The Traveling Pitcher and His Companion Jim Crow

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

I have just finished reading a rather remarkable book by Larry Tye: “Satchel:The Life And Times Of An American Legend.” In one way it is a glorious book, a tribute to a dead black man who Joe DiMaggio described as “the best and fastest pitcher I’ve ever faced.” At the same time it is a vicious portrait of another black man called Jim Crow who still is alive and well in many sections of this country. All one has to do is to look at the Tea Party attendees across the South.

This book is actually a dual biography of a dominating cultural human tragedy and a dominating baseball player who pitched his way to the record books from Bismarck, North Dakota to the Dominican Republic, from Birmingham, Alabama to Guayama, Puerto Rico, from Smalltown USA to the Major League teams of Kansas City and Cleveland. The author claims that Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige was credited with winning over two thousand baseball games in his career. In order to get credit for a win a starting pitcher’s team must be ahead in the score at the end of five innings. That is an incredible total of wins, counting the fact that Satch lost once in a while.

My baseball pitching career lasted about eight years, 1946 to 1954, in amateur, high school, American Legion, and college. Over that time I probably pitched in about 150 games, now thinking that I must have been credited with wins over half the time. Age dims the thought of losses. Satch pitched almost every day. If he pitched every other day it would take him 4000 days just for the wins! That would take eleven years, forgetting about the few times he lost!

I have been interested in Satchel Paige for much of my life, following his career from the time when I was a teenager. I still remember seeing a newspaper photo of a purple Cadillac with gold letters on the side proclaiming “Satchel Paige, The Greatest Baseball Pitcher In The World!”

“And Look Over At God And Say How About That!”

When I was teaching English at Fargo Central High School I tried to get senior boys interested in poetry by using the poem “To Satch” to catch their interest. It also gave me the excuse to talk a little bit about man and baseball. The author ee cummings (he hated punctuation and capitalization) caught the spirit and the ability of Satch in a few short lines:

To Satch

Sometimes I feel like I will NEVER stop
Just go on forever
‘Til one fine mornin’
I’m gonna reach up and grab me a handfulla stars
Swing out my long lean leg
And whip three hot strikes burnin’ down the heavens
And look over at God and say
How about that!

Satch was a long, lean drink of a man, 6 feet 3 inches, who topped the scales at about 140 pounds, with arms that would stick out of any shirt cuff, and his 14-AAA shoes almost stuck in the face of the batter. When I see a picture of the slim Satch, I always think of the comedian Fred Allen’s description of the dancer Ray Bolger: “Ray was so skinny that if he had a stomach ulcer he would have had to carry it in his hand.” Corky and I lived with Jim Crow in the South for three years in the 1950’s while in the Marine Corps, so I used Langston Hughes’s “I, Too” while teaching, a poem that synthesizes black thought in a few lines:

I,Too

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes,
But I laugh and eat well and grow strong.
Tomorrow I’ll be at the table when company comes.
Nobody’ll dare say to me “Eat in the kitchen,” then.
Besides, they’ll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed–
I, too, am America.

Satch was born in Mobile, Alabama on July 7, 1906, the seventh child of a washerwoman in a family of twelve children. He was born in a “shotgun,” a house designed so that a shot fired through the front door in a straight line would go through the back door. Mobile was the center of the slave trade in the South and was the destination of the last slave trade ship from Africa. With its 18,000 blacks Mobile was perhaps the birthplace of Jim Crow, the other subject in Tye’s book. There were enough lynchings and killings in Mobile County that blacks were warned with handwritten messages: “Negroes must be taught that death will always follow attacks on white women. There are plenty of ropes and trees left.”

Satch and his numerous brothers and sisters knew that they had to contribute to the welfare of the family when they reached the age of six. Satch’s father was a sometime gardener who worked flower beds in downtown Mobile for a wage that didn’t feed twelve. At the age of six Satch worked the alleys, picking up bottles that could be sold back to stores. He delivered small chunks of ice during the heat of the summer. When he was as young as eight he worked as a porter in Mobile hotels carrying the bags of wealthy white travelers. He found that if he made a “tree” out of rope and a pole he could carry several bags at one time. At a dime a bag he increased his take about fourfold. Other baggage boys laughed at Satch: “You look like a walking satchel tree!” The name Satchel stuck for the rest of his life.

Satch attended church even less than he did school, which was hardly ever. But at the age of ten on school diamonds he gained the reputation of being one of the best young baseball pitchers around. He also became a thief, stealing bikes, suitcases at hotels, and other items of value. At the age of twelve he went into a five-and-dime and stole brightly colored trinkets and beads from displays. He thought no one was looking, but a security guard hauled him down to the police station. The judge sent him to reform school for six years. Satch explained the theft later: “Unless you’ve gone away with nothing, you don’t know how powerful a lure some new, shiny stuff is.”

Life At Reform School

Actually reform school was like Mayberry for Satch. For the first time in his life he shared a bed with only one other boy. The school provided three relatively good meals a day, all the clothes he could wear, and heated buildings in the winter! Because the reform school was 200 miles from Mobile, Satch’s family never visited him in the six years. Too far, too expensive. He felt abandoned but had many interests. He was such a good singer the authorities made him leader of the choir. He played an instrument and was chosen for the drum and bugle corps.

The school ran a farm to provide food for the institution and Satch worked in every area. He learned to milk cows, pick cotton and other crops, and helped to construct new buildings on campus. During half the year all the boys and girls had to attend classes in ciphering, reading, and other elementary school subjects. Since he couldn’t play hooky in reform school, he actually learned a great deal for the first time in his life. He learned how to talk to girls like Minnie Young and Ida Sanderson. And he learned the game of baseball from a coach.

Traveling The Countless Fields Of Dreams

To cover Satch’s baseball career thoroughly would take thousands of pages. Suffice it to say that he pitched games all over the known baseball world at every possible level of expertise. At one time he was the highest paid pitcher in the world–and he had never pitched an inning in the Major Leagues! He pitched his first game in the majors at the age of 42 for the Cleveland Indians and his last game in the majors at age 60 for the Kansas City Athletics.

In the fall of 1934, Satch and Dizzy Dean of the St. Louis Cardinals (who won 30 games that year) pitched a number of exhibition games against each other. In Los Angeles that year Dizzy and Satch pitched what was then called by Bill Veeck “the greatest pitcher’s battle I have ever seen.” The two battled for thirteen innings with Satch finally winning 1-0. Later, Dean, writing for the Chicago Tribune, wrote that Satch had “the greatest stuff I ever saw.” Satch, ever the great publicist, came up with 16 names for his various pitches.To name a few: The Two Hump Blooper, The Smokeball, The Aspirin, Bat Dodger, The Barber, The Midnight Creeper. Chicago Cubs broadcaster Jack Brickhouse said: “Paige threw a lot of pitches that were not quite “legal” and not quite “illegal.”

Although Satch pitched only 59 games at the major league level he was the first player from the Negro Leagues to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. He was also twice elected to the Major League All-Star teams.

Jim Crow Is Still Alive And Well

Satch was on the road constantly for about 60 years, so he probably endured more Jim Crow than any other person in the United States. Black players, weaned on Jim Crow in the South, quickly learned all kinds of survival techniques. They had to know what road or street they could travel, what hotel they could stay at, where they could park and sleep if no hotel would accept them, what restaurant would serve them, where they could buy groceries, where the “colored” water fountains were, where they could shower, and when the last lynching occurred in the town.
In the 1930’s, as an example, the black Chicago American Giants pulled into Lumberton, Mississippi and one player went into a confectionary to buy a quart of ice cream. The player didn’t take his cap off, so the white clerk yelled: “Hey, nigger, you better take your cap off.” Before he could take it off a Coke bottle shattered above his head and he was drenched with Coke. Then three whites in attendance “escorted” the black player back to the team bus.

Monte Irvin, a black who finally made the Majors and the Hall of Fame, was always angry when he thought of the time his all-black Newark Eagles stopped in Birmingham, Alabama to see if they could all get a drink of cold water. They were sent around to the back of the restaurant where they could use a pump and gourd. They all took a drink. Then, in full view of the entire team, the owner smashed the gourd. The book has a great number of Jim Crow incidents to remind us “it ain’t over til it’s over.”

Satch generally waxed philosophical about these incidents, but when he could take advantage of whites he did so with a wide grin. Often invited to events to receive awards for pitching, he always asked for expenses if the event was scheduled by whites. He would then charge very expensive items to his hotel room, including the best booze and the best suits!

He always had great advice for players and fans alike. I love the advice he had for young pitchers: “Just take the ball and throw it where you want to. Throw strikes. Home plate don’t move.”

I also love the advice he had for everyone: “Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watchin’.”

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