‘Satchel’: The Story Of An American Legend

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, we offer a glimpse at the life of Satchel Paige.

Taken from NPR:

Satchel Paige was a dazzling pitcher with a scorching fastball. A decade before Jackie Robinson became the first black player in Major League Baseball, Paige helped integrate the sport by touring the country and playing exhibition games with white players.

He delighted crowds by walking out onto the field before the game and throwing a fastball repeatedly over a matchbook or a postage stamp set on home plate.

Larry Tye, the author of the biography Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, describes Paige’s pre-game performance as the show before the show.

“[Satchel was] a circus act that understood that there was a thin line between entertaining a crowd and demeaning himself, and he would never take it to the point where he was doing anything to demean himself,” Tye says.

Tye describes the challenges of playing and touring for the Negro leagues in the days of Jim Crowe.

Click here for the rest of this review, an excerpt from the book, and a link to purchase the book.