February 17, 2010 • 23 mins
Born in Alabama in 1906, Satchel Paige rose through the ranks to become one of the most popular baseball players in the Negro Leagues. Tune in as Sarah and Katie explore the career of one of baseball's greatest pitchers.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And the other
day I was on Atlanta's public transit system and I
noticed this guy who's wearing a jacket and it's for
(00:22):
the Negro leagues, the baseball teams. And what specifically caught
my attention was the logo and it said for the
brothers who played but didn't get paid. And we're gonna
be talking about that today. I missed so much by
not writing Marda. This is the second installment in our
series on Black History Month, and today we're going to
(00:43):
be talking about Satchel Page. And when you think of
the Negro leagues and the integration of baseball, you're probably
thinking of Jackie robinsoner at least Sarah and I were.
He was the first to break a sixty year color
line and he went on to be a star, but
he was not that huge star when he wing the
Brooklyn Dodgers in ninety seven. He was young, and he
(01:03):
was chosen for his promise but also for his ability
to withstand the inevitable racial slurs. Yeah, he was a
safe public face for the integration of baseball. The big
star at the Negro leagues at the time was Statchel Page,
and he had been working in these subtle ways to
integrate baseball decades before Robinson was ever signed, and he
(01:26):
played with and against some of the most talented players
in baseball, white and black. He entertained people across the country,
and he eventually earned one of the highest salaries in baseball.
But because of this unspoken segregation of the major leagues,
he doesn't become a big leaguer until he's forty two
years old, which makes him the oldest rookie in history.
(01:48):
So let's get started on this career. Because his prime
seasons were spent before baseball was integrated, we don't have
a bunch of fantastic stats to throw at you, or
we don't of the saber metrics um, but a few
to get us started. He was reputed to have pitched
two thousand, five hundred games during his career. He won
two thousand of them, so think about that for a second.
(02:10):
And he pitched fifty five no hitters by his own estimate,
which is pretty impressive. Insane, absolutely insane. So consequently, some
people call him the best picture in history. And a
bunch of our details, we'd like to say, come from
a Fresh Air interview with author Larry Tie, who wrote
a book called Satchell, The Life and Times of an
(02:31):
American Legend. If you'd like to pick it up, yeah,
So we're gonna start at the beginning. Satchell was born
July seven, nineteen o six, in Mobile, Alabama as Leroy
Robert Page, and his family changed their name to Page
with an Eye in the middle from Page with no
Eye because he said it's made them sound more high toned.
(02:51):
Mom thought it looked too much like a page in
a book. I think so. He's the seventh of twelve kids,
and because his father isn't really a major presence in
their life, the children learn early on that they're going
to be poor and they have to earn what they can.
And Um, just one thing though that he does appreciate
from his father. He gets his approval to be a
(03:11):
baseball player, even as a kid, instead of a landscaper.
This is something that his mom never approves of. No,
she said that she thought baseball was sent in always
plan and never working. Dad. So by the age of nine, Um,
Satchels working at a railway station and he's toting bags
or satchels specifically, so he develops the system of pulleys
(03:35):
and ropes so he can carry multiple bags and make
more money. And his friends tell him that you look
like a walking Satchell tree. So that's how he gets
his nickname. And this is one of my favorite quotes
from Sarah's outline. She says, young Satchel has a knack
for hurling things, and not just baseballs. But it's true.
He could throw a rock or a brick and take
down a chicken or a squirrel at tremendous speeds, and
(03:56):
he can also hit kids. He fights with rival gangs
of kids and um he would psych out his his
opponents by throwing what he later called the hesitation pitch. Basically,
he'd lift his arm and start to pitch and his
opponent would duck, and after they had ducked and they
(04:17):
couldn't move, he'd nail him with the rock or whatever
he was throwing. But in his youth, Satchell turned to
petty crime and was sent to reform school, the Alabama
Reform School for Juvenile Negro lawbreakers, and the school was
set up along the Booker tea model of Negro self help.
So they work hard and they also do athletics, which
(04:38):
is a lot like Babe Ruth. Sarah was telling me
earlier that he also went to reform school and that's
where he learned how to play. Yeah, and this ends
up being a good thing for Satchel. He has a
coach who recognizes his ability and um he leaves the
school with not only athletic prowess, but discipline and baseball skills.
And by nine he pres ends himself to Candy Jim Taylor,
(05:02):
who manages the Mobile Tigers, and uh, there are a
semi pro black team. He gets the job by sending
him ten fastballs and that's it. He's one of them.
How I got my job here at how Stuff Works
a little known story. He joined the Negro leagues in
nineteen twenty six for the Chattanooga Black Lookouts, and he
pitched for a bunch of teams in both the Negro
(05:23):
Southern Association and the Negro National League, um the Birmingham
Black Barons, the Baltimore Black Sox, the Cleveland Cubs, Pittsburgh Crawfords,
Kansas City Monarchs, the New York Black Yankees, and the
Memphis Red Sox. His career really kind of takes off
with the Crawfords. But we're gonna talk a little bit
about what the Negro leagues are all about, because I
don't know. I don't think we knew very much about
(05:45):
them before. No, I definitely didn't. So they're actually professional
black ballplayers as far back as the nineteenth century. But
Rube Foster is the guy who really brings um a
functioning Negro league together in the nineteen twenties, and he
actually dreams of having this black major league that would
play the best of the white big league clubs, and
(06:05):
they come together in a multi racial World Series at
the end of the year, black versus White. And there's
some major financial instability in the league's but by World
War Two, Negro baseball was a two million dollar a
year industry. Journeyman players are making about four hundred dollars
a month, but someone who's a star like Satil Page
(06:27):
could get a thousand dollars a month. But there's a
little more to it than that. Yeah, the black players
are playing a lot of games, like up to a
hundred and fifty games in a season, and they're working
all year pretty much most of them. They're having to
go out in barnstorm, which is something that we're going
to talk about later. But another thing we should mention
is that they're not always going up against other Negro
(06:50):
league teams. You think today major league baseball player plays
other major league teams, right, But the majority of these
guys games are actually against white or non league team,
so they're playing outside of their own league. And Negro
league baseball games were a huge part of the social
life of black Americans at the time. People would dress up,
(07:11):
and the biggest games run Sunday afternoon, so a lot
of people would just go after church. According to Tie,
the men we've mentioned earlier who wrote the book on
Satchel Page, ministers would even let out church early so
you could go. Yeah, and Satchell becomes the star attraction
of these big Sunday matchups. He's always in them. He's
always the feature draw. And he's a real showman too,
(07:33):
in addition to being a great baseball player, and that's
part of the job for a Negro league player. You
have to be showy enough to attract a white audience
as well as a black audience, and to disarm them enough.
So that um, so that they're willing to watch you,
and he was good at it. One offense, little tricks
he'd like to do before the game. He'd set up
(07:54):
some teeny tiny object like a matchbook on the home plate,
and then he'd proceed to throw pitches right over the
place ridiculously fast, pitious, so the fans would go completely
crazy and the opponents would think, what did I get
myself into? You? You can just imagine sitting there watching
this guy warm up basically um. And he also shuffles
(08:14):
his six ft three frame out to the mound. He
knows that the game can't start without him, so he
takes his time and really milks it for everything it's worth.
He's he's funny, but he also is kind of elegant,
and he never crosses a line to degrading himself. He
did have a crazy wind up. Sometimes he did a single,
a double, or a triple windmill before he threw. And
(08:36):
he did this high kick when he sling shots the
ball forward. Um. There are a bunch of pictures off
If you do like a Google image search for Satchel page,
you're probably gonna find this picture of him with his
foot about up to his face. Um, and he names
his pitches too. He calls them bloopers, loopers, and droopers.
He's got a barber pitch. He has a nightmare pitch,
(08:59):
which he says he'd dreamt up in a nightmare. He
has the long tim and the little tom. Uh. It's
funny those catchers say that they're all really the same pitch.
It's he's got a fast pitch, and he has a
really fast pitch, and then later he eventually has a
curve ball. And there were, of course no radar guns,
but he people think he pitched at about a hundred
to a hundred and five miles per hour. So back
(09:21):
to the barn storming we mentioned earlier. Um, he pitched
in these big Sunday matchups, but during the week he
did barnstorming, which was basically playing in any small town
that would pay him. He traveled as many as thirty
thousand miles a year, and sometimes he's going up against
semi proteins, white, black, whatever. Um. Sometimes they're just country
(09:43):
boys who have pulled together their money and they want
to play against a great baseball player. UM. In the winter,
he goes to the Dominican Republic and to the Mexican
leagues to play, and someone is good as Satchel could
even work out special deals where say he pitched one
inning or three innings for a team UM either black
or white as a guest star. But the crazy thing
(10:05):
here is Satchel pitched every day and pictures don't do that.
I mean, we were thinking about today. You'll see a
picture after you after he's done a few innings with
ice on his shoulder in the locker room, and then
he goes on rest for a while. But this guy
is out there pitching every single day and he just
gets better and better. But the barn storming can be
(10:26):
a little scary, especially in the Jim Crow South, because
I mean, you never know what's going to happen. So
Satchel did have some conditions for when he was barn storming.
There was no game unless he had somewhere to sleep
and eat afterward, which you know fair enough. It's basically
like we're not going to play baseball with you and
then risk getting driven out of town after this, UM
(10:48):
I liked to t I actually called him a quiet
racial pioneer for this, just putting down his foot to
a certain extent. Uh. One thing he would also do
and sometimes this was just to show his own team
or audience how good he really was. But oftentimes it
happened after a racial slur. But he would dismiss his fielders,
like in the middle of a game with loaded bases,
(11:10):
he would dismiss his fielders. And sometimes he'd just bring
in the outfield. Um, so if you if you hit
a ball into the outfield, you'd have an automatic home run,
and they just sit around pretending to play poker with
the infielders. Sometimes he'd bring in all of his fielders,
send them all, you know, off, And he'd do this
against big league people to not just second rate opponents
(11:34):
who was trying to even the playing field a little.
This was against legitimate competitors. I think he proved his point.
But all of this barn storming. Part of it was
exposing white audiences to black players and maybe perhaps making
some of them a little more open minded about the
idea of an integrated league. Yeah, this is definitely paving
(11:57):
the way for the ultimate integration of baseball. He played
in a lot of places where there were practically no
black people at all, like in Bismarck, North Dakota. Yeah,
he actually walks out on a contract to go play
on this white semi pro team in Bismarck. And it's
integrated baseball, a decade before it's integrated in the majors.
And it's almost a test too, you know, like what
(12:19):
does a integrated baseball field look like? And it looks good.
Satchel becomes a big star in Bismarck. After a few games,
you know, he's not ultimately welcome there, but it ends
up working out really well for him. He takes the
team all the way to a regional tournament. As Satchell's
reputation grows, he starts collaborating with some white major leaguers
(12:40):
who are also barn storming. He teams up with Dizzy
Dean for a while because they both know that they'll
make money from people who want to see the greatest
of the great face off, but also from people who
just want to see a race battle. Yeah, and this
of course changes opinions with some white players too. If
you play with someone and you get to know them,
you might come to respect them a little more. And
(13:01):
this happens with Dizzy. He actually says stuff like if
Satchel and nine teens up together, we'd clenched the pennant
by the fourth of July and we could go fishing
until the World Series. So this is a guy who
comes to respect someone who who we didn't ultimately converted.
Good old boy, and these matches proved that Satchel is
just as good as anybody else. He struck out Roger's
(13:22):
hornsby five times in one game. Um, in a nineteen
thirty four game that went into thirteen innings with Dizzy Dean,
he got a one oh victory. Pretty amazing stuff. He
makes a lot of money too, Satchel does. By nineteen forty,
he's making forty thou dollars a year and um, according
to Tie, that's four times what the Yankees were making,
(13:43):
which I thoroughly approve of. Yes, Um, it's exactly what
DiMaggio was making. And it's twice what Ted Williams was making.
And he lives it up too. He's got a closet
just for his shoes, four for his suits. He's got
all these cars, fifteen shotguns and cameras. He's uh, living
the good life here. But he has to work year
(14:06):
round and pitch every single night, and he doesn't get
a winter break. So you know, after barn storming with
these great white players, he sees them go off to
the big leagues, but he can't. So Sarah and I
were saying earlier, how hard would it be to watch
someone like DiMaggio go off to great fame and you're
still stuck where you are. Well, you know, you're just
(14:27):
as good as them, and you should be playing with them.
Would be so frustrating. But the segregation of baseball is
coming to an end. By the War, managers of white
teams are starting to consider bringing in black players. Some
of it is just to show the Red Sox hold
these ridiculous kind of fake tryouts in and we do
love the Red Sox, but this is not a good
(14:48):
period of history for them. But some managers really are
serious about it. By the Brooklyn Dodgers President General manager
Branch Ricky has put into motion the secret plan to
in an African American player, and he of course finds
and signs Jackie Robinson October nine, who at the time
(15:08):
was the first gear short stop for the Kansas City Monarchs.
It's a black team, obviously. Um Robinson spends the forty
six season in the minors before he's promoted to the
Dodgers in n So the question here is why wasn't
it Satchell who was the huge star who broke the
color barrier? What? There are a few reasons to start.
(15:29):
He was old or on the older side for a
starting baseball player, and the year that Ricky is hunting
for this person, he wasn't having a great year. He
was also expensive, he never would have conceded to starting
in the minors like Jackie did. And he's really unpredictable.
He says these crazy things and puts on these shows,
and he's a bit too much of a loose cannon
(15:52):
for the people who wants someone, you know, who will
be very correct in front of all the cameras. So
Satchel gives a real PC and or when Robinson starts
and he says, you know, they couldn't have picked a
better man than Jackie. But later he does show a
little injury from from this decision, and he says that
he should have been signed first. He was the one
(16:14):
who was seriously integrating baseball even back in the nineteen thirties,
and said that it killed something inside of him not
being picked. And Jackie Robinson wasn't very sympathetic to his
plight in his mind. Satchel was from a different era.
He was unpredictable, he lived to access. He just wasn't
the kind of man that Jackie Robinson wanted to be. Yeah,
(16:34):
and I actually think this is one of the sadder
aspects of the story, and that one of the sadder
sides of segregated baseball is that you should have these
two men on the same side. You know. You imagine
if they played today, it would be a situation where
Jackie Robinson coming up would admire someone like Satual Page
(16:55):
and hope to play within some day. But instead you
just have these guys who are arepably different from each other.
Satchell does end up in the big league, though, he's
signed to the Cleveland Indians in nineteen forty eight by
Bill Back when he's forty two, but he's introduced pretty
slowly and carefully since he is old and people are
skeptical about him, and people think vac might be just
(17:18):
pulling a publicity stunt. Yeah, he's used as relief six
times before he starts. But when he does start, the
team beats the Washington Senators five to three, which he
follows up with two shutouts, and he helps the Indians
get to the Pennant and they win the series that year,
and Satchell has the second best E r A in
the American League and he gets twelve votes for Rookie
(17:38):
of the Year, which I love that. How could you
not vote for acul year. A year later, though, Bill
Vack loses his controlling interest in the Indians and Satchels
let go UM, but he joins up again with back
later when he buys the St. Louis Browns, who today
they're the Baltimore Orioles. And he's a relief pitcher through
nineteen fifty three and a pretty good one. UM. He
(18:01):
makes it onto the Major League All Star Team in
fifty two and fifty three UM, and after fifty three
he's released and goes on to play in the minors again.
Barnstorms even appears with the Harlem Globe Trotters as a guest,
but he comes back briefly in n one game with
the Kansas City Athletics, and he really hands it up.
(18:22):
He's got a rocking chair in the bullpen. Nurse is
attending to him just in case, but he pitches three
scoreless innings, which makes him the oldest person to pitch
in the majors at fifty nine. So I think this
is classic Satchel here kind of hamming it up, but
ultimately he has the goods to back Yeah, you can
back it up. At the end, he calls this game
(18:44):
the end of his hundred year career in baseball, which
I also think is funny. So later he's brought in
briefly as a pitching coach for the Atlanta Braves in
nineteen sixty nine, but the owner of the Braves was
um giving him a favor. Actually, he needed one more
year to qualify for his pensions, so he didn't really
do much. Yeah, and the owner also wanted to draw
(19:05):
up a little support for the Braves. They just moved
to Atlanta, and Satchell's a big name, obviously. Um Satchell's
inducted into the Hall of Fame in nine and this
makes him the first player to make the Hall based
on his Negro League record, And there was some dispute
over this, because you know, Satchell's got a good major
(19:26):
league baseball record, but it's not very long and it's
not the kind of thing that's going to get you
in the Hall of Fame. It's obviously his previous experience
that would qualify him as a great baseball player. But
the Hall initially says, uh, you know, okay, we'll induct
him into the league, but we're going to put him
in a different hall, a different place. And there was
(19:47):
just this huge outcry over it. People do not want
to segregated Hall of Fame after decades of segregated baseball.
Now and when he is inducted in the same everyone
he said it was the proudest moment of his life.
His real dream, though, is to become a manager after
(20:07):
his playing days were over here, and he even says
in his Hall of Fame speech that he's ready. He's
ready to manage, and he probably would have been pretty good.
He had an amazing memory for batting stance, he um
when he was a player. When he was shown pictures
of unidentified players, just chest down, no faces shown, he
(20:27):
could recognize most of them just from just from their
batting stance. But no one takes him up on this
whole manager thing, and so instead he goes on to
other things. He's got seven kids in middle age with
his second wife, so he's got a family to support,
and he tries some other jobs. He runs for public
office and is briefly a deputy sheriff, but again he
(20:48):
knows that pitching is what he's good at. It's what
he's meant to do. Yeah, he just works for anyone
who will hire him. He's still barn storming. And this
is where it gets a little sodder. You know, you
have this increasingly elderly guy who's out there barnstorming, always
on the road. Um. But he did give some famous
advice on how to stay young, and most of it
(21:09):
is just sort of funny, like avoid fried meats which
angry up the blood. Katie and I have actually been
posting these on our on our Twitter page this week. Yes,
if you'd like to find us where it missed in history,
there are a whole bunch of them. But that was
something he didn't even adhere to himself. He would actually
cook catfish on a Coleman stove like in his room,
and when he was finally in the Major League, his
(21:32):
roommate couldn't stand being in the room with him because
of these weird smells and scary cooking apparatus he had.
I think we've all had that experience in the dorms,
at least I did. But he's most famous for his
final tip, which was don't look back, as somebody might
be gaining on you. And Satchel Page does June eight
(21:52):
of heart trouble and emphysema um. But we should wrap
up the Negro leagues too, because that's what star this
whole story, and integration is obviously the beginning of the
end because black fans start focus on black players who
are playing in the major leagues, and the young talented
players like Willie Mays and Hank Aaron sign onto major
(22:14):
league teams. So it's essentially over by ninety but not
officially over until nineteen sixty, although the Indianapolis Clowns with
whom Aaron made his debut, continued barn storming through ninete.
So that brings us to the question that we started
this off with, was Satchel Page the greatest picture in history?
(22:37):
And we have one person who definitely thinks so, and
that's Joe DiMaggio, and he said that Satchel was the
best I've ever faced and the fastest. So I think
we're gonna close it out with Joe's quote there that
if you have an opinion you'd like to send us,
please email us at History Podcast and how stuff works
dot com, and if you'd like to learn a little
(22:58):
bit more about baseball statistics and all that sort of goodness,
search for how saber Metrics works at www dot how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and
be sure to check out the stuff you missed in
History Class blog on the how stuff works dot com
home page.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And the other
day I was on Atlanta's public transit system and I
noticed this guy who's wearing a jacket and it's for
(00:22):
the Negro leagues, the baseball teams. And what specifically caught
my attention was the logo and it said for the
brothers who played but didn't get paid. And we're gonna
be talking about that today. I missed so much by
not writing Marda. This is the second installment in our
series on Black History Month, and today we're going to
(00:43):
be talking about Satchel Page. And when you think of
the Negro leagues and the integration of baseball, you're probably
thinking of Jackie robinsoner at least Sarah and I were.
He was the first to break a sixty year color
line and he went on to be a star, but
he was not that huge star when he wing the
Brooklyn Dodgers in ninety seven. He was young, and he
(01:03):
was chosen for his promise but also for his ability
to withstand the inevitable racial slurs. Yeah, he was a
safe public face for the integration of baseball. The big
star at the Negro leagues at the time was Statchel Page,
and he had been working in these subtle ways to
integrate baseball decades before Robinson was ever signed, and he
(01:26):
played with and against some of the most talented players
in baseball, white and black. He entertained people across the country,
and he eventually earned one of the highest salaries in baseball.
But because of this unspoken segregation of the major leagues,
he doesn't become a big leaguer until he's forty two
years old, which makes him the oldest rookie in history.
(01:48):
So let's get started on this career. Because his prime
seasons were spent before baseball was integrated, we don't have
a bunch of fantastic stats to throw at you, or
we don't of the saber metrics um, but a few
to get us started. He was reputed to have pitched
two thousand, five hundred games during his career. He won
two thousand of them, so think about that for a second.
(02:10):
And he pitched fifty five no hitters by his own estimate,
which is pretty impressive. Insane, absolutely insane. So consequently, some
people call him the best picture in history. And a
bunch of our details, we'd like to say, come from
a Fresh Air interview with author Larry Tie, who wrote
a book called Satchell, The Life and Times of an
(02:31):
American Legend. If you'd like to pick it up, yeah,
So we're gonna start at the beginning. Satchell was born
July seven, nineteen o six, in Mobile, Alabama as Leroy
Robert Page, and his family changed their name to Page
with an Eye in the middle from Page with no
Eye because he said it's made them sound more high toned.
(02:51):
Mom thought it looked too much like a page in
a book. I think so. He's the seventh of twelve kids,
and because his father isn't really a major presence in
their life, the children learn early on that they're going
to be poor and they have to earn what they can.
And Um, just one thing though that he does appreciate
from his father. He gets his approval to be a
(03:11):
baseball player, even as a kid, instead of a landscaper.
This is something that his mom never approves of. No,
she said that she thought baseball was sent in always
plan and never working. Dad. So by the age of nine, Um,
Satchels working at a railway station and he's toting bags
or satchels specifically, so he develops the system of pulleys
(03:35):
and ropes so he can carry multiple bags and make
more money. And his friends tell him that you look
like a walking Satchell tree. So that's how he gets
his nickname. And this is one of my favorite quotes
from Sarah's outline. She says, young Satchel has a knack
for hurling things, and not just baseballs. But it's true.
He could throw a rock or a brick and take
down a chicken or a squirrel at tremendous speeds, and
(03:56):
he can also hit kids. He fights with rival gangs
of kids and um he would psych out his his
opponents by throwing what he later called the hesitation pitch. Basically,
he'd lift his arm and start to pitch and his
opponent would duck, and after they had ducked and they
(04:17):
couldn't move, he'd nail him with the rock or whatever
he was throwing. But in his youth, Satchell turned to
petty crime and was sent to reform school, the Alabama
Reform School for Juvenile Negro lawbreakers, and the school was
set up along the Booker tea model of Negro self help.
So they work hard and they also do athletics, which
(04:38):
is a lot like Babe Ruth. Sarah was telling me
earlier that he also went to reform school and that's
where he learned how to play. Yeah, and this ends
up being a good thing for Satchel. He has a
coach who recognizes his ability and um he leaves the
school with not only athletic prowess, but discipline and baseball skills.
And by nine he pres ends himself to Candy Jim Taylor,
(05:02):
who manages the Mobile Tigers, and uh, there are a
semi pro black team. He gets the job by sending
him ten fastballs and that's it. He's one of them.
How I got my job here at how Stuff Works
a little known story. He joined the Negro leagues in
nineteen twenty six for the Chattanooga Black Lookouts, and he
pitched for a bunch of teams in both the Negro
(05:23):
Southern Association and the Negro National League, um the Birmingham
Black Barons, the Baltimore Black Sox, the Cleveland Cubs, Pittsburgh Crawfords,
Kansas City Monarchs, the New York Black Yankees, and the
Memphis Red Sox. His career really kind of takes off
with the Crawfords. But we're gonna talk a little bit
about what the Negro leagues are all about, because I
don't know. I don't think we knew very much about
(05:45):
them before. No, I definitely didn't. So they're actually professional
black ballplayers as far back as the nineteenth century. But
Rube Foster is the guy who really brings um a
functioning Negro league together in the nineteen twenties, and he
actually dreams of having this black major league that would
play the best of the white big league clubs, and
(06:05):
they come together in a multi racial World Series at
the end of the year, black versus White. And there's
some major financial instability in the league's but by World
War Two, Negro baseball was a two million dollar a
year industry. Journeyman players are making about four hundred dollars
a month, but someone who's a star like Satil Page
(06:27):
could get a thousand dollars a month. But there's a
little more to it than that. Yeah, the black players
are playing a lot of games, like up to a
hundred and fifty games in a season, and they're working
all year pretty much most of them. They're having to
go out in barnstorm, which is something that we're going
to talk about later. But another thing we should mention
is that they're not always going up against other Negro
(06:50):
league teams. You think today major league baseball player plays
other major league teams, right, But the majority of these
guys games are actually against white or non league team,
so they're playing outside of their own league. And Negro
league baseball games were a huge part of the social
life of black Americans at the time. People would dress up,
(07:11):
and the biggest games run Sunday afternoon, so a lot
of people would just go after church. According to Tie,
the men we've mentioned earlier who wrote the book on
Satchel Page, ministers would even let out church early so
you could go. Yeah, and Satchell becomes the star attraction
of these big Sunday matchups. He's always in them. He's
always the feature draw. And he's a real showman too,
(07:33):
in addition to being a great baseball player, and that's
part of the job for a Negro league player. You
have to be showy enough to attract a white audience
as well as a black audience, and to disarm them enough.
So that um, so that they're willing to watch you,
and he was good at it. One offense, little tricks
he'd like to do before the game. He'd set up
(07:54):
some teeny tiny object like a matchbook on the home plate,
and then he'd proceed to throw pitches right over the
place ridiculously fast, pitious, so the fans would go completely
crazy and the opponents would think, what did I get
myself into? You? You can just imagine sitting there watching
this guy warm up basically um. And he also shuffles
(08:14):
his six ft three frame out to the mound. He
knows that the game can't start without him, so he
takes his time and really milks it for everything it's worth.
He's he's funny, but he also is kind of elegant,
and he never crosses a line to degrading himself. He
did have a crazy wind up. Sometimes he did a single,
a double, or a triple windmill before he threw. And
(08:36):
he did this high kick when he sling shots the
ball forward. Um. There are a bunch of pictures off
If you do like a Google image search for Satchel page,
you're probably gonna find this picture of him with his
foot about up to his face. Um, and he names
his pitches too. He calls them bloopers, loopers, and droopers.
He's got a barber pitch. He has a nightmare pitch,
(08:59):
which he says he'd dreamt up in a nightmare. He
has the long tim and the little tom. Uh. It's
funny those catchers say that they're all really the same pitch.
It's he's got a fast pitch, and he has a
really fast pitch, and then later he eventually has a
curve ball. And there were, of course no radar guns,
but he people think he pitched at about a hundred
to a hundred and five miles per hour. So back
(09:21):
to the barn storming we mentioned earlier. Um, he pitched
in these big Sunday matchups, but during the week he
did barnstorming, which was basically playing in any small town
that would pay him. He traveled as many as thirty
thousand miles a year, and sometimes he's going up against
semi proteins, white, black, whatever. Um. Sometimes they're just country
(09:43):
boys who have pulled together their money and they want
to play against a great baseball player. UM. In the winter,
he goes to the Dominican Republic and to the Mexican
leagues to play, and someone is good as Satchel could
even work out special deals where say he pitched one
inning or three innings for a team UM either black
or white as a guest star. But the crazy thing
(10:05):
here is Satchel pitched every day and pictures don't do that.
I mean, we were thinking about today. You'll see a
picture after you after he's done a few innings with
ice on his shoulder in the locker room, and then
he goes on rest for a while. But this guy
is out there pitching every single day and he just
gets better and better. But the barn storming can be
(10:26):
a little scary, especially in the Jim Crow South, because
I mean, you never know what's going to happen. So
Satchel did have some conditions for when he was barn storming.
There was no game unless he had somewhere to sleep
and eat afterward, which you know fair enough. It's basically
like we're not going to play baseball with you and
then risk getting driven out of town after this, UM
(10:48):
I liked to t I actually called him a quiet
racial pioneer for this, just putting down his foot to
a certain extent. Uh. One thing he would also do
and sometimes this was just to show his own team
or audience how good he really was. But oftentimes it
happened after a racial slur. But he would dismiss his fielders,
like in the middle of a game with loaded bases,
(11:10):
he would dismiss his fielders. And sometimes he'd just bring
in the outfield. Um, so if you if you hit
a ball into the outfield, you'd have an automatic home run,
and they just sit around pretending to play poker with
the infielders. Sometimes he'd bring in all of his fielders,
send them all, you know, off, And he'd do this
against big league people to not just second rate opponents
(11:34):
who was trying to even the playing field a little.
This was against legitimate competitors. I think he proved his point.
But all of this barn storming. Part of it was
exposing white audiences to black players and maybe perhaps making
some of them a little more open minded about the
idea of an integrated league. Yeah, this is definitely paving
(11:57):
the way for the ultimate integration of baseball. He played
in a lot of places where there were practically no
black people at all, like in Bismarck, North Dakota. Yeah,
he actually walks out on a contract to go play
on this white semi pro team in Bismarck. And it's
integrated baseball, a decade before it's integrated in the majors.
And it's almost a test too, you know, like what
(12:19):
does a integrated baseball field look like? And it looks good.
Satchel becomes a big star in Bismarck. After a few games,
you know, he's not ultimately welcome there, but it ends
up working out really well for him. He takes the
team all the way to a regional tournament. As Satchell's
reputation grows, he starts collaborating with some white major leaguers
(12:40):
who are also barn storming. He teams up with Dizzy
Dean for a while because they both know that they'll
make money from people who want to see the greatest
of the great face off, but also from people who
just want to see a race battle. Yeah, and this
of course changes opinions with some white players too. If
you play with someone and you get to know them,
you might come to respect them a little more. And
(13:01):
this happens with Dizzy. He actually says stuff like if
Satchel and nine teens up together, we'd clenched the pennant
by the fourth of July and we could go fishing
until the World Series. So this is a guy who
comes to respect someone who who we didn't ultimately converted.
Good old boy, and these matches proved that Satchel is
just as good as anybody else. He struck out Roger's
(13:22):
hornsby five times in one game. Um, in a nineteen
thirty four game that went into thirteen innings with Dizzy Dean,
he got a one oh victory. Pretty amazing stuff. He
makes a lot of money too, Satchel does. By nineteen forty,
he's making forty thou dollars a year and um, according
to Tie, that's four times what the Yankees were making,
(13:43):
which I thoroughly approve of. Yes, Um, it's exactly what
DiMaggio was making. And it's twice what Ted Williams was making.
And he lives it up too. He's got a closet
just for his shoes, four for his suits. He's got
all these cars, fifteen shotguns and cameras. He's uh, living
the good life here. But he has to work year
(14:06):
round and pitch every single night, and he doesn't get
a winter break. So you know, after barn storming with
these great white players, he sees them go off to
the big leagues, but he can't. So Sarah and I
were saying earlier, how hard would it be to watch
someone like DiMaggio go off to great fame and you're
still stuck where you are. Well, you know, you're just
(14:27):
as good as them, and you should be playing with them.
Would be so frustrating. But the segregation of baseball is
coming to an end. By the War, managers of white
teams are starting to consider bringing in black players. Some
of it is just to show the Red Sox hold
these ridiculous kind of fake tryouts in and we do
love the Red Sox, but this is not a good
(14:48):
period of history for them. But some managers really are
serious about it. By the Brooklyn Dodgers President General manager
Branch Ricky has put into motion the secret plan to
in an African American player, and he of course finds
and signs Jackie Robinson October nine, who at the time
(15:08):
was the first gear short stop for the Kansas City Monarchs.
It's a black team, obviously. Um Robinson spends the forty
six season in the minors before he's promoted to the
Dodgers in n So the question here is why wasn't
it Satchell who was the huge star who broke the
color barrier? What? There are a few reasons to start.
(15:29):
He was old or on the older side for a
starting baseball player, and the year that Ricky is hunting
for this person, he wasn't having a great year. He
was also expensive, he never would have conceded to starting
in the minors like Jackie did. And he's really unpredictable.
He says these crazy things and puts on these shows,
and he's a bit too much of a loose cannon
(15:52):
for the people who wants someone, you know, who will
be very correct in front of all the cameras. So
Satchel gives a real PC and or when Robinson starts
and he says, you know, they couldn't have picked a
better man than Jackie. But later he does show a
little injury from from this decision, and he says that
he should have been signed first. He was the one
(16:14):
who was seriously integrating baseball even back in the nineteen thirties,
and said that it killed something inside of him not
being picked. And Jackie Robinson wasn't very sympathetic to his
plight in his mind. Satchel was from a different era.
He was unpredictable, he lived to access. He just wasn't
the kind of man that Jackie Robinson wanted to be. Yeah,
(16:34):
and I actually think this is one of the sadder
aspects of the story, and that one of the sadder
sides of segregated baseball is that you should have these
two men on the same side. You know. You imagine
if they played today, it would be a situation where
Jackie Robinson coming up would admire someone like Satual Page
(16:55):
and hope to play within some day. But instead you
just have these guys who are arepably different from each other.
Satchell does end up in the big league, though, he's
signed to the Cleveland Indians in nineteen forty eight by
Bill Back when he's forty two, but he's introduced pretty
slowly and carefully since he is old and people are
skeptical about him, and people think vac might be just
(17:18):
pulling a publicity stunt. Yeah, he's used as relief six
times before he starts. But when he does start, the
team beats the Washington Senators five to three, which he
follows up with two shutouts, and he helps the Indians
get to the Pennant and they win the series that year,
and Satchell has the second best E r A in
the American League and he gets twelve votes for Rookie
(17:38):
of the Year, which I love that. How could you
not vote for acul year. A year later, though, Bill
Vack loses his controlling interest in the Indians and Satchels
let go UM, but he joins up again with back
later when he buys the St. Louis Browns, who today
they're the Baltimore Orioles. And he's a relief pitcher through
nineteen fifty three and a pretty good one. UM. He
(18:01):
makes it onto the Major League All Star Team in
fifty two and fifty three UM, and after fifty three
he's released and goes on to play in the minors again.
Barnstorms even appears with the Harlem Globe Trotters as a guest,
but he comes back briefly in n one game with
the Kansas City Athletics, and he really hands it up.
(18:22):
He's got a rocking chair in the bullpen. Nurse is
attending to him just in case, but he pitches three
scoreless innings, which makes him the oldest person to pitch
in the majors at fifty nine. So I think this
is classic Satchel here kind of hamming it up, but
ultimately he has the goods to back Yeah, you can
back it up. At the end, he calls this game
(18:44):
the end of his hundred year career in baseball, which
I also think is funny. So later he's brought in
briefly as a pitching coach for the Atlanta Braves in
nineteen sixty nine, but the owner of the Braves was
um giving him a favor. Actually, he needed one more
year to qualify for his pensions, so he didn't really
do much. Yeah, and the owner also wanted to draw
(19:05):
up a little support for the Braves. They just moved
to Atlanta, and Satchell's a big name, obviously. Um Satchell's
inducted into the Hall of Fame in nine and this
makes him the first player to make the Hall based
on his Negro League record, And there was some dispute
over this, because you know, Satchell's got a good major
(19:26):
league baseball record, but it's not very long and it's
not the kind of thing that's going to get you
in the Hall of Fame. It's obviously his previous experience
that would qualify him as a great baseball player. But
the Hall initially says, uh, you know, okay, we'll induct
him into the league, but we're going to put him
in a different hall, a different place. And there was
(19:47):
just this huge outcry over it. People do not want
to segregated Hall of Fame after decades of segregated baseball.
Now and when he is inducted in the same everyone
he said it was the proudest moment of his life.
His real dream, though, is to become a manager after
(20:07):
his playing days were over here, and he even says
in his Hall of Fame speech that he's ready. He's
ready to manage, and he probably would have been pretty good.
He had an amazing memory for batting stance, he um
when he was a player. When he was shown pictures
of unidentified players, just chest down, no faces shown, he
(20:27):
could recognize most of them just from just from their
batting stance. But no one takes him up on this
whole manager thing, and so instead he goes on to
other things. He's got seven kids in middle age with
his second wife, so he's got a family to support,
and he tries some other jobs. He runs for public
office and is briefly a deputy sheriff, but again he
(20:48):
knows that pitching is what he's good at. It's what
he's meant to do. Yeah, he just works for anyone
who will hire him. He's still barn storming. And this
is where it gets a little sodder. You know, you
have this increasingly elderly guy who's out there barnstorming, always
on the road. Um. But he did give some famous
advice on how to stay young, and most of it
(21:09):
is just sort of funny, like avoid fried meats which
angry up the blood. Katie and I have actually been
posting these on our on our Twitter page this week. Yes,
if you'd like to find us where it missed in history,
there are a whole bunch of them. But that was
something he didn't even adhere to himself. He would actually
cook catfish on a Coleman stove like in his room,
and when he was finally in the Major League, his
(21:32):
roommate couldn't stand being in the room with him because
of these weird smells and scary cooking apparatus he had.
I think we've all had that experience in the dorms,
at least I did. But he's most famous for his
final tip, which was don't look back, as somebody might
be gaining on you. And Satchel Page does June eight
(21:52):
of heart trouble and emphysema um. But we should wrap
up the Negro leagues too, because that's what star this
whole story, and integration is obviously the beginning of the
end because black fans start focus on black players who
are playing in the major leagues, and the young talented
players like Willie Mays and Hank Aaron sign onto major
(22:14):
league teams. So it's essentially over by ninety but not
officially over until nineteen sixty, although the Indianapolis Clowns with
whom Aaron made his debut, continued barn storming through ninete.
So that brings us to the question that we started
this off with, was Satchel Page the greatest picture in history?
(22:37):
And we have one person who definitely thinks so, and
that's Joe DiMaggio, and he said that Satchel was the
best I've ever faced and the fastest. So I think
we're gonna close it out with Joe's quote there that
if you have an opinion you'd like to send us,
please email us at History Podcast and how stuff works
dot com, and if you'd like to learn a little
(22:58):
bit more about baseball statistics and all that sort of goodness,
search for how saber Metrics works at www dot how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and
be sure to check out the stuff you missed in
History Class blog on the how stuff works dot com
home page.
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