Pitching Forever

I first read about Satchel Paige when I was in the 10th grade.  Through the Scholastic book club, I bought a paperback copy of his autobiography aptly called Maybe I'll Pitch Forever.  I'd heard of Paige because a kid in my neighborhood once traded with me some baseball cards from the early 50s and I recall a Satchel Paige card when he was with the St. Louis Browns.  Wish I had that card now, but that's for another time.

Paige was a legendary player from the Negro Leagues when apartheid in America was called Jim Crow and athletes with promise and potential had to play in separate leagues that somehow managed to fund their existence from year to year despite all the obstacles against that.
Paige was always the stuff of folklore.  Stories abound about the speed of his fastball, the "hesitation" pitch he used to fool some of the game's greatest hitters, and the times he called his outfield in after they committed too many errors and then proceeded to strike out the side.
Now there is a new biography simply titled Satchel by Larry Tye.  Impeccably researched, this current volume puts the era and the man in perspective.  For those that appreciate the game of baseball and have wondered about the mythology surrounding Satchel Paige, this read is a must.
If anything, Satchel was a barnstormer.  His reputation for jumping contracts that would tie him down to one place and one pay rate was the true forerunner of free agency.  He simply did not want to be owned by one team or one owner.  Because the media was so different back in the 1930s, Paige was seldom covered by the mainstream press.  Ultimately his ability to draw crowds, especially hen barnstorming against teams of white major leaguers, led to his discovery.

Paige was no Jackie Robinson.  In fact, he was in his 40s when Jackie first broke the color line.  The mystery of Satchel's feats and his demeanor which could be Stepin Fetchit like did not make him the ideal choice to integrate baseball.  Sure, his chance came...eventually, but by that time the saga continued with the addition of a rocking chair in the Cleveland Indians bullpen for "Satch" to rest his aging body.  When I see these multi-million dollar contracts that today's ballplayers command, I can't help but think of the times that the front door was taboo and they were often forced to sleep in their vehicles.  Our history, while often painful, must be preserved to get an accurate picture of who we are and where we've come from.
Today, we have a person in the White House who continually defends his ideas and intelligence, yet shows no knowledge of historical perspective.  As I recall, he had trouble discerning if Frederick Douglass was still alive or not.  One would think that the unbiased, factual history of our country would be imperative in our curriculum.  I know it was always in the material I taught.  But then one has only to look at the current Secretary of Education to realize that won't happen anytime soon.  I'd love to see Larry Tye's book Satchel placed on the national reading list.  It's time.