Satchel Paige Biography

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.