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Bio-Sketch
Leroy Robert ("Satchel")
Paige (1906-1982) --
born in Mobile, Alabama
-- became the first African American pitcher in the
American League when he joined the Cleveland Indians in 1948.
With Paige on the pitcher's mound, the Indians won the 1948
World Series. By 1952 Paige was pitching on the American League
All-Star squad. According to American
ballplayer Dizzy Dean, the greatest pitcher of all time.
He was the sixth child of twelve, which included a
set of twins of John Page, a gardener, and Lulu Coleman
Paige, a domestic and washerwoman.
Leroy Paige earned his nickname as a boy who carried
satchels, or suitcases, at the Mobile train station. At age 12,
Satchel was sent to the Industrial School for Negro Children in
Mount Meigs, Alabama, for shoplifting and truancy from W.C. Council
School. There, he developed his pitching skills. more
satchel
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Larry
Tye.
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American
Legend (2009)
He is
that rare American icon who has never been
captured in a biography worthy of him. Now,
at last, here is the superbly researched,
spellbindingly told story of athlete,
showman, philosopher, and boundary breaker
Leroy “Satchel” Paige.
Few reliable records or news reports survive
about players in the Negro Leagues. Through
dogged detective work, award-winning author
and journalist Larry Tye has tracked down
the truth about this majestic and enigmatic
pitcher, interviewing more than two hundred
Negro Leaguers and Major Leaguers, talking
to family and friends who had never told
their stories before, and retracing Paige’s
steps across the continent. Here is the
stirring account of the child born to an
Alabama washerwoman with twelve young mouths
to feed, the boy who earned the nickname
“Satchel” from his enterprising work as a
railroad porter, the young man who took up
baseball on the streets and in reform
school, inventing his trademark hesitation
pitch while throwing bricks at rival gang
members. |
Tye shows Paige barnstorming across
America and growing into the superstar hurler of the
Negro Leagues, a marvel who set records so eye-popping
they seemed like misprints, spent as much money as he
made, and left tickets for “Mrs. Paige” that were picked
up by a different woman at each game. In unprecedented
detail, Tye reveals how Paige, hurt and angry when
Jackie Robinson beat him to the Majors, emerged at the
age of forty-two to help propel the Cleveland Indians to
the World Series. He threw his last pitch from a
big-league mound at an improbable fifty-nine. (“Age is a
case of mind over matter,” he said. “If you don’t mind,
it don’t matter.”)
More than a fascinating account of a baseball odyssey,
Satchel rewrites our history of the integration of the
sport, with Satchel Paige in a starring role. This is a
powerful portrait of an American hero who employed a
shuffling stereotype to disarm critics and racists,
floated comical legends about himself–including about
his own age–to deflect inquiry and remain elusive, and
in the process methodically built his own myth. “Don’t
look back,” he famously said. “Something might be
gaining on you.” Separating the truth from the legend,
Satchel is a remarkable accomplishment, as large as this
larger-than-life man.
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Table
The Greatest, My Own Story
(Muhammad Ali)
Shrovetide in Old New Orleans (Ishmael
Reed) /
Airing Dirty Laundry (Ishmael Reed)
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Jock the Vote:
NBA Players Raise Their Voices—In the early 1990s,
Michael Jordan famously refused to publicly support
Harvey Gantt, a black Democrat running against
Republican Jesse Helms in a North Carolina U.S. Senate
race, saying, "Republicans buy sneakers, too." Jordan
eventually donated money to Gantt, and also contributed
to the presidential campaigns of Bill Bradley in 2000
and Obama.
Steve Nash sparked
a minor controversy when he showed up at the 2003
All-Star Game in Atlanta wearing a T-shirt that read,
"No War. Shoot for Peace." Orlando Magic center Adonal
Foyle, another critic of the Iraq war, said athletes
shouldn't be afraid to share their political views.
"There is some
risk, there is no doubt about that, but I think that's
part of the responsibility," said Foyle, 33, who in 2001
founded Democracy Matters, a nonprofit, nonpartisan
group that works on campaign finance reform. "Saying
what you think is going to come with a certain amount of
people being mad at you, but so what? People are mad at
you when you beat them at a basketball game anyway. They
boo you anyway. Really, what has changed? I think it all
depends on how you do it."
Foyle, a native of
St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean,
recently became a U.S. citizen and plans to vote for
Obama. "This is truly a remarkable time to be involved
in politics. I feel absolutely honored and special to be
voting at this particular juncture," Foyle said.
The political
climate has led to debates in locker rooms around the
league. "Those are the hot topics because that's where
all the news is from," Hawes, who is white, said, adding
that he takes some heat from teammates for his views.
"You see the 'Saturday Night Live' sketches. It's not
really just politics right now. It's become intertwined
with pop culture as a whole."
However, some
players still refuse to get excited about the election.
"People get sour-faced when you talk about politics and
voting," said Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas, adding that
he doesn't plan to vote. Arenas, who is slated to earn
$14.5 million this season after signing a six-year, $111
million contract this past summer to remain with the
Wizards, said he is fearful that both candidates will
raise his taxes.
"The first Bush
said he wasn't going to tax nobody," Arenas said. "It
doesn't really matter who the president is. They say
whatever they need to say to get in office."
WashingtonPost
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LeBron James: 3rd 'Vogue' cover boyLeBron
LeBron James is
striking a pose.
The Cleveland
Cavaliers' superstar will appear on the
April cover of Vogue, joining actors Richard
Gere and George Clooney as the only men to
do so in the influential fashion magazine's
116-year history.
Wearing a tank top,
shorts and sneakers from his own Nike
clothing line, James appears on the cover
dribbling a basketball and screaming as if
in game mode while throwing one arm around
supermodel Gisele Bundchen with Tom Brady
nowhere to be found.
USA Today /
Mary E. Weems
Table |
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I divide sports
fans into two categories: those who love football
(soccer) and those who don’t. The former are the
majority of sport fans in the world. The later are
mostly myopic American males. These are men who think
that the World Cup is something to pour a bottle of beer
into while at a tailgate party. They have no idea that
more people watch the World Cup than the Super Bowl,
baseball, and basketball play-offs, and the Stanley Cup
combined. Not even the appearance of a phenomenal talent
like David Beckham, perhaps the most famous athlete in
the world, will bring these American men to the game.
Ugliness in the Beautiful Game
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Dock
Ellis, the former major league pitcher who
claimed to have thrown a no-hitter while on
LSD but later turned his exploits into the
basis of an anti-drug crusade and counseling
career, died Friday of liver disease at
County-USC Medical Center. He was 63.
Ellis, a Los Angeles native who lived in
Apple Valley, was diagnosed with cirrhosis
of the liver the day after Thanksgiving last
year.
LATimes
Ellis is trying to strike back at tough foe—Ellis,
a Los Angeles native and graduate of Gardena
High, won 138 games and lost 119 from 1968
through 1979 for five big league teams. He
played on the Pirates' 1971 World Series
championship team and on the 1976 Yankees'
team that lost the Series to the Cincinnati
Reds. . . . Ellis battled everyday
injustices with the same ferocity. While in
the minor leagues, he raced into the stands
to confront a racist heckler. |
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In 1971, he dared the powers that be to
designate him the National League's All-Star starter by
noting that Vida Blue was starting for the American
League and declaring baseball would "never start two
brothers against each other."
Ellis started, his only All-Star appearance. He didn't
shrink from other, tougher battles.He had begun drinking
and using drugs in high school; in the major leagues he
started popping pills, not an uncommon clubhouse
practice then. Yet, while playing for the Pirates and
still using, he counseled substance abusers at
Pittsburgh's Western State penitentiary.
LATimes
Donald Hall.
Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball (1989)
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Marvin
Gaye's "song & dance" for Nike—Moments before
the start of National Basketball Association's
annual All-Star Game in February of 1983, the
legendary Soul singer Marvin Gaye took center court
at the Los Angeles Forum to perform the "Star
Spangled Banner." Armed with only a first
generation drum machine (programmed the day before
by Gordon Banks), his own vocal genius and the
legacy African-American protest, Gaye offered the
most soulful rendition of the National Anthem that
most Americans had ever heard. That singular moment
in Gaye's career has been recaptured in a recent
Nike commercial featuring the so-called Olympic
"Redeem Team."
Give Nike
credit for mining the digital crates of Black
American culture to make explicit comment on the
hegemony of basketball, black music and their
products in the world. It's difficult to watch
images of Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and
Carmelo Anthony juxtaposed to classic footage of
Marvin Gaye and not get warm fuzzies about America's
role in the world and the position of black athletes
and artists as ambassadors. The Nike commercial
succeeds in part because it forces us to forget the
silence of these same athletes on issues like
China's
support of the Sudanese government and Nike's
own
labor practices.
Vibe Blog
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Might I remind Ms.
Solo that Briana Scurry was once considered the best
goalkeeper in the game. And, if she is now passed her
prime, this is simply part of being a professional
athlete. But, when Briana was on top, she was a thing of
beauty. She was a part of the1999 national team that won
the World Cup which put American women’s football on the
map. She was an Olympic gold medalist. And, she has 54
shutouts in her career.
This is a black
woman, who along with her teammates, made women’s soccer
fashionable. Without her, no one but a few diehard fans
would even care if Ms. Solo was in goal against Brazil.
And what of the Brazil team that beat the US team, Ms.
Solo talks as if it was a given that the US would even
beat them—an assumption that reflects the height of
arrogance when one considers the talent of the
Brazilians
One can easily dismiss Ms. Solo’s
comments as a momentary lapse in judgment of a
disappointed young woman. She may wake up tomorrow
or the next day and regret her statements.
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She may even apologize and go on to have a
great career. But, there are too many
self-absorbed athletes in the world today.
And if Ms. Solo does not want to be counted
among their numbers, she had better spend
some time reflecting.
Ugliness in the Beautiful Game
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speed, aggression and agility these players bring to it would be
a pale imitation of what draws the fans out to the arenas and
into the stores to buy jerseys and other paraphernalia with
players' names and numbers on it. To deal with this
contradiction, players are allowed, even encouraged, to show
that spirit in competition, and even somewhat in combat, among
each other. (Think of how much less a story this would've
been if Artest had responded to Wallace's blow by throwing
punches at HIM. Both of them would've gotten suspended for
one or a couple of games at most.) But never, ever, should
a player even think about responding to anything done to him or
his team by a fan. Think of the gladiators in the Roman
Coliseum, cheered or jeered for what they did against each
other, but never allowed to respond to directly to the crowd for
anything it said or did.
Ron Artest Ain't the Problem
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updated 2 November
2007 / updated 24
February 2008 |
