Satchel Paige
Leroy Robert ("Satchel") Paige (July 7, 1906, Mobile, Alabama–June 8, 1982, Kansas City, Missouri) was a legendary black baseball player who spent most of his career in the marginal and ill-paying Negro Leagues because the color of his skin barred him from playing in the all-white Major Leagues. Even though he toiled mostly in obscurity during his prime years, he was nevertheless well known throughout North America as being one of the greatest pitchers of his day, and late in his career he became even more famous as a seemingly ageless living legend who had at last managed to pitch his way into the Big Leagues. Although he was at least in his early 40s, and perhaps even older, when he first pitched in a Major League game, he still retained enough skills, including a blazing fastball, pinpoint control, and a baffling assortment of junk pitches, to be a successful pitcher for the next five years and he was, at least during his first year in the Big Leagues in 1948, a gate-pleasing attraction who drew record-breaking crowds in several different ballparks. He pitched in his last Major League game at the age of 59 in 1965 and in his last professional game in 1966. In 1971 he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York. Bill James, the ground-breaking baseball historian and sabremetrician, named Paige the 17th greatest player of all time, non-pitchers included, in his New Historical Baseball Abstract in 2001, just ahead of such great Caucasian pitchers as Lefty Grove, Grover Cleveland Alexander, and Warren Spahn.
Paige had a folksy, laid-back manner that charmed most people, both white and black. During his burst of celebrity in the late 1940s and early 1950s numerous articles about him, and/or supposedly written by him, appeared in national magazines. In many of them the seemingly ageless pitching marvel expounded about his "Rules for Staying Young"
- "Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood."
- "If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts."
- "Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move."
- "Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society—the social ramble ain't restful."
- "Avoid running at all times."
- "And don't look back—something might be gaining on you."