials from a diverse group chosen for their love of the game, including former Negro league player Buck O'Neil, editor Daniel Okrent, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Mickey Mantle, comedian Billy Crystal, and sportscaster Bob Costas. It is periodically aired on public television. Burns has referred to his trilogy of films: The Civil War, Baseball, and Jazz, as a trilogy about race in the United States. Baseball contains ongoing commentary on race, especially about the treatment of African-American baseball players before, during, and after Paige's lifetime. The film covers the development of the Negro leagues and the star players emerging from them. It also covers the struggle of blacks to break into the major leagues, overcoming a color barrier that had kept them out for decades. The film shows the heroism of not only Jackie Robinson but such players as Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Hank Aaron, Rube Foster, Curt Flood, Bob Gibson, and Frank Robinson.