Satchel Paige was forty-two years old in 1948 when he became the first black pitcher in the American League. Although the oldest rookie around, he was already a legend. For twenty-two years, beginning in 1926, Paige dazzled throngs with his performance in the Negro Baseball Leagues. Then he outlasted everyone by playing professional baseball, in and out of the majors, until 1965. Struggle—against early poverty and racial discrimination—was part of Paige's story. So was fast living and a humorous point of view. His immortal advice was "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The superbly researched, spellbindingly told story of athlete, showman, philosopher, and boundary breaker Leroy “Satchel” Paige “Among the rare biographies of an athlete that transcend sports . . . gives us the man as well as the myth.”—The Boston Globe Few reliable records or news reports survive about players in the Negro Leagues. Through dogged detective work, award-winning author and journalist Larry Tye has tracked down the truth about this majestic and enigmatic pitcher, interviewing more than two hundred Negro Leaguers and Major Leaguers, talking to family and friends who had never told their stories before, and retracing Paige’s steps across the continent. Here is the stirring account of the child born to an Alabama washerwoman with twelve young mouths to feed, the boy who earned the nickname “Satchel” from his enterprising work as a railroad porter, the young man who took up baseball on the streets and in reform school, inventing his trademark hesitation pitch while throwing bricks at rival gang members. Tye shows Paige barnstorming across America and growing into the superstar hurler of the Negro Leagues, a marvel who set records so eye-popping they seemed like misprints, spent as much money as he made, and left tickets for “Mrs. Paige” that were picked up by a different woman at each game. In unprecedented detail, Tye reveals how Paige, hurt and angry when Jackie Robinson beat him to the Majors, emerged at the age of forty-two to help propel the Cleveland Indians to the World Series. He threw his last pitch from a big-league mound at an improbable fifty-nine. (“Age is a case of mind over matter,” he said. “If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.”) More than a fascinating account of a baseball odyssey, Satchel rewrites our history of the integration of the sport, with Satchel Paige in a starring role. This is a powerful portrait of an American hero who employed a shuffling stereotype to disarm critics and racists, floated comical legends about himself–including about his own age–to deflect inquiry and remain elusive, and in the process methodically built his own myth. “Don’t look back,” he famously said. “Something might be gaining on you.” Separating the truth from the legend, Satchel is a remarkable accomplishment, as large as this larger-than-life man.
Some say Satchel Paige was the greatest pitcher ever—and and certainly his dazzling record of perhaps as many as 2,000 wins, first in the Negro Leagues and then in the integrated major leagues, ranks as one of the most remarkable athletic feats of the century. He also became famous for the advice he freely offered others, including the now legendary "Don't look back, something might be gaining on you." Mark Ribowsky gives the best picture yet of life in the Negro Leagues as he brings to life a man whose act as a lovable eccentric with a golden arm masked a decidedly darker side as womanizer, hard drinker, and contract jumper always on the lookout for number one.
The first autobiography by Leroy “Satchel” Paige, one of the best and most colorful pitchers in the history of professional baseball. Based on interviews conducted by Cleveland sports writer Hal Lebovitz, this book was first released shortly after Paige joined the Indians in 1948 (days after his 42nd birthday and after 22 years playing with various Negro League, minor league and Puerto Rican League teams). Told in a casual first-person style, Paige's stories provide a snapshot from a bygone era of Major League baseball. Paige tells how he began his pitching career by throwing rocks (”We had a pretty rough gang down on the South Side of Mobile, near the Bay, where I was born and raised”). He describes his early years in baseball, starting at age 17 with the Chattanooga Black Lookouts in 1926, and addresses the controversy over varying claims about his age and the source of his nickname. He talks about ballplayers he had known, in particular Josh Gibson (”the best of all”) of the Pittsburgh Crawfords and Homestead Grays, and Bob Feller (with whom Paige barnstormed years before joining the Indians). Includes a foreword by Indians owner Bill Veeck and a note from Indians player-manager Lou Boudreau. With Paige's help, the Indians went on to win the 1948 World Series.
The Negro baseball leagues were a thriving sporting and cultural institution for African Americans from their founding in 1920 until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. Rogosin's narrative pulls the veil off these "invisible men" and gives us a glorious chapter in American history.
An inside baseball memoir from the game’s first superstar, with a foreword by Chad Harbach Christy Mathewson was one of the most dominant pitchers ever to play baseball. Posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame as one of the “Five Immortals,” he was an unstoppable force on the mound, winning at least twenty-two games for twelve straight seasons and pitching three complete-game shutouts in the 1905 World Series. Pitching in a Pinch, his witty and digestible book of baseball insights, stories, and wisdom, was first published over a hundred years ago and presents readers with Mathewson’s plainspoken perspective on the diamond of yore—on the players, the chances they took, the jinxes they believed in, and, most of all, their love of the game. Baseball fans will love to read first-hand accounts of the infamous Merkle’s Boner incident, Giants manager John McGraw, and the unstoppable Johnny Evers and to learn how much—and just how little—has really changed in a hundred years. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Selected as one of baseball literature's Golden Dozen by Roger Kahn, Man on Spikes is an uncompromisingly realistic novel about a baseball player who struggles through sixteen years of personal crises and professional ordeals before finally appearing in a major league game. In a preface to this new edition, Eliot Asinof reveals the longsuffering ballplayer and friend upon which the novel is based.
Looks at the history of the greatest performances by pitchers in the history of baseball including perfect games, near-misses, no-hitters, and the 20-strikeout games, highlighting such pitchers as Johnny Vander Meer, Nolan Ryan, and Roger Clemens.
The ï¬?rst full biography of the star Negro Leaguer and Hall of Famer James “Cool Papa” Bell (1903–1991) was a legend in black baseball, a lightning fast switch hitter elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. Bell’s speed was extraordinary; as Satchel Paige famously quipped, he was so fast he could flip a light switch and be in bed before the room got dark. In The Bona Fide Legend of Cool Papa Bell, experienced baseball writer and historian Lonnie Wheeler recounts the life of this extraordinary player, a key member of some of the greatest Negro League teams in history. Born to sharecroppers in Mississippi, Bell was part of the Great Migration, and in St. Louis, baseball saved Bell from a life working in slaughterhouses. Wheeler charts Bell’s ups and downs in life and in baseball, in the United States, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico, where he went to escape American racism and MLB’s color line. Rich in context and suffused in myth, this is a treat for fans of baseball history.
