The Pecan Park Eagle

Satchel Paige, The Hero of Bismarck, North Dakota.

Contrary to the popular belief of some people, there was a lot written about Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige in newspapers back in the early days of his Negro League career. It simply was erratic and inconsistent – and impossible to mount over time by any accurate statistical analysis of credible data.

But it was there in varied forms.

Through these excerpts from a rather lengthy report on many other factors, here’s how the Bismarck Tribune reported the success of Mr. Paige in their September 5, 1933 edition of the paper after Leroy led the local club he played for through a a critical Labor Day series weekend. It begins with four bold type layered headlines:

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TWO VERDICTS AND WINS, TIE IN OTHER

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Reached Dramatic Peak Sunday When Satchel Paige Out-pitched Willie Foster

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CRUSHED VISITORS MONDAY

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Two Teams Will End Their Seasons Next Sunday With Contest At Jamestown

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Winning two games and earning a tie in the other contest of a three-game series with Jamestown over the Labor Day weekend, Bismarck’s potent baseball club decisively advanced its claim for the unofficial state championship.

About 7,000 fans saw the series which reached its dramatic peak in the tenth inning of Sunday’s game when Satchel Paige singled in a run from second base to win his own game with Willie Foster and came to a roaring end Monday when Bismarck routed both of Jamestown’s mound aces, Barney “Lefty” Brown and Willie Foster, to win an 11-5 verdict in a walkaway.

Bismarck will play its last home game Wednesday evening when it battles the strong Dickinson club at the city park beginning at 6 o’clock.

Finale at Jamestown

……. Besides outpitching Foster in a brilliant mound duel Sunday between the two greatest hurlers in colored baseball, Satchel Paige, Bismarck’s elongated right-hander, knocked in all three of Bismarck’s runs to nip Jamestown 3-2, Satchel’s last single coming dramatically in the 10th inning to score  Oberholzer from second and end hostilities for the day.

Paige Whiffed Fifteen

Besides restricting the visitors to six hits in ten innings, Paige whiffed 15 of the visitors. Foster, the colored race’s great southpaw, was nicked for seven safe hits and in flurries of wildness, intentional and unintentional, gave 10 free tickets to first base. ………

Figures Tell Story 

Bismarck probably be without the services of Satchel Paige this week, though it is possible he will return here for the winter and next season. Paige Tuesday was tentatively planning to accept an offer to pitch for the Easterners next Sunday against the Western All-Stars in a feature game between colored teams as a World’s Fair feature at Chicago. Willie Foster will pitch for the Western club.

More than a thousand fans turned out for the Saturday night game here, 4,000 for Sunday’s game and 1800 for the Monday contest. A special train from Jamestown Sunday brought nearly 500 here to swell the crowd into probably the largest turnout in North Dakota history.

– Bismarck Tribune, September 5, 1933, Page 6.

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If we only had that working time machine today, Bismarck could have had the largest turnout in Baseball History back on the Labor Day weekend of 1933.

With the fall of the color line, Satchel Paige finally made it to big leagues with the Cleveland Indians in 1948 at the age 0f 42..

Satchel Paige and the face of Negro League Baseball really comes to life in the 2010 paperback work (2009 Copyright), “Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend” by Larry Tye. It’s one of the best written biographies I’ve read in a very long time, augmenting fact with a three-dimensional picture of how life was in the days of negro league resuscitation under the gangster-leadership of Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee, who just happened also to be the dual owner of the Crawford Grill and the forgiving sponsor of the imported man-child wunderkind that was the strapping phenomenon known as Satchel Paige.

Upstairs above the Crawford Grill, was a place known as the Club Crawford. The “CC” was place frequented by powerful people from both the white and black communities, a place where politicians, prostitutes, and pimps could, and did, feel quite at home in each other’s company, drinking and sometimes drugging the night away, and listening to the some of the best jazz artists of the day back in 1934.

Cab Callaway played the “CC” – revving things up with his signature piece, “Minnie the Moocher,” and a fellow named Teddy Horne dealt poker hands while his teenage daughter, Lena, flirted her way around the room with those great beguiling eyes and that extra special voice and singing style that were all hers by genetic heritage. Can you picture the very young Lena Horne singing “Stormy Weather” with the rain coming down in sheets outside the Club Crawford?

Among others, and usually near to his reserved stool space next to mentor Gus Greenlee, young Satchel Paige rubbed shoulders and bent elbows at the “CC” with people like Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney, former black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, and Mr. Bojangles himself, Bojangles Robinson, the tap dancer extraordinaire and later owner of the New York Black Yankees club, Bojangles Robinson.

What a time it must have been. Satchel Paige wasn’t raised with strong ideas for temperance and self-management, but he managed to survive an environment that could have destroyed more than his money supply. Fortunately for Satchel, he didn’t get drunk that often, and, if things got too bad (too broke) anywhere he happened to be, his main defense seems to have been to run away to another part of the baseball world and let his talents help him find a new ceiling.

On page 68 of the paperback version, author Larry Tye cites a white writer for the Chicago Daily Times named Marvin McCarthy with one of the most beautifully descriptive pieces of baseball action writing I’ve ever read – and I’d like to share it with you here, along with the suggestion that you read this book for yourself. I see it as the best thing I’ve ever read on the man who, with Josh Gibson, stands today as one of the the two major faces of the old Negro Leagues.

With obvious attribution to the great Christy Mathewson, McCarthy responded to Paige’s stellar performance in the 1934 East-West All Star Game at Comiskey Park in Chicago with an article called “Black Matty:”

“With measured tread an African giant crosses the line and heads for the pitcher’s box. – ‘It’s Paige! Its Satchel Paige and goodbye ballgame’ whisper the stands. And it is. He must stand six feet six inches in his sox. Gaunt as old Abe Lincoln. He walks with that slow Bert Williams shuffle. Maybe it takes him two minutes to cross the fifty yards to the box. He stoops to toy with the resin bag – picks up the old apple. He mounts the bag, faces third – turns a sorrowful, but burning eye toward the plate, nods a nod that Hitler would give his eye for – turns his gaze back to the runner on second – raises two bony arms high toward the heaven, lets them sink slowly to his chest. Seconds pass like hours. The batter fidgets in his box. Suddenly that long right arm shoots back and forward like the piston on a Century engine doing 90. All you can see is something like a thin line of pipe smoke.There’s an explosion like a gun shot in the catcher’s glove. ‘Strike wun,’ howls the dusky umpire.”