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Summary
Summary
He is that rare American icon who has never been captured in a biography worthy of him. Now, at last, here is the superbly researched, spellbindingly told story of athlete, showman, philosopher, and boundary breaker Leroy "Satchel" Paige. 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.
Author Notes
Larry Tye is a medical writer at The Boston Globe where he has won numerous awards for his work. He has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and is the author of The Father of Spin, a biography of public relations pioneer Edward L. Bernays. His latest biography is called Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend.
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Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Tye, a Boston Globe reporter and author of The Father of Spin, offers the first biography on Satchel Paige, the premier pitcher of the Negro Leagues. Having interviewed more than 200 veteran fellow players of the Negro and Major Leagues, he is able to flesh out the Satchel Paige persona. Through Paige's hardscrabble years in Jim Crow Alabama to his time with the all-black Monarchs, one of the powerhouses in segregated "colored" ball, Tye dissects Satchel's mastery of pitching, his accuracy, power and velocity, and signature pitch, the sizzler. Satchel was among the peerless Negro Leaguers, who beat the white big leaguers more than 60% of the time; he struck out some of the biggest sluggers, like Ralph Kiner, Rogers Hornsby and even Joe DiMaggio, who got one hit off of Satchel and was signed by the Yankees immediately. He became one of four black athletes signed up in the late 1940s, with the Cleveland Indians, three years after Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers (the two men were bitter rivals). This is the definitive biography of a black showman-athlete, and as Tye makes the case, one of the finest pitchers ever, who finally was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
It would be hard to write a better account of the life and times of Satchel Paige than Mark Ribowsky's Don't Look Back (1994). Larry Tye's Satchel might be better researched his thorough account of Paige's Major League debut at age 42 with Bill Veeck's 1948 Cleveland Indians is one example but Ribowsky's book is a better read, and it also makes a stronger case for Paige as the cultural phenomenon he was. Still, Tye details the pitcher's impoverished childhood, his early athletic prowess, and the circuitous, even tragic (though financially rewarding) career path Paige was forced to take in the absence of the Major League contract he deserved from the beginning. And Tye doesn't sugarcoat the damage Paige's fame and fortune wreaked upon his loved ones, not to mention upon himself. A supplement, but only that, to the still-definitive Ribowsky biography.--Moores, Alan Copyright 2009 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IF I could travel back in time and watch any baseball player in his prime, I'd have to pick Satchel Paige, who was quite possibly the greatest pitcher ever. Leroy Robert Paige (1906-82) is one of those fascinating, complicated characters who might have been invented by a novelist if they hadn't been real. He was "a fastball wrapped in a riddle," to use a phrase employed by Larry Tye, author of a new biography, "Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend." The riddle is a vital part of the Paige legacy. Though he made his mark as a Negro league pitcher of breathtaking skill in the 1920s and '30s, during the days of segregation, he continued pitching in the major leagues, on the barnstorming circuit and anywhere else that people would pay him to appear, into the 1960s. Over and over again through those years, he told his own story, piling one exaggeration atop another until the myth hardened to something firm enough to pass for truth. By the end of his Hall of Fame career, young fans could only wonder what kind of gargantuan talent had inspired such a legend. One handed-down story said he would routinely order his outfielders to abandon their positions or have them sit idly in the grass while he struck out - and thoroughly humiliated - opposing batters. Another piece of folklore said his fastball was so zippy it disappeared in flight, his control so precise he could knock the ash off a teammate's cigarette with a pitched ball. In yet another tale, Paige supposedly entered a game in relief with a spare baseball stashed in his pocket, went into his windup and, somehow, managed to pick off two base runners and strike out the man at the plate before anyone figured out what had happened. Talk about your 1-2-3 innings! As one of the great showmen in American history, Paige understood that the best stories were meant to be enjoyed, not necessarily believed. Having spent most of his career in the Negro leagues, he had to sell, sell, sell, and he did that at least as well as he pitched. As a result, he became the greatest and most lasting symbol of black baseball in America, as much a hero as Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio or Jackie Robinson. Satchel Paige, playing with the New York Black Yankees, at Yankee Stadium with the Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1941. In many ways, Paige was ahead of his time, as Tye nicely demonstrates in this engaging and insightful but uneven book. Like modern athletes, Paige jumped from team to team, slipping out of contracts as necessary, showing scant loyalty to anything but the dollar (or peso, in some instances). Also, like many of today's athletes, he was self-centered and boorish. He neglected his mother, cheated on his wives, abandoned his teammates and abused his fans by failing to show up for ballgames. He became famous for the expression "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you." Some people thought Paige was referring to age gaining on him, as he continued pitching with surprising skill into his 40s and even 50s. But in his case, it was probably an ex-girlfriend or a bill collector he was most worried about. All of this makes Paige a tricky subject for a biographer. In literature as in life, he's tough to hit. Paige claimed he pitched more than 2,500 games and won about 2,000 of them, including 250 shutouts. But statistics for black baseball are unreliable, as Tye notes. "Imagine trying to tell Lou Gehrig's story, or Mickey Mantle's," he writes, "based primarily on their memories and stories passed down." Tye, the author of several books and formerly a journalist at The Boston Globe, interviewed many of the men who played with Paige and uses those interviews to supply this story with some of the cold, hard facts missing from the pitcher's own accounts of his adventurous life. Tye evokes the wretched poverty and secondclass-citizen status endured even by the stars of the Negro leagues. He portrays the mixture of frustration and pride felt by Paige and so many other black players when Jackie Robinson - a college athlete who played only briefly in the Negro leagues - was chosen to break the major league color barrier. And he keenly describes the bittersweet demise of the Negro leagues, which occurred as a result of Robinson's success. "If Jackie Robinson was the father of equal opportunity in baseball," Tye writes, "surely Satchel Paige was the grandfather." Yet while his analysis is sharp, Tye's writing sometimes falters. "The fledgling fireballer mowed down batters like tenpins at a bowling alley," he writes at one point. He is susceptible to the cliché. He writes of "a fire in Satchel's belly," batters "crossing swords" with the pitcher and Paige "pitching his heart out" to keep an "upstart Philadelphia fireballer from stealing his spurs." At times he falls for some of the same hyperbole that marked Paige's own writing. Tye states, for example, that Paige's best friend on the Pittsburgh Crawfords was the slugger Josh Gibson. Yet there are few details to support the assertion. If there was a strong bond between the two, I would like to have read more about it, because Paige emerges in this book as almost entirely friendless and not all that likable. Tye's publisher is promoting this book as the first biography of Paige that is "worthy of him." The claim is not only inaccurate but also unfair to Mark Ribowsky, whose fine biography "Don't Look Back: Satchel Paige in the Shadows of Baseball" was published in 1994. Tye's book is better organized and more meticulously researched, but Ribowsky's has more soul. When Ribowsky calls Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige the Charlie Parker and Miles Davis of baseball, he gets it just right. Demons destroyed Gibson, who died at 35, but Paige was too ornery, too slippery, to be beaten down. Like Miles, and like so many of the great jazz and blues musicians who were Paige's contemporaries, he not only survived but found a way to put the demons to work in the service of his art. Satchel Paige's life was one of America's great improvisations. The demons chased him all the way - and no doubt gained on him from time to time. But even at the end, as the pitcher shows the ravages of age and the bitterness of a hard life, Tye keeps his subject - and his readers - at an emotional distance. "It happens to lots of leading men as they fade into supporting roles," he writes. "Loneliness sets in, along with sadness. There is more time to remember all you have achieved and to wonder why others have forgotten." Paige himself summed it up much more evocatively after he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, in 1971. "The only change," he said, "is that baseball has turned Paige from a second-class citizen to a secondclass immortal." Even then, at the age of 65, the man could still bring the heat. Paige piled one exaggeration atop another until his myth hardened into something that could pass for truth. Jonathan Eig is the author of "Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season" and "Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig." His book "Get Capote," will be published next spring.
Choice Review
How does one write a story about a man who even during his glory days was as much myth as he was real? How does one find the true John Henry or Paul Bunyan ... or Satchel Paige? Tye attempts to track down and come to terms with Leroy "Satchel" Paige, who was one of the two most famous black players (Josh Gibson was the other) before the integration of the Major Leagues. The problem with writing about Paige is that he was the master of self-invention, a man for whom "truth" was like clay, something to be molded and altered and reshaped to create something beautiful. Even some of the most basic facts of his life are contestable--and in the end most are not even important. What is important is the fact that Paige has been remembered not only as a baseball player but also as an African American icon, a voice from the Jim Crow era that challenged the most fundamental stereotypes that whites held of blacks. This reviewer cannot imagine a better book on Paige or another one that so beautifully captures what it was like to be a black man in the Negro Leagues. Summing Up: Essential. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; general readers. R. W. Roberts Purdue University
Kirkus Review
A fine biography of the legendary baseball Methuselah. In 1945 Brooklyn Dodger's general manager Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, breaking a color barrier that had held for more than 75 years. Though revolutionary, Rickey's selection overlooked a generation of Negro Leagues superstars, none bigger than Satchel Paige (190682), quite possibly the greatest pitcher ever. After a lengthy Negro Leagues career, tours barnstorming against the likes of Dizzy Dean and Bob Feller and seasons played in Cuba, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, by 1944 Paige had become the biggest attraction and the highest paid player in the game. Starting out as a blazing fastballer, he later developed an array of pitches that baffled hitters and delighted fans. He matched his on-field showmanship with a larger-than-life persona as a comic and aphorist. Along the way, he also developed a reputation as a contract jumper, crazy driver, mad fisherman, womanizer and all-around fast liver who bridled at Jim Crow's rules. Although Paige had proven that white fans would come to see a black ballplayer, his age and reputation disqualified him as the impeccable figure Rickey needed for the tricky role of "first." Journalist and biographer Tye (Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class, 2004, etc.) conducted more than 200 interviews with Paige's former teammates to reconstruct this amazing career, in which the facts, including such basics as Paige's birth date, the spelling of his last name and the origins of his sobriquet, require careful sifting from the mistakes, misinformation and myth. Tye never quite convinces us that Paige consciously constructed "a brilliantly defiant parody" in order to combat racism, but he's correct that Paige knew his value and put himself first in a way that anticipated the superstars of today's game. Well past his prime, Paige finally got a shot at the Majors with three teamsincluding an appearance for the Kansas City Athletics at age 59and a plaque in Cooperstown in 1971. An authoritative treatment of a true baseball immortal. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Leroy "Satchel" Paige is a poster child for the tragedy of segregated baseball. He could have dominated major league pitching but got a chance with the Indians only at the end of his career. Paige could have been the star to break baseball's color line, but Jackie Robinson got first crack as a "safer choice." While there are stacks of biographies about Robinson, this is the first attempt at a full, major biography of Paige. Tye, a journalist, is more noted for his labor histories, such as Rising from the Rails, about black rail porters. However, he's a passionate baseball fan with a strong interest in the history of segregated America. Why has so little been written about Paige? One factor is the difficulty of getting reliable information. Paige was well known for embellishing stories. Tye masterfully weaves primary and oral sources together to create a credible biography of a talkative yet elusive subject. We can hope that his occasional sloppiness when it comes to sports facts (e.g., he refers to Joltin' Joe Dimaggio as "Jumpin'" Joe) will have been corrected for publication because this is an important book about a neglected figure in baseball history. Recommended for all readers in sports as well as 20th-century America.-Randall Schroeder, Ferris State Univ., Big Rapids, MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One Coming Alive "I was no different from any other kid, only in Mobile I was a nigger kid." Satchel Paige entered the world as Leroy Robert Page. He was delivered at home into the hands of a midwife, which was more help than most poor families could afford in 1906 in Mobile, Alabama. His mother, Lula, was a washerwoman who already spent her nights worrying how to feed and sustain the four daughters and two sons who had come before. Five more would follow. Leroy's father, John, alternated between the luxuriant lilies in the gardens he tended uptown and the corner stoops on which he liked to loiter, rarely making time to care for his expanding brood. With skin the shade of chestnut and a birthplace in the heartland of the former Confederacy, the newborn's prospects looked woeful. They were about to get worse. The hurricane that battered Mobile Bay just two months after Leroy's birth started with two days of torrential rains carried in on the back of a driving northeast wind. By the next morning ten-foot-high surges had dispatched oyster and fishing vessels to the bottom of the sea. Tornado-like squalls ripped from their roots southern pines, blew tin roofs off Greek Revival homes, and made it look as if birds were flying backward. At historic Christ Church only the choir loft was left standing. The lucky escaped by fleeing to third-floor attics or climbing tall trees; 150 others were consigned to watery graves. One area hit especially hard was the Negro slum known as Down the Bay, where the Pages lived. Their home was a four-room shack called a shotgun, because a shot fired through the front door would exit straight out the back. That is the path storm waters took when they burst through Down the Bay's alleys on the way to more fashionable quarters. Rental units like the Pages' were ramshackle and fragile, with no flood walls to protect them from the nearby sea and no electricity to ease their recovery. The Page cottage remained standing but the thin mattresses the children shared and their few furnishings needed airing out. That cleanup would have to wait: Lula's white employers insisted she be at their homes early the next morning to mop up the storm damage. The kids would wait, too, the way they did every day when Mama headed to work, with the older ones watching over baby Leroy and the rest of the young ones. Leroy's world was being reshaped in another way that would mark him even more profoundly. Mobile historically was a center of the slave trade and the destination for the last slave ship to America, but Alabama's oldest city also was home to more than a thousand blacks who bought or were granted their freedom in the antebellum era. That paradox was consistent with the coastal city's push toward the conservative state of which it was part and its pull to a more tolerant world beyond its shores. For more than two hundred years Mobile had welcomed outsiders--Irish Catholics fleeing the famine, Jewish merchants, Yankees and English, along with legions of Creoles, the free offspring of French or Spanish fathers and chattel mothers--and they in turn challenged inbred thinking on everything from politics to race. The result, during the Reconstruction period, was a blurring of color lines in ways unthinkable in Montgomery, Selma, and most of the rest of Alabama. Jim Crow--the system of segregation named after a cowering slave in an 1820s minstrel show--was there in Mobile, but so was Booker T. Washington's gospel of black self-help. The races were separated on trolleys and in other public settings, but the separation was done by tradition more than law. Blacks not only could vote for officeholders, a few even held political office. Paternalism more than meanness defined how whites treated Mobile's 18,000 black citizens. Unfortunately for Leroy, that live Excerpted from Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Tye All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
