Satchel Paige

He married his long-time sweet heart, Janet Howard in October 26, 1934.

He became attracted to Lucy “Luz” Maria Figueroa and married her in 1940. Their marriage became legal only after he was legally separated from his first wife in 1943.

Later, he married his girlfriend Lahoma Brown around 1947. The couple had seven children.

Leroy Robert Page who later became Leroy Robert Satchel Paige was the seventh of the twelve children born to John Page and Lula Coleman Page.

The family lived in poverty, a fact which he mentioned in his biography, ‘Maybe I'll Pitch Forever’ where he had mentioned, ‘We played in the dirt because we didn’t have toys. We threw rocks. There wasn’t anything else to throw.’

To lend monetary support to his family, he did a number of odd jobs like selling the empty bottles he picked up and as a porter at the Mobile’s Louisville & Nashville’s railway station.

He skipped his classes to play baseball and to fish in Mobile Bay.

His pitching skills were chiseled by Edward Byrd while he was under a five year-detention period in the Industrial School for Juvenile Negro Lawbreakers on charges of stealing toy rings from a store. He came out of the school in 1923, six months before the end of his term.

After coming out from the reform school, Paige started his career as a pitcher for ‘Mobile Tigers’, a semi-professional Negro League, in 1924 and helped his team win thirty games with only one loss.

In 1926, he joined the professional team, ‘Chattanooga Black Lookouts’, where he played for two seasons. During this period, he became a crowd-puller with his stupendous performance that earned him a high ranking in the Negro League.

From 1926 to 1947, he played for a number of teams including ‘Kansas City Monarchs’, ‘Birmingham Black Barons’, ‘New York Black Yankees’, ‘Cleveland Cubs’, ‘Memphis Red Sox’ and ‘Baltimore Black Sox’ and was rewarded handsomely.

Along with other payers, he went for barnstorming and traveled as much as 30,000 miles per year. Despite the racial discrimination that was predominant at the time, his fast and accurate pitching skills gathered a number of white American fans.

The year 1948 marked a grand beginning with his entry into major leagues when Bill Veeck signed him to play for ‘Cleveland Indians’. At the age of 42, Paige made a record as the oldest rookie to debut in the American League.

In 1948, when he made his debut appearance in the World Series for Cleveland Indians, he made a record as the oldest rookie to play for major leagues.

In the years 1952 and 1953, he was named to Major League Baseball’s All-Star Team for the American League.

He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971. He was the first African-American to achieve this honor.