Black History Month: The Greatest MLB Pitcher You Didn't Know

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You may not know the man who arguably was the greatest pitcher ever to play professional baseball was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame 54 years ago before yesterday, Super Bowl Sunday. It wasn’t Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, or any famous Hall pitcher. His name was Leroy “Satchel” Paige.

Satchel signed with the Cleveland Indians in July 1948 and, at age 42, became the oldest rookie in MLB history. Paige’s 6-1 record helped the Indians win the AL Pennant and World Series in 1948, and amazingly, in 1965, at age 59, he became the oldest pitcher in MLB history. Pitching 3 innings for the Kansas City (now Oakland) A’s against the Boston Red Sox, allowing only one hit.

Page wasn’t elected to the hall because of his pitching for Cleveland. Leroy “Satchel” Paige was the first player from the Negro Leagues elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

This wasn’t sort of woke action. Great players who would have been superstars in MLB were not allowed in because of the color of their skin. Black players formed the Negro leagues, which were just as good as the Whites-only MLB leagues. Leroy Satchel’s page Dominated the Negro leagues.

Until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, no Black American was allowed to play in the American or National Leagues. Paige came a season and a half later.

Page was not only a great pitcher but a consummate showman. More than once, he’d call in his outfielders to the infield and then single-handedly get the three outs when he struck out three in a row. After all, Joe DiMaggio once called Satchel Paige “the best and fastest pitcher I’ve ever faced.”

During a Negro League World Series game in 1942, he intentionally walked two batters so that he could face the league’s best hitter Gibson with the bases loaded. Gibson was not a hitter that a pitcher would want to face. He won the Negro League triple crown 2x. And power? He was the only player of the Negro or White league to ever hit a homer clear outside the old Yankee stadium. Babe Ruth was sometimes called the White Josh Gibson. Gibson was the only man in history (that includes MLB players) to hit a home run clear out of the old Yankee Stadium. And he would load the bases to face him!!!

And Satchel wasn’t done. During that World Series stunt, after loading the bases, Paige taunted Gibson and told him where he intended to place each throw. But the great Josh Gibson struck out in three pitches anyway.

Paige played in the Negro professional leagues. During the the off-season, he pitched for teams playing against the White stars and in the Caribbean and Central and South America as a barnstorming player, Satchel traveled thousands of miles each off-season and played for whichever team that met his asking price. He pitched an estimated 2,500 games in those games and had 300 shut-outs and 55 no-hitters. In one month in 1935, he reportedly threw 29 consecutive games.

Satchel Paige played parts of six seasons in the white’s only major leagues. His W-L record was 28-31, and he had a 3.29 ERA.

But stats don’t tell the story of this man who was kept out of the major leagues until his career was in its declining years. According to his contemporaries, he would have been the greatest MLB pitcher if there had been no restrictions against blacks.

Along with being a great pitcher, Leroy Satchel Paige was a master of home-spun philosophy. Some of his quotes are still famous. My favorite one is, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”

Some of his others were:

“Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

“Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.”

“You win a few, you lose a few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them.”

“I never rush myself. See, they can’t start the game without me.”

“It’s funny what a few no-hitters do for a body.”

“Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.”

“Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common.”

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” [He didn’t know for surw how old he was. His age was an estimate]

“Money and women. They’re two of the strongest things in the world. The things you do for a woman you wouldn’t do for anything else. Same with money.”

“Mother always told me, if you tell a lie, always rehearse it. If it don’t sound good to you, it won’t sound good to no one else.”

“Don’t eat fried food, it angries up the blood.”

Segregation cheated Satchel Paige out of a long career in the MLB, but even more so, baseball fans were cheated out of seeing possibly the greatest pitcher ever. His election to the Hall of Fame was very well deserved.