How long was satchel paige career

Amazing, there was one appearance yet to come. Paige continued to play in various leagues for another 13 years, finally ending his days as a professional baseball player in at the age of On Sept. The team had a rocking chair on the field for Paige, who was then 58 years old, and rubbed down his arm for the 9, fans in attendance.

The real show started, however, when Paige took the mound to start the game vs. He needed just 28 pitches to mow down nine of the 10 batters he faced in his three innings, allowing only a double to Carl Yastremski.

He passed away in at age A look at Satchel Paige's legendary career. As Satchel grew older, he helped support his family. Satchel rarely attended school. Instead, he skipped class to play baseball and fish in Mobile Bay. In twelve-year-old Satchel was convicted of shoplifting and was sentenced to five years in the Alabama Reform School for Juvenile Negro Lawbreakers.

Satchel attended class, worked on the school farm, joined the school choir, and became a member of the drum and bugle corps. He honed his skills as a baseball player under the direction of Coach Edward Byrd. Coach Byrd showed Satchel how to use his physical skill and strength to become a powerful and proficient right-handed pitcher. Most importantly, Byrd taught Satchel that he could not depend on his physical talent alone—he would also have to outwit his opponents.

You might say I traded five years of freedom to learn how to pitch. After baseball became segregated in , blacks were prohibited from playing in the major leagues. Paige returned home and joined the black semi-professional Mobile Tigers. In , playing for the Tigers, Paige won an estimated thirty games with only one loss.

In he joined the professional Chattanooga Black Lookouts for two successful seasons. Paige then spent the next several years going from team to team in search of a more lucrative paycheck. When not playing with a team, Paige and other black players formed freelance barnstorming teams that toured the country playing other teams in exhibition games to make extra money. Paige spent long hours on the road and rarely saw his wife when barnstorming across the country.

This player does not have game logs available for some years. Negro League player stats include league games, interleague games against major Negro League competition , and games against select top-level independent Black Baseball teams.

Player stats do not include the extensive amount of exhibitions and barnstorming games Negro League teams often played. Negro League data is not complete. More about data coverage. Question, Comment, Feedback, or Correction? Are you a Stathead, too? Subscribe to our Free Newsletter. This Month in Sports Reference Find out when we add a feature or make a change.

Do you have a sports website? Or write about sports? We have tools and resources that can help you use sports data. Find out more. We present them here for purely educational purposes. Our reasoning for presenting offensive logos. Logos were compiled by the amazing SportsLogos. With the big league color barrier broken by Jackie Robinson and the Cleveland Indians in need of extra pitching, owner Bill Veeck gave the veteran Negro League star a tryout.

Veeck reportedly laid a cigarette on the ground and told Paige to think of it as home plate; the hurler then threw five fastballs, all but one sailing directly over the cigarette. On July 7, , his 42nd birthday, Paige became the oldest player to debut in the Major Leagues, as well as the first Negro League pitcher in the American League. Drawing huge crowds when he pitched, Paige went with an outstanding 2. He pitched one more season with Cleveland, then played for three years with the St.

Louis Browns. Despite his age, Paige continued to tour regularly for hefty appearance fees. At age 59 on September 25, , he became the oldest player in Major League history, marking the occasion by throwing three scoreless innings and allowing just one hit for the Kansas City Athletics.

He finished his big league career with a record, 32 saves and a 3. One of baseball's most famous players of any color, Paige lived the sort of life in which myth became difficult to separate from reality. According to the stories, he was once served divorce papers by a wife as he walked out to the mound at Wrigley Field, and another time pitched for Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo's team to decide the outcome of an election.

Still, the accounts of his unparalleled talents were likely true; Paige was renowned for his hard fastballs and his signature "hesitation" pitch, but he could do anything with the ball that he wanted. Despite his incredible longevity, Paige rarely addressed the issue of his age, often quoting Mark Twain : "Age is a question of mind over matter.