Satchel in Salina

This story was originally published over at seamheads.com.

SATCHEL IN SALINA

By Scott Simkus

 

He was late.

            The fried chicken was already served, a toastmaster had spilled his guts and five dozen acne-challenged boys were getting antsy.  School Superintendent Philip Falk, who had nearly put everybody into a mass-coma by sharing a few words of scholarly encouragement earlier in the evening, got up to speak for a second time after finishing his plate of mashed potatoes.

            Things were getting desperate; somebody- it may have been Alderman Harold Rohr- suggested the boys have a singing contest.  You know, each table could belt out their school fight song and the dignitaries in attendance would vote on who they believed was best.  This was American Idol, circa winter 1960, an awkward twist in an already uncomfortable evening.

            People began taking turns at the podium.  Jim Atkins, President of the West Side Business Men’s Association (WSBMA), butted his cigarette and killed a couple minutes in front of the group.  Secretary of State Bob Zimmerman, representing Wisconsin Governor Gaylord Nelson (who apparently had more important things to do than attend the banquet), finished up his highball and took a stab as emcee; as did Ron Nord, assistant basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin, who used his impromptu speech to extol the virtues of hard work and persistence, and how these young men should take the lessons learned on the hardwood and apply them to life.

            The high school boys, being teenagers and all, had completely tuned out the speakers by this point and were thinking about getting laid, or coming up with excuses for the homework they didn’t complete.  Some of them were thinking about getting some sleep: They had school the next day.   

            Nearly two hours after his scheduled arrival, the keynote speaker for the evening, legendary fastball pitcher Satchel Paige, was still nowhere to be found.

            The event was an annual affair in the state capital; a high school basketball banquet, hosted at the swanky Madison Club, honoring four local hoops teams, as well as the state champion Wausau group.   Coach Marsh Taylor and his trophy winners had motored 65 miles due west from the outskirts of Milwaukee to attend the dinner.

            Just as Superintendent Falk was threatening to get up for a third speech, a telephone echoed in the lobby.  It was Satch, and although he had reached the Madison city limits, he needed directions to the club house.  He was at a filling station just a couple miles away, where the slightly inebriated clerk behind the counter (relieved he wasn’t going to be robbed) let the tall black stranger make a call.

            Leroy “Satchel” Paige was at a crossroads in his life, toeing the line between being a full-time ballplayer and full-time celebrity.  Just a year earlier, the ageless right-hander had gone 10-10 with the Miami Marlins of the International League, featuring a 2.95 ERA.  Although well into his fifties, he was still a legitimate pitcher at the minor league level, but couldn’t hook up with anybody from organized ball in 1959.  Instead, he went Hollywood.

            For a reported $10,000 (about $70k in today’s money), he traveled to Durango, Mexico, and played the role of Sergeant Tobe Sutton in The Wonderful Country, a romantic western starring Robert Mitchum.  He’d later call his acting experience one of the most gratifying (and profitable) projects of his life.

            “I loved it.  You get to sit down a lot and the money’s good.”

            Upon arriving at the Madison Club, Satch grabbed a frosted mug of Blatz and found a chair in the corner of the wood-paneled room, where he caught his breath for a few minutes.  His trip to the basketball banquet had apparently been a harrowing, white knuckle affair.

            He lit a smoke then grabbed the microphone, apologizing for his tardiness.

            “It became so foggy 20 miles out of Beloit, I opened the window so I could see,” Paige explained to the room.  “The fog drifted in and I didn’t see my partner in the front seat until we got to town.”

            The region had been blanketed in heavy, wet snow just a few days earlier, and on the day of the event, the rubber-ball temperatures of late-March had bounced up into the high 50s, saturating the air with moisture and wreaking havoc on visibility.

            Satchel put everybody at ease with his charm and humor, telling a few well-worn stories he had probably told a million times before.  Then he opened up the room to questions, where coaches and basketball players lobbed batting practice fastballs his way.

 

Q- Who were the best hitters you ever faced?

A- Josh Gibson and Ted Williams.

 

Q- What was your best year as a hitter?

A- There are two things in baseball I never was- a runner or a hitter.

 

Q- How do you keep your arm from getting sore?

A- I don’t put anything on it except hot water; I don’t give it a chance to get sore. You can get out of shape sitting on the bench.

           

Q- What advice would you give young pitchers?

A- Learn one good pitch and control; that gives you five or six pitches.

 

            At the end of the session, Satchel told the boys he planned on returning to the major leagues, but “didn’t know when.”

            Around this same time, an interview with Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck appeared in Wendell Smith’s Pittsburgh Courier column.  “I talked to Leroy,” Veeck explained, “and he tells me he’s in training.”

            “He’s up in Beloit, Wisconsin, getting ready to throw for anyone who will hire him.”

            Veeck went on to explain he had six different scouts follow Paige the previous summer, during the barnstorming games, and they all believed the old man was a better reliever than Gerry Staley or Turk Lown, who, he pointed out, “are two of the best relievers in the majors today.”

            Veeck explained they decided against pursuing Paige, as the team was going well already (they’d wind up in the World Series against the Dodgers) and adding him might have proven to be a distraction.

            “I’ve seen most of ‘em,” said Veeck, “Including Bob Feller and all the others, and he knows- and knew- more about pitching than any of them.  He’s the greatest.”

            Then why didn’t you sign him, Smith wondered.

            “Because Staley and Lown were going good. They would have had to sit on the bench if Satch had been with us.  That would have made them angry.”

            By the time Paige reached the podium at the Madison basketball banquet, it had already been a busy couple months.  After returning from Mexico, his wife Lahoma gave birth to a baby girl (Rita Jean) on February 9.  Then it was up to Wisconsin to finalize arrangements for a 150-game barnstorming tour (and attend the first of what would be dozens of paid speaking engagements). Around January, he had inked a deal with writer David Lipman and Doubleday & Company to pen his memoirs.  It might not be the “easy” Hollywood money, but he was lining up a nice ten-to-twelve month revenue stream.  He now had a wife and seven kids to take care of.

            The man who got fogged out of the car with Satchel on the ride up to Madison was a booking agent from Beloit named Dempsey Hovland.  Hovland was putting together an outfit called the “Caribbean Kings,” who would travel the country and Canada, playing charity ballgames for a flat fee.  The Wisconsin entrepreneur had already secured the services of ex-major leaguer Virgil Trucks, and several young Cuban ballplayers.

            The tour started as planned in April, but Trucks, who had retired two years earlier and was about twelve years younger than Satchel, came up with a bad hamstring and got hit hard in several outings.  He was unable to field his position and often gave way to Paige to clean up the mess.  He wasn’t used to throwing every other day.

            Traveling through New Mexico and Arizona, the Kings won some, lost others, and struggled to put fans in the seats.  At the end of May, Paige simply disappeared; hopped in his car and drove home.

            Dempsey Hovland, who had put some time and money into the venture, was livid.  “I can’t run a business like this,” he was quoted in several nationally-syndicated newspaper stories.  “I have to give the fans what they pay to see…playing in the majors might have been the worst thing that could have happened to Paige.

            “When a guy gets a taste of a certain kind of living, it’s hard for him to leave it.  Some fellows just never adjust to the change.”

            Two weeks later newspaper stories reported Satchel Paige had signed with a semi-pro team near his home in Kansas City.  He was going to pitch for the Salina Bluejays of the Victory League, and hoped to participate in the national semi-pro tournament in Wichita come August.

            Salina, a couple hours west of KC, is known as the geographical center of the continental United States.  After 31 years of beating the bushes, traveling to all corners of the western hemisphere, Satchel Paige had returned home, smack dab in the middle of the country.  

            In his first game with the Bluejays, Satch pitched well: three innings of shutout ball, with one hit and two strikeouts.  That night, after the game, Paige claimed he was robbed on his way back to his hotel room.

            According to newspaper accounts, “Paige called the police department about 2am to report a Negro man and woman, about 30 to 40 years old, met him on the street and stopped to talk to him.

            They chatted about baseball for some time, when Paige asked the couple where he could get something to eat.  They told him they knew a place and would be glad to get something for him.

            He gave them a $10 bill, and they left.  Paige waited for about 1-1/2 hours in his car but they did not return.  Then he called police.”

            Interestingly, C.F. Leiker, the man who ran the Salina ball club, was a policeman in town.  There were no reports that the perpetrators were ever caught (nor that they ever actually existed).

            Paige shrugged off the incident and pitched well for the team.  They had a decent ball club; a half-dozen or so former minor leaguers, couple college kids and several high school baseball stars.  Their opponents were similarly constructed.  After Salina was upset in the state tournament, Paige joined the powerful Wichita Weller Indians and won their first game in the National Semi-Pro Tournament, an event he had electrified while pitching for Bismarck back in 1935.

            As for the Caribbean Kings, with Paige gone their tour fell apart very quickly.  Virgil Trucks, in a Sporting News article dated August 25, was still hot about how things unfolded.

            “I lost $5,000 on the tour, mainly because Satchel Paige could never be counted upon to show up.  We had contracted to play throughout the country and Paige was supposed to be with us.  The guarantees were no good in those cities where he failed to show.”

            Before the Kings’ baseball junket blew up, Trucks wrote a letter to Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Joe Brown to see if he could get a job throwing batting practice, which he did for the last couple months of the season.

            The next year, Satchel Paige finished “writing” his autobiography, hit the road to pitch some barnstorming games again, and wound up in the Pacific Coast League for a few games, where he struck out 19 men in 25 innings, while issuing only 5 free passes.

            To follow are the reconstructed stats for Satchel Paige, circa 1960.  This is one of his “lost” seasons, a year that began on a foggy March night in Madison, Wisconsin.

 

1960	W	L	ERA	IP	H	BB	K	R	ER	GS	G	CG
Satchel Paige	5	2	2.21	53	43	8	63	18	13	8	11	2

 

Interview: Bill James

I pay three dollars each month to be “friends” with Bill James. This isn’t the first time I’ve traded money for companionship, and it probably won’t be the last. As you know, I’m not afraid to open up my wallet if I want something bad enough, and if I’m short on cash: I’m not opposed to opening up somebody else’s wallet. If things ever became really desperate, I’d consider putting on a ski mask and robbing a liquor store.

But that’s just the kind of man I am, the way I was raised. Bill James, on the other hand, is also from the wrong side of the tracks. He’s a rebel, an outsider. And although he’s denied it repeatedly: I believe he’s a direct descendent of either Jesse James or Jesse Owens; or possibly both Jesse James AND Jesse Owens. To me, his mysterious past is one of the most compelling elements of his appeal. Well…his past, and the fake beard he’s been wearing for thirty-plus years.

Based on a thorough examination of several black-and-white publicity photos, James appears to stand about 7’5” and weighs maybe 260 pounds dripping wet. To follow is his harrowing tale, the story of a Midwestern everyman clawing his way up from the seedy depths of the baseball stat underworld…

George William H. Bonney “Bill” James (born October 5, 1949) has been turning sabr-tricks since the 1970s, when he began peddling crudely rendered baseball smut from a dark alley behind a pork and beans plant in Kansas. Business was slow at first; with James offering an enigmatic selection of stat-urbation, sometimes published in Baseball Digest, the contents of which befuddled most hardcore baseball johns at the time.

During those pre-Cable TV days, back when Gerald Ford was stumbling over ottomans in the Oval Office, most traditional hardball hustlers would say, “Johnny Bench IS the toughest catcher to steal against,” then quickly move on with their lives. It was an impersonal, wham-bam, love ‘em and leave ‘em commentary which often left customers feeling cheap and dirty. James had a different approach, more personal. He’d ask, “Is Johnny Bench the toughest catcher to steal against?” then gently invite you into his thought process as he tackled the problem. You’d experience him going through box score after box score after box score, adding up the numbers for a large “sample” of catchers, then watch as he presented statistical evidence answering his question. It was an exotic, interactive experience; and over the first few years he developed a small, but lustful, cult following.

About this same time, James began publishing a subversive paper called the “Baseball Abstract.” In retrospect, the outsider’s annual Abstract was to the insider’s weekly Baseball Digest, what Larry Flynt was to Hugh Hefner. Whereas the Digest was classy, but conservative; the Abstract was loaded with page after page of explicit, uncensored baseball analysis. James would take readers “around the world,” then “blow” their minds with the kind of “full frontal” investigations that may have made Red Smith blush.

Bill James’ Statistical Inquisition (he later coined the term “sabermetrics”) soon became a cottage industry, albeit not quite mainstream, due to the vehement opposition of baseball authorities, barkeeps, and the media elite’s cliché peddling pimps. He had to break through a powerful cabal of old school big league skippers, scouts, beat reporters and TV broadcasters, who for years had made a quick buck telling us things like “the Cardinals play better on artificial turf,” or “Ron Guidry is tough in day games,” or “this kid’s gonna be a great hitter because he’s got a solid baseball chin and a large penis,” even though they had no concrete evidence to support their claims.

Bill James brought a ruler and a calculator, and said “Let’s measure it!”

Sabermetrics changed the game, and like another literary giant, Heidi Fleiss, soon Mr. James had a national book deal and several best sellers. The Kansas Kid was able to the leave the dirty world of back-alley, baseball-bump-and-run for good. The baseball street hustler had made it.

PART TWO: Today Bill James is the kingpin in charge of a multinational sabermetric empire, with posh offices located in Kansas and on the east coast. He’s been known to rub shoulders with many of the biggest names in the game, including Ty Cobb and Mark Grudzielanek.

In fact, the former wheeler dealer is now a high-ranking informational Geisha inside the Boston Red Sox front office. His sponsoring danna is a youthful man named Theo Epstein, a Harvard grad who first became smitten with James’ work after secretly thumbing through some old Abstracts during his youth, which nearly caused blindness. After rising to a position of power in Beantown, one of Epstein’s first official orders of business was to clean up the old stat master and put him on his payroll.

The man who first made a name for himself dabbling in the cheap thrills of Major League Equivalencies (MLEs), Ballpark Effects and the Platoon Differential; now slides around the floors of 4 Yawkey Way in his split-toed tabi, whispering secretive, high-level saberotica into the ears of the Bosox brass.

After a 263-year drought, the Red Sox finally won a World Series.

PART THREE: Some of the former drifters and curb crawlers who first jumped on the James bandwagon back in the early 80’s have suggested that BJ’s lost a little bit off his fastball since going “mainstream.” I’m not going to provide any evidence to the contrary just yet, not with a golden opportunity to extend this introduction another couple hundred words.

But I will say this: Bill James has tried to keep one foot rooted in his old school, sabermetric past. When not wearing his black and red kimono in Boston, BJ is an active partner in billjamesonline.com, a site foisted on the internet back in ‘07. BJOL (as it’s known to hipsters on the ‘net); is a clean, ad free, pay-for-play baseball bordello, offering a number of exotic services and experiences to its subscribers, with a menu rivaling that of an ancient Roman bath house.

There are basically 12 major categories for subscribers to explore, including things like POLLS AND ARGUMENTS, FUN STUFF, and POWER RANKINGS. But three areas seem to stand out above the others: STATISTICS, OTHER COLUMNISTS and HEY BILL, although not necessarily in that order.

STATISTICS- BJOL offers a mountain of obscure baseball data, courtesy of Baseball Info Solutions, Inc., whose owner is a partner in the web site. Not the traditional Jamesian analysis, rather it’s a collection of raw statistics, intricate data not found at the conventional web-based sites, such as baseball-reference.com. They chart things like batter performance during various pitch counts, and the number (and type) of pitches thrown by every Major League hurler during the previous couple seasons. There’s also some Clutch Hitting, Skill Assessment and unconventional Fielding data available at the site. Having access to this kind of information allows subscribers to cobble together their own sabermetric studies, which is often dangerous and boring.

For instance, over the past six months, I’ve been using the information for my ground-breaking study regarding how well married players perform during the various stages of their wive’s menstrual cycles. Also, I’ve been working feverishly on a little something I call “PCAFs,” or, Protective Cup Adjustment Factors. We’ll just have to wait and see where these studies take us.

OTHER COLUMNISTS- Last Summer, during periods when James was otherwise predisposed with his Red Sox work, his “guest” columnists were often charged with keeping the BJOL ship afloat. I say “guest” columnists because they’re not really employees of the site, but rather a collection of volunteer writers and sabermetricians making high-standard contributions to the venture. Most of them were selected during an American Idol-like talent search promoted by Rob Neyer at ESPN.com; and in fairness, Bill James said upfront that winners were unlikely to receive any compensation for their efforts. In other words, after beating out hundreds of aspiring writers, they get paid zippo; although some of them did get to take a bubble bath with Simon Cowell.

The problem is, as a subscriber, I don’t know when or if my favorite columnists are going to produce anything new. Most of the Other Columnists got out of the gate pretty fast, producing new stories every week, but then quickly slowed down. Without the Cash Factor (CF), it must be a challenge to summon up the creative motivation on a consistent basis. Some columnists continue to contribute new material every couple weeks, while others have regressed to monthly columns or something new every 5 or 6 weeks. One guy, one of the guys who was there at the very beginning, hasn’t written anything new since the last time Billy Martin was fired by the Yankees. This is a serious issue.

Open letter to Mr. Bill James:

Dear Bill,

I have three demands. Number one, start paying the columnists. Number two, pay them well. Number three; demand that they contribute high quality stuff on a weekly basis in exchange for their compensation.

I don’t care if you have to start selling ad space on the site, or stealing money from Big Papi’s locker, just get it done.

Oh, and I have one more demand. Number four; fix the boiler down in the columnist’s locker room. They’re sick and tired of cold showers after a strenuous day at the keyboard. It’s the least you can do.

(To the columnists: as your de facto agent, you’ll kindly tithe 15% of your weekly income to me, ad infinitum.)

Sincerely,
Scott (Boras) Simkus

HEY BILL- Hey Bill is a Question & Answer column, where subscribers get to pepper the Jamester himself with a variety of baseball (and non-baseball) questions. I believe the concept is modeled after the classic newspaper feature called “Dear Abby.”

For those of you too young to remember, Dear Abby was a popular newspaper column syndicated nationally for over 50 years. Although nobody reads newspapers anymore, a different version of Dear Abby continues to run today; although the weekly readership is said to consist of less than two dozen people.

The concept of DA was simple. Dear Abby’s original writer, Pauline Phillips (a socialite who lived a life of privilege in Beverly Hills), offered heartfelt advice and answered questions which had been submitted by idiots.

Hey Bill is a little like DA, but with a twist. The questions aren’t necessarily submitted by idiots; but James uses a creative arsenal of quips, barbs, Pravda-like editing, and snarkiness to make them appear stupid. It’s all intended to be innocent, masochistic fun, harkening back a bit to the good old days behind the pork and beans plant.

I like it.

PART FOUR: The Book.

Over the past several years, Bill James has been threatening to publish something he calls a “Crime Book,” and although not completely positive, I believe it’s going to be the tell-all autobiography we’ve all been waiting for.

Rumor has it; over 100 pages will be devoted to Bill’s thoughts on retired Houston Astro slugger Jeff Bagwell.

I decided to utilize the Hey Bill section to press James for some more details about his autobiography. To follow is an unedited transcript of the questions, with some parenthetical commentary following each one. Because these were originally published at BJOL, and may or may not violate a number of copyright laws, you’re advised to read them at your own risk.

SCOTT SIMKUS: When you were risking your life working nights at Stokely Van Camp, did you ever have to fend off any would-be criminals? It’s my understanding the black market for pork and beans was pretty lucrative (and ruthless) during the 1970s. And as a follow-up question: Although you were paid to protect the inventory, were you ever tempted to pilfer any merchandise?

BILL JAMES: You wouldn’t steal that stuff either if you saw them packing it.

(I think it’s pretty obvious BJ isn’t being completely forthright in his answer here. Very short answer, tense. As if I had struck a nerve.)

PETER JENNINGS: Is your crime book going to include “sabermetric-styled” statistical analysis? Just hoping it does…

BILL JAMES: It doesn’t contain statistical analysis, no, but it does contain certain types of arguments and analysis that will look familiar to you.

(This is an homage to one of my favorite journalists, the late Peter Jennings. When I use the Hey Bill section, I’ll often put on a disguise at my computer and type in questions using a fake name. And yes, the “just hoping it does” thing is part of a well-known, textbook suck-up strategy used by all the great media outlets, including the E! Network)

SCOTT SIMKUS: To follow up on Peter Jennings’ question about the crime book…Having worked on the thing for a couple years, do you have any sense of whether there is more violent crime, less violent crime, or perhaps the same amount of violent crime per capita as there was, say, 50 years ago?

BILL JAMES: There is certainly less. Much less. Violent crime has decreased in this country throughout most of the last 140 years, with the exception of a few periods such as 1963-1976 and 1903-1914 when there were significant increases in crime rates.

(This is one of my signature moves, to secretly follow up on one of my own questions. How can Bill not respond to a follow up on Peter Jennings query?)

Over the past few months, I’ve submitted dozens of probing questions to Bill James. Sometimes I’ve used my own name, other times not. Sometimes Bill answers them, while other times he simply hits the delete button and moves on with his life. To see the rest of the interview, my attorney has advised me to suggest that you subscribe to Bill James online. You’ll find the rest of the stuff there.

At three dollars a month, it’s a pretty decent bang for your buck.