Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend »

Larry Tye was a prize-winning journalist at The Boston Globe and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. An avid baseball fan, Tye now runs a Boston-based training program for medical journalists. He is the author of The Father of Spin, Home Lands, and Rising from the Rails and co-author, with Kitty Dukakis, of Shock. He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.

The definitive biography of Satchel Paige, an all-American story of struggle and triumph about the greatest pitcher to ever throw a baseball

In his hometown streets of Mobile, Alabama, Satchel Paige fired rocks with enough power and precision to bring down a bird or a rival gang member. In the Negro Leagues he fine-tuned a pitch so fast that catchers complained it set their mitts on fire. After a young Joe DiMaggio managed a scratch single off of him, a Yankees scout wired his bosses, DiMaggio all we hoped he d be. Hit Satch one for four.

But racial discrimination kept the Yankees and every other big league team from signing Paige until he was forty-two when he was voted Rookie of the Year. While many dismissed him as a Stepin Fetchit if not an Uncle Tom, this book makes clear that Paige was something else entirely a quiet subversive, defying Uncle Tom and Jim Crow. He pitched so spectacularly that white writers and fans turned...

The Barnes & Noble Review

I want to be "the onliest man in the United States that nobody knows nothin' about," declared Satchel Paige; and to that end he dished out a variety of dates and places of birth, explanations of his nickname, and statements concerning his family, his marital status, and his wealth. Over time, reporters and historians have nailed down the facts in most of these matters; but it is in a larger respect that Satchel Paige remains an insoluble mystery. That is in the particulars that make up baseball's enduring reality: statistics. According to Paige, he played for 250 different teams -- a statement that, like most coming from this great fabulist, may or may not be true; but, in this case, it is certainly possible. In addition to having played under contract for countless teams -- semipro, major and minor Negro leagues, winter and Latin leagues, and eventually the integrated majors and Triple-A -- Paige freelanced, barnstormed, and was rented out throughout his entire career, a picaresque series of escapades and ordeals running from his debut as a semi-pro in 1924 to his three-inning swan song for the Kansas City Athletics in 1965.

Preface vii

Chronology xv

Author's Note xvii

l Coming Alive 3

2 Blackball 26

3 The Glory Trail 53

4 The Game in Black and White 77

5 South of the Border 108

6 Kansas City, Here I Come 136

7 Master of the Manor 158

8 Baseball's Great Experiment 180

9 An Opening at Last 204

10 Crafting a Legend 11

11 Maybe I'll Pitch Forever 267

Acknowledgments 299

Appendix: Satchel by the Numbers 301

Notes 305

Bibliography 343

Index 379