Satchel - Larry Tye

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The superbly researched, spellbindingly told story of
athlete, showman, philosopher, and boundary breaker Leroy "Satchel" Paige

"Among the rare biographies of an athlete that transcend sports . . . gives us the man as well as the myth."-The Boston Globe

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.