Satchel Paige Biography - Growing Up, Chronology, Awards And Accomplishments, Played In The Negro Leagues, In The Big Leagues - SELECTED WRITINGS BY PAIGE:
baseball player american major
1906-1982
American baseball player
Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige, one of the game's true natural talents, was an African-American man living during the height of the Jim Crow days in a South where the color-barrier was thick and seemingly insurmountable. Yet in spite of the odds, Paige transcended place, time, and sport, and became one of the greatest players baseball has ever seen. The first black pitcher to play in the major leagues, the oldest major league rookie, and a man who pitched—and won—more games than any other baseball player in history, many of Paige's accomplishments stand on their own. But many of his feats exist as part of the mythology that preceded him in life, and now—since his death from a heart attack in 1982—follow Paige's legend wherever it goes. As Mark Ribowsky noted in his 1994 book Don't Look Back: Satchel Paige in the Shadows of Baseball: "If Paige hadn't existed, someone in art or literature would have invented him…. Wherever [he] went, somethingimportant happened in the evolution of baseball."
SELECTED WRITINGS BY PAIGE:
(With Hal Lebovitz) Pitchin'Man. Meckler Publishing, 1992.
(As told to David Lipman) Maybe I'll Pitch Forever. University of Nebraska Press, 1993.
Additional Topics
Leroy Robert Paige was born on July 7, 1906, in Mobile, Alabama, the third son and seventh child in a family that would eventually run to 12 children. Born to Robert and Lula Paige, Satchel came into the world in the back room of a rundown shack he would later describe as a "shotgun shack"—meaning, he said, that if someone were to shoot a shotgun through the front door, it wou…
The Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, Alabama, provided Paige with the education he'd been lacking and gave him his first true introduction to baseball. Initially a first basemen, he soon became the starting pitcher. That same Willie Hines—the one who'd witnessed Satchel's dead-on accuracy when he'd thrown rocks and bricks back in Mobile—…
In 1946, the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson to play in the majors, at long last breaking the color barrier. Other teams soon followed suit and two years later, Bill Veeck, the owner of the Cleveland Indians, signed Satchel Paige to a contract. He was 42 years old, and many critics believed this was a publicity stunt designed by Veeck to bring more fans into the stadium. Documentary filmma…
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 …
Satchel Paige was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971. Today, Paige's plaque sits alongside the other great major leaguers who grace the halls in Cooperstown. Though he never played major league ball in his prime, Paige will stand in his rightful place forever as one of the greats. "Baseball turned Paige from a second-class citizen to a second-class immortal,…
Cline-Ransome, Lesa and James Ransome (Illus.). Satchel Paige. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Contemporary Black Biography, Vol. 7. Detroit, MI: Gale, 1998. Costas, Bob, and Sterry and Eckstut, eds. Satchel Sez: The Wit, Wisdom, and World of Leroy 'Satchel'Paige. New York: Crown, 2001. Holway, John. Josh and Satch: The Life and Times of Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige. Westpo…
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