Opening Day: Or, the Return of Satchel Paige Read online

  OPENING DAY

  Or, The Return of

  Satchel Paige

  A NOVELLA BY

  Les Standiford

  "A Little Fact Before Fiction"

  Most baseball historians consider Satchel Paige to be among the very best pitchers ever to play the game, black or white. But Paige was more than a great athlete: he was a crowd-pleaser, self-promoter, and all-around showman who eventually rose to the legendary status that no ball player other than Babe Ruth achieved. He was a tall, lanky, gangly right-hander, and he parlayed his blazing fastball, nimble wit, and colorful personality into a household name that is recognized by people who know little about baseball itself and even less about the players who performed in the Jim Crow era of organized baseball when Americans of equal ability played the game under the rule of unequal opportunity.

  “You see,” Buck Owens has said, “Satchel did to black baseball just what Ruth did to white baseball…. Ruth kept the franchises going. Just like Ruth after the Black Sox scandal, here comes Ruth and he brings it back. And this is the same that happened to us…. Satchel came. This is the guy that the people wanted to see. And he never failed.”

  Paige drew black baseball’s biggest crowds for more than two decades, and his fellow players acknowledged his contribution to their profession. “There’s not a Negro baseball player will say anything against Satchel,” a teammate said, “because he kept our league going. Anytime a team got into trouble, it sent for Satchel to pitch. So you’re talking about your bread and butter when you talk about Satchel.” Paige himself said, “Those other players ate that lean meat. If it wasn’t for me, they’d have been eating side meat.”

  During the course of his career, stories about his prowess and antics proliferated, and the embellishments eventually blurred fact into tall tale, and eventually to folklore. On many occasions he would pull in the outfielders to sit behind the mound while he struck out the side with the tying run on base. Once he intentionally walked Howard Easterling and Buck Leonard to load the bases so he could pitch to Josh Gibson, the most dangerous hitter in black baseball, and then struck him out. During his endless barnstorming days as the quintessential itinerant Negro Leaguer, he was billed as guaranteed to strike out the first nine batters he faced, and he invariably fulfilled his billing. He warmed up by throwing twenty pitches across a chewing gum wrapper that was used as home plate.

  His fastball provoked the most colorful hyperbole. It was described by some hitters as looking like a half-dollar. Others said that he wound up with a pumpkin and threw a pea. “It starts out like a baseball,” said Hack Wilson, one of the greatest National League home run hitters, “but when it gets to the plate it looks like a marble.” (Paige responded: “You must be talking about my slowball. My fastball looks like a fish egg.”) Connie Johnson, a star pitcher for the Kansas City Monarchs, remembered seeing Paige’s fastball for the first time:

  I was playing with [the] Toledo Crawfords…in 1940. And I heard about Satchel and said, “Well, I’m going to stay up here a whole week after the season opens and see Satchel.” Because I’d never seen him before. So I was up in the grandstand, bashful like I was, you know. I’m way up by myself and the game started and Satchel throw the ball. I didn’t see anything. The man throw the ball back. He throwed again. I didn’t see nothing. I said, “He playing shadowball? This ain’t no shadowball. This is a real game.” So I said, “Next inning, I’m going down and see.” So next inning, I went down there behind the stop. I just saw a little glimpse. He was throwing the ball. But in the grandstand, I couldn’t see it…. Then I went home, I said, “Well, I’ve seen Satchel!”

  Paige had names for his various pitches, mostly variations on the fastball: Long Tom, Little Tom, bee ball (because it hummed as it flew), jump ball, trouble ball. There was also the Midnight Rider, and the Four-Day Creeper. But his most famous delivery was the hesitation pitch (which may have been inspired by Cannonball Redding): He would interrupt his characteristic windmill motion with a disorienting pause just as his front foot hit the ground. (Hitters found this hesitation so baffling that the American League banned the pitch after Paige introduced it in the big leagues in 1948.)

  Paige’s life before baseball is almost as colorful and dramatic as his career. He was born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1906, the seventh of eleven children. His father was a gardener; his mother took in washing. Paige rarely attended school; he spent most of his youth scrounging to help his family make ends meet. While carrying suitcases at a rail depot for tips, he got the nickname “Satchel”–either because he got caught trying to steal a satchel or because when he used a pole across his shoulders to hang several bags at the same time, a porter said he looked like a “walking satchel tree.” (There are other tales about the origin of the nickname.)

  When he was twelve he was caught stealing costume jewelry from a toy store and sent to the Industrial School of Negro Children at Mount Meigs, Alabama, where he learned baseball and eventually grew to 6-foot-3, but only weighed 130. He developed his idiosyncratic crane-like pitching motion, with the impossibly high leg kick.

  After leaving Mount Meigs at 17, Paige found a spot on the semipro Mobile Tigers, where his brother played, and it wasn’t long before folks started hearing about his amazing fastball and flamboyant style. His first pro team was the Chattanooga Lookouts, but soon he was traveling around the country, moving in swift succession to the Birmingham Black Barons, the Nashville Elite Giants, and the Cleveland Cubs. His greatest popularity came with his association with the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the early 30s, when he went 32-7 and 31-4 in 1932-33. He did stints in the Dominican Republic and Mexico, and eventually returned in 1939 to play for the Kansas City Monarchs, pitching them to four consecutive Negro American League pennants (1939-42), culminating in a clean sweep of the powerful Homestead Grays in the 1942 World Series, with Paige himself winning three of the games.

  He played on barnstorming exhibition teams, winter ball in Puerto Rico and California, always on the prowl for the best offer. He estimated that he pitched 2,600 games in his career, winning 2,000, including 300 shutouts and 55 no-hitters.

  In 1948, the renowned baseball showman Bill Veeck brought Paige to the majors with the Cleveland Indians. As the oldest rook ever to play major-league baseball, he went 6-1 and had a 2.48 ERA down the stretch and contributed mightily to the Indians’ winning the World Series that year. Veeck and Paige reunited in 1951 on the St. Louis Browns, where Paige had his own personal rocking chair in the bullpen; he made the All-Star teams of 1952 and 1953. At the age of 59, Paige pitched three innings for the Kansas City Athletics, making him the oldest man to pitch in a major-league game.

  In 1971, Satchel Paige became the first player from the Negro Leagues to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He died in 1982.

  I.

  Leland "Buck" Wilson

  stood in the chalk-lined coach’s box just off third base, absently fingering the wool sleeve of his aged uniform, watching as the manager of the Vero Beach Grouper swatted practice balls to the outfielders. He was also trying to remain inconspicuous, not an easy task in this situation, for he was surely the oldest batboy in the Double-A Florida League, and most likely the oldest in all of baseball. Ever.

  Ironic that it had taken him this long to work his way into organized ball, he thought. But it had taken his former barn-storming teammate, Mr. LEROY “SATCHEL” PAIGE, a few years to get his call to the “bigs,” hadn’t it? And never mind if the Grouper were not exactly the prototype of a big league team. It was baseball, and it was a job, enough to keep him in walking around money until a place opened up fo
r him in the Golden Years Retirement Village, which, given the rate at which many of the residents completed their “golden years,” should not be too long. Certainly by the end of baseball season, he nodded, turning his attention back to his surroundings.

  It was a lovely day, the balls rising and falling brightly against the brilliant April sky, the players circling lazily on the thick green grass below, catching and throwing, catching and throwing, and Buck gradually forgot his fears. The thunk of the bat and the solid plop of balls into cavernous gloves had lulled him almost to a stupor when a weak toss from Wattles, the chunky, phlegmatic center fielder, struck a watering hose snaked out toward the pitcher’s mound, and the ball dribbled to a stop at Buck’s feet.

  He had been computing his anticipated savings when the ball rolled up, had determined in fact that if things worked out, he might be able to upgrade to a corner living unit with a view of Golden Years Lake if he were frugal. It only worried him that if he moved too rapidly up the waiting list, he might have to leave the Grouper before the season ended. And if the Grouper were to make the playoffs, well...

  He stopped then, reminding himself that there was little likelihood that this rag-tag bunch could make it to a Little League playoff, much less win a Double A crown.

  Besides, there was a more immediate problem. He stared at the ball glumly, the vision of skimming across Golden Years Lake clinging to the mast of a sailboard replaced by the vision of the same trim but grizzled black man bending awkwardly to clutch, of all things, a baseball. He did not want to look in toward home, where he knew the catcher would be expecting a relay toss. He had not thrown a baseball in, well, more than 50 years. Too long to think back on, in any case. The vision still running behind his eyes shifted a bit: Now he saw himself giving a piteous flop of a toss toward the plate, all the players collapsing in laughter as he did so.

  He blinked, hoping the ball was actually a mirage, but it remained stubbornly there, a round, white toad nestled in fresh-clipped grass. And while he had once played the game, and not so badly at that, he had not even touched a baseball since his single visit to the Hall of Fame, a painful memory in itself. A mere finger’s touch on the smooth hide of Babe Ruth’s sixtieth homer ball, and Buck had been ejected, no refund, no apology. He had always taken the event as an omen, the unequivocal end of his association with the game. But here he was now, in the flesh, if considerably older flesh, about to receive one more thump from the finger of Fate.

  “Hum it in here, pops!” called the catcher, Cogsill–at 6' 7" and maybe 180 pounds, hardly your prototype himself. Even the manager had paused to stare out at the procrastinating Buck. He would have to act soon, Buck told himself, but still, he hesitated.

  For this predicament, Buck could thank the team owner, a traditional baseball enthusiast who had chased out of the stadium all the tight-satin-clad usherettes and haltertopped batgirls of the previous season.

  “Distracts from the game, that’s what,” the balding, diminutive Hasslebrow had told Buck, chomping on a dead cigar and staring out from behind a massive desk that seemed to dwarf him. Buck had nodded agreement, eager for the $110-a-week position advertised on the stadium fence. “And these kids, they’re undependable as hell. Show me a twelve-year-old these days who’s not smoking pot, or worse, and I’ll introduce you to our future President.”

  The cigar bobbed up and down, and Buck nodded agreement in time. “Now an old geezer like you, you’re tradition in the flesh. Good for the game to have you around. I’ll bet you even saw CY YOUNG, WALTER JOHNSON, CHRISTY MATHEWSON, all those guys, right?” And yes, yes, yes, Buck had nodded, though the reference to “geezer” made him squirm. A paycheck was a paycheck.

  “Give us your fireball,” the catcher was calling, and a snicker floated onto the field, drawing Buck back to the moment. Lucco, the manager, lowered his bat and turned with his hands on his hips.

  “Throw the goddamned thing in here,” Lucco said. Now Lucco was a manager from central casting, Buck thought, the very picture of a baseball man’s baseball man: stocky, with powerful forearms, chiseled features and a Marine’s haircut, his flesh tanned and leathery from years in the sun. And no namby-pamby chewing gum for Lucco, either. The man spat a ribbon of tobacco juice in the dust at his feet and called again. “You’re holding up the goddamn show!”

  Lucco especially had not approved of Hasslebrow’s decision to rid the stadium of the scantily clad ball girls, because his fiancée of several years had been among their number. The pay was good and, more importantly, it kept her close, where he could keep an eye out–for Sharon was an undeniably attractive woman.

  Nor had Lucco approved of the owner’s decision to hire an octogenarian for a batboy, a fact that accounted for the threadbare uniform parceled out to him, Buck hoped. For while everyone else chased around in the hot sun wearing cool mesh jerseys and white cotton pants, he stood sweltering in his gone-to-gray wool outfit like a member of some second-rate opposition.

  Not that Buck was unaccustomed to such status. He’d grown up in America, after all. As a young man, he might have been able to play ball with the best of them, but then, so had Mr. Leroy Paige, and Mr. OSCAR CHARLESTON, and Mr. WILLIAM J. JOHNSON, and so many others, and that had not made them immune to less than favored status. They’d not only had their own water fountains and their own busses, their own hotels and restaurants, they’d had their own league, for heaven’s sakes….

  Buck had to shake himself away from such thoughts. Long ago, he’d resolved to bury his feelings in this regard. No good could come of it. In fact, he’d seen too many consumed by their own bile. He’d had a good life, and a long life, and this was no time to be getting himself churned up. Not at his age.

  He was back in a baseball uniform, after all, and a white man’s uniform at that. If there was any regret that lingered, it was simply that so many people everywhere had missed the chance to watch such men as Charleston and Johnson, Paige and LEONARD, TURKEY STEARNS and CANNONBALL REDDING, so many who played the game like angels, and when it came right down to it, wasn’t it the world’s own loss that they had missed that sight?

  Lordy, lordy, Buck murmured, willing his pulse to calm and his breath to even out. So he’d missed his chance to shine, and so had all those others. That was fate, that was the way of the world. It was also fate that he had nonetheless survived, and fate that he had stumbled down the street that led to Grouper Stadium on the very day that this job had been posted, and on and on and on–up to the fate that had sent the baseball tumbling to his feet right there, white as the driven snow against some emerald Florida grass, a thing so bright it was as if it had taken on a life, an inner glow, as if to demand he pay it some attention.

  ...pick me up, dammit, soothe my troubled stitchings, do for me and I will do for you...

  Buck shook his head, wondering at his capacity to dream up such foolishness. That stitched-up hunk of cowhide was just a baseball and there was no reason not to pick it up and heave it where it had to go–except that he hadn’t had a baseball in his hand since the last game he’d played, and how long ago was that? The owner of the Whippets had come to tell them all their day was done, the league folded, but wasn’t it great for the sport that JACKIE and LARRY and LUKE and a few of the others, including Mr. Leroy Paige, would have the chance to carry on. Sure, of course, you bet it was great, Buck had nodded, but he was thinking also about the call he’d had from the Homestead Grays–“Next week, son, we’re bringing you up next week”–and he put his glove down, and the ball he’d held in his hand folded into it. That was the last time he’d held a baseball, unless you wanted to count that time he’d been so bold in the Hall of Fame and earned himself another bum’s rush.

  Well, he couldn’t put it off any longer, he supposed. He bent, reluctantly, stretching his stiff fingers toward the patient ball, and then straightened slowly, with his free hand held to his creaking back. The manager Lucco fumed, tapping the bat with increasing force against the ground, spitting needles of to
bacco toward third base. The catcher waved his mitt in wide arcs. A flock of pigeons chose that instant to burst up from the roof above the stands. Finally, Buck threw.

  He had intended a sort of limp-wristed flip, something on the order of a basketball player’s casual one-hander from the free throw line, but somehow, when he touched the smooth leather, his own intentions were shunted aside, and another force took control. On the one hand, the feeling was frightening, almost otherworldly. On the other hand, there was something reassuring in the surge, as if the spirit of an old friend had swept through him for an eerie but welcome moment of reunion. This power, which he felt as an electrical tingling that raced from the tips of his fingers as they curled at the hide, up his arm to his shoulder and then deep inside him to lodge who knew where, coiled his ancient arm into a configuration he had never known.

  The throbbing in the muscles there seemed like fire now, but the pain that lingered was nothing compared to what it had produced. He could see it in his mind’s eye clearly, in slow motion, just like a replay from the Monday night game on the television in the lobby of the crumbling hotel where he’d been staying. But, while it was understandable that Kevin Brown or Pedro Martinez might snap a curve or rip a fastball worthy of a replay, it was less explicable what Buck did.

  Buck threw, the ball shot in toward home, and what sounded like a sonic boom exploded over the practice field.

  The catcher had shed his smoking glove, and was now running in frantic circles, shaking his hand as if a scorpion had buried its tail there. Lucco stood with his mouth hanging wide, his ever-present wad of tobacco tumbled to the dust. The pigeons soared in an intricate spiral overhead, while the other players, most of whom had been focused elsewhere, glanced about in confusion, wondering what they had missed. For his part, Buck smiled and rubbed his sore arm, far more comfortable now with this new job.