Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend

From Strand Bookstore

The superbly researched, spellbindingly told story of athlete, showman, philosopher, and boundary breaker Leroy 'Satchel' Paige. This is the stirring account of the child born of an Alabama washerwoman, mother of twelve, 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, who was signed at age forty-two by Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck. Satchel Paige was still pitching in the major leagues when he was fifty-nine. Myth, story, biography. What a dazzling life!

From the Publisher

A portrait of the Negro League pitcher evaluates the role of discrimination in limiting his career, covering such topics as his near-defeat of a young Joe DiMaggio, the Jim Crow biases that prevented his signing with the big leagues until he was in his forties, and his lasting legacy.

Review

Andy Geller - New York Post
"Read it if you love baseball and want to find out more about one of its true heroes. Read it equally if you want to learn how Jim Crow robbed a baseball great of his true place in the game."

Review

David A. Takami - Seattle Times
"One of the challenges for [Paige's] biographer...is to distinguish the actual from the apocryphal--but to give readers enough of the latter for its sheer entertainment value. In this definitive and impressively researched biography,...Larry Tye succeeds in doing precisely that, offering a rich and nuanced portrait of Paige that is as complex as it is thrilling to read."

Review

Bill Nowlin - Boston Globe
"Tye's writing is a pleasure, relaxed but economical, providing a more vivid sense of life in black baseball than any of the several other books on Paige and the Negro Leagues."

Review

Rob Klugman - Philadelphia Inquirer
"It would probably be difficult to write a boring book about Satchel Paige, and Tye certainly has not done so. Through exhaustive research, interviews, and correspondence with more than 350 people, he has surely given us a definitive account of the man and of the player."

Review

Janet Maslin - New York Times
"[A] discerning, empathetic and hype-free...biography....Paige's contribution to baseball history, already enormous, is enhanced by the strong, solid arguments that Mr. Tye has constructed."

More about the book

Larry Tye presents the first authoritative biography of one of the greatest players and characters in baseball history, Leroy "Satchel" Paige, whose mythic status has baffled potential biographers as much as the batters who had the misfortune of facing him. Until now, basic information such as Paige's real name and date of birth have remained a mystery, perpetuated by Paige himself, who notably provided conflicting reports of his own childhood. When it came to Paige's baseball career, the legends outnumber the facts: Did he really once call his teammates off the field for an inning, and then strike out the side? Was he known to intentionally walk hitters to load the bases, just to make the game more interesting? Did he once win more than 60 games in the Negro Leagues? Did he actually pitch in a big league game at the age of 59? Tye answers all of these questions and many more, in a riveting biography worthy of one of baseball's neglected legends. Selected by the New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of 2009.