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

 

About these ads