Chattanooga and Birmingham: 1926–1929 A former friend from Mobile,
Alex Herman, was the player/manager for the
Chattanooga White Sox of the minor
Negro Southern League. In 1926 he discovered Paige and offered to pay him $250 per month, of which Paige would collect $50 with the rest going to his mother. He also agreed to pay Lula Paige a $200 advance, and she agreed to the contract. The local newspapers—the
Chattanooga News and
Chattanooga Times—recognized from the beginning that Paige was special. In April 1926, shortly after his arrival, he recorded nine strikeouts over six innings against the
Atlanta Black Crackers. Partway through the 1927 season, Paige's contract was sold to the
Birmingham Black Barons of the major
Negro National League (NNL). According to Paige's first memoir, his contract was for $450 per month, but in his second he said it was for $275. Pitching for the Black Barons, Paige threw hard but was wild and awkward. In his first big game in late June 1927, against the
St. Louis Stars, Paige incited a brawl when his fastball hit the hand of St. Louis catcher Mitchell Murray. Murray then charged the mound and Paige raced for the dugout, but Murray flung his bat and struck Paige above the hip. The police were summoned, and the headline of the
Birmingham Reporter proclaimed a "Near Riot." Paige improved and matured as a pitcher with help from two teammates, Sam Streeter and Harry Salmon, and his manager,
Bill Gatewood. He finished the 1927 season 7–1 with 69 strikeouts and 26 walks in 89 innings. Over the next two seasons, Paige went 12–5 and 10–9 while recording 176 strikeouts in 1929.) On April 29 of that season he recorded 17 strikeouts in a game against the
Cuban Stars, which exceeded what was then the
major league record of 16 held by
Noodles Hahn and
Rube Waddell. Six days later he struck out 18
Nashville Elite Giants, a number that was tied in the white majors by
Bob Feller in 1938. Due to his increased earning potential, Barons owner R. T. Jackson would "rent" Paige out to other ball clubs for a game or two to draw a decent crowd, with both Jackson and Paige taking a cut.
Cuba, Baltimore, and Cleveland: 1929–1931 Abel Linares offered Paige $100 per game to play winter ball for the
Santa Clara team in the
Cuban League.
Gambling on baseball games in Cuba was such a huge pastime that players were not allowed to drink alcohol, so they could stay ready to play. Paige—homesick for carousing, hating the food, despising the constant inspections and being thoroughly baffled by the language—went 6–5 in Cuba. He left Cuba abruptly before the end of the season, with several stories told about the circumstances. Paige told one version in which the mayor of a small hamlet asked him, in Spanish, if he had intentionally lost a particular game. Paige, not understanding a word the man said, nodded and smiled, thinking the man was fawning over him, and then had to flee from the furious mayor. Another version, also told by Paige, says that when he called on an attractive local girl at her home, she and her family interpreted his attentions as an official
engagement and sent the police to enforce it, leading Paige to flee the island with police in pursuit. A third version, told by the general manager of the Santa Clara Leopards, says that he left Cuba in haste after legal charges were brought against him regarding an amorous incident with "a young lady from the provincial mulatto bourgeoisie." When Paige returned to the United States, he and Jackson revived their practice of renting him out to various teams. In the spring of 1930, Jackson leased him to the
Baltimore Black Sox, who had won the 1929
American Negro League championship led by their bowlegged third baseman
Jud "Boojum" Wilson. Paige, as a Southerner, found that he was an outsider on the Black Sox, and his teammates considered him a hick. Moreover, he was the team's number two pitcher behind
Laymon Yokely, and Paige did not like being overshadowed. In midsummer Paige returned to Birmingham, where he pitched well the rest of the summer, going 7–4. By the spring of 1931, the
Depression was taking its toll on the Negro leagues, and the Black Barons had temporarily disbanded. Few teams could afford Paige, but Tom Wilson, who was moving the
Nashville Elite Giants to
Cleveland as the
Cleveland Cubs, thought he could. Playing in the same city as a white major league team, Paige recalled, "I'd look over at the Cleveland Indians' stadium, called
League Park... All season long it burned me, playing there in the shadow of that stadium. "It didn't hurt my pitching, but it sure didn't do me any good."
Pittsburgh, California, and North Dakota: 1931–1936 In June 1931, the
Crawford Colored Giants, an independent club owned by
Pittsburgh underworld figure
Gus Greenlee, made Paige an offer of $250 a month. On August 6, Paige made his Crawford debut against their hometown rivals, the
Homestead Grays. Entering the game in the fourth inning, Paige held the Grays scoreless and had six
strikeouts and no
walks in five innings of
relief work to get the win. In September, Paige joined a Negro all-star team organized by Tom Wilson, called the Philadelphia Giants, to play in the
California Winter League. This was the first of nine winters that he played in a league that provided ongoing competition between elite black and white baseball players, including major and minor league players. On October 24 Paige won his first California game 8–1, allowing five hits and striking out 11, including
Babe Herman four times. He finished the winter with a 6–0 record and 70 strikeouts in 58 innings. In 1932, Greenlee signed
Josh Gibson,
Oscar Charleston and
Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe away from
Cumberland Posey's Homestead Grays to assemble one of the finest baseball clubs in history. Paige took the mound when the Crawfords opened the season on April 30 in their newly built stadium,
Greenlee Field, the first completely black-owned stadium in the country. Paige lost the opener to the
New York Black Yankees in a pitching duel with Jesse "Mountain" Hubbard, but he got even with them by beating them twice that season, including Paige's first Negro league
no-hitter in July. Paige went 10–4, allowing 3.19 runs per game and striking out 92 in 132 innings. With the Crawfords playing five future Hall of Famers, many Negro league historians regard the 1930s Crawfords as the greatest team in Negro league history. The next season, Greenlee organized a new
Negro National League, which survived for 16 years. Despite Greenlee's efforts to control his biggest star, Paige followed his own schedule and was often late to games that he was scheduled to pitch. In August, he jumped the Crawfords, accepting an offer from
Neil Churchill's
North Dakota semi-pro team, the
Bismarcks (sometimes known as the "Bismarck Churchills" today), of $400 and a late model car for just one month's work. It was Paige's first experience playing with an integrated team in the United States. He helped Bismarck beat their local rivals in
Jamestown, who were also featuring a Negro league ace pitcher, Barney Brown. Paige was unapologetic when he returned to Pittsburgh in September to help the Crawfords win the second-half championship. Paige was snubbed by other Negro league players and fans when he was not selected for the first ever
East–West All-Star Game. The 1934 season was perhaps the best of Paige's career, as he went 14–2 in league games while allowing 2.16 runs per game, recording 144 strikeouts, and giving up only 26 walks. On July 4, Paige threw his second no-hitter, this time against the Homestead Grays. He struck out 17, and only a first-inning walk to future Hall of Famer
Buck Leonard and an error in the fourth inning prevented it from being a
perfect game. Leonard, unnerved by the rising swoop of the ball, repeatedly asked the
umpire to check the ball for scuffing. When the umpire removed one ball from play, Paige hollered, "You may as well thrown 'em all out 'cause they're all gonna jump like that."
The Denver Post conducted an annual baseball tournament (sometimes known as the "Little World Series") that attracted semi-pro and independent professional teams from across the country. In 1934 it was open, for the first time, to black players. Greenlee leased Paige to the
Colored House of David, a prominent barnstorming team of white men who represented a religious commune and wore beards. Their manager was Hall of Fame pitcher
Grover Cleveland Alexander. Paige pitched shutouts in his first two starts, striking out 14 and 18. The final, championship game was his third start in five days and he faced the
Kansas City Monarchs—at the time an independent, barnstorming team—who were participating in the tournament with a lineup augmented by Negro league stars
Turkey Stearnes and
Sam Bankhead. Paige faced
Chet Brewer before a crowd of 11,120. Paige won the pitchers' duel 2–1, striking out 12 Monarchs for a tournament total of 44 strikeouts in 28 innings. The 1934 tournament was Paige's first major exposure in front of the white press. Paige received his first East–West All Star Game selection in 1934. Playing for the East, Paige came in during the sixth inning with a man on second and the score tied 0–0, and proceeded to strike out Alec Radcliffe and retire
Turkey Stearnes and
Mule Suttles on soft fly balls. The East scored one run in the top of the eighth and Paige held the West scoreless the rest of the way, giving him his first All-Star Game victory. 27 years after winning the second-ever East-West All-Star Game, Paige was also the winning pitcher of the 1961 East-West Game, the next to last in the series. Despite an outstanding season, Paige had a strong competitor for best Negro league pitcher of 1934, the 21-year-old
Slim Jones of the
Philadelphia Stars, who went 22–3 in league games. In September, a four-team charity benefit doubleheader was played at
Yankee Stadium, with the second game featuring a faceoff between Paige and Jones. Paige recalled driving all night from Pittsburgh and parking near the stadium, then falling asleep in the car. A batboy found and woke him, and he got into uniform just in time for his scheduled start. In a game that was sometimes described as the greatest game in Negro league history, Paige and Jones battled to a 1–1 tie that was called because of darkness. A rematch was scheduled, and this time Paige and the Crawfords beat Jones and the Stars 3–1. That fall, Paige faced off against major league star
Dizzy Dean, who that season had won 30 regular season games plus two more in the
World Series, in several exhibition games. In Cleveland, Paige struck out 13 while beating Dean 4–1, although for that game Dean was playing with a minor league team. Later, while playing in the
California Winter League, Paige faced Dean in front of 18,000 fans in Los Angeles, with Dean's team including major league stars like
Wally Berger. The two teams battled for 13 innings, with Paige's team finally winning 1–0. Bill Veeck, future owner of the Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns, and
Chicago White Sox, was watching the game and many years later described it as "the greatest pitchers' battle I have ever seen." Paige and Dean would continue to barnstorm against each other until 1945. Later, when Dean was a sports columnist for the
Chicago Tribune, he called Paige "the pitcher with the greatest stuff I ever saw." In the spring of 1935, Greenlee refused Paige's request to raise his $250 per month salary, so Paige decided to return to Bismarck for the same $400 per month and late model used car that he got before. Churchill added other Negro league players to the team—pitchers
Barney Morris, and
Hilton Smith, catcher
Quincy Trouppe, and pitcher/catcher Double Duty Radcliffe. Paige dominated the competition, with a 29–2 record, 321 strikeouts, and only 16 walks. In Wichita, Ray "Hap" Dumont was establishing a new national baseball tournament, the
National Baseball Congress. Dumont invited 32 semi-pro teams, paying $1,000 for Paige and his Bismarck teammates to attend. The tournament was held at
Lawrence–Dumont Stadium in
Wichita, Kansas and offered a $7,000 purse. Churchill added yet another Negro league star to his team—Chet Brewer, the Kansas City Monarchs' ace pitcher. Bismarck swept the tournament in seven straight games. Paige won the four games he started, pitched in relief in a fifth game, and struck out 60 batters—a record that still held 74 years later. In September, Paige could not return to the NNL because he was banned from the league for the 1935 season for jumping to the Bismarck team.
J. L. Wilkinson, owner of the independent Kansas City Monarchs, signed Paige on a game-by-game basis through the end of the season. That winter, a northern California promoter, Johnny Burton, hired Paige to front a team called the "Satchel Paige All-Stars", in a game to be held on February 7, 1936, in Oakland against a white all-star squad. The opposing team included a number of major league players out of the
Bay Area, including
Ernie Lombardi,
Augie Galan,
Cookie Lavagetto, and
Gus Suhr, as well as
Pacific Coast League star
Joe DiMaggio, who was making his last stop as a minor leaguer before joining the
New York Yankees. Other than Negro league catcher, Ebel Brooks, Paige's team was composed of local semi-pro players. Despite the imbalance in talent, Paige kept the game to a 1–1 tie through nine innings, striking out 12 and giving up one run on three hits. In the bottom of the tenth inning, he struck out two more, then gave up a single to
Dick Bartell, bringing up DiMaggio. Bartell stole second on the first pitch, then went to third on a wild pitch. DiMaggio then hit a hard hopper to the mound that Paige deflected; DiMaggio beat the second baseman's throw to drive in the winning run. A Yankee scout watching the game wired the club that day a report that read, "DiMaggio everything we'd hoped he'd be: Hit Satch one for four." In 1936, Paige returned to Pittsburgh where Greenlee acquiesced to Paige's salary demands and gave him a $600-per-month contract, by far the highest in the Negro leagues. In games for which complete box scores are available, Paige went 5–0, allowed 3.21 runs per game, and struck out 47 in 47 innings.
Dominican Republic: 1937 In the spring of 1937 the Crawfords were training in
New Orleans, and Paige was approached by Dr. José Enrique Aybar, dean of the
University of Santo Domingo, deputy of the
Dominican Republic's national congress and director of the
Dragones, a baseball team operated by
Rafael Trujillo,
dictator of the Dominican Republic. Aybar hired Paige to act as an agent for Trujillo in recruiting other Negro league players to play for "Los Dragones." Aybar gave Paige $30,000 to hire as many players as he could. Paige recruited five of his Crawfords teammates—Cool Papa Bell, Leroy Matlock,
Sam Bankhead, Harry Williams and Herman Andrews—as well as Josh Gibson, who had recently been traded to the Homestead Grays. Other Dominican teams were also recruiting Negro league players. Greenlee and his fellow owners banned Paige and the other jumpers from the organized Negro leagues, but failed to dissuade the players. In the Dominican Republic, the American players were shadowed by armed guards. Although the purpose of the guards was to protect the players, the players were fearful that Trujillo would unleash them in anger if his team lost the championship. The season ended with an eight-game series between the two top teams, Paige's Dragones of "Ciudad Trujillo" (as Trujillo had renamed the capital city of
Santo Domingo) and the
Águilas Cibaeñas of
Santiago. The Dragones won the first four, with Paige contributing two of them. The Águilas came back to win the next two and still had a chance to win the championship if they won the final two games. In Paige's memoirs, he recalled finishing the game with two shutout innings to hold onto a 6–5 win while soldiers looked on "like a firing squad." In reality, however, Paige did not enter the game until there was one out in the ninth inning, with his team leading 8–3. He proceeded to give up three runs on three hits before he got the third out on a great throw by Bankhead. Paige had an excellent season overall, however, leading the league with an 8–2 record. Paige and the other players returning from the Dominican Republic faced a Negro league ban for jumping their teams. In response, they formed a barnstorming team called "Trujillo's All-Stars", which was later known as the "Satchel Paige All-Stars." Wilkinson evaded the ban by having promoter Ray Dean schedule games between the All-Stars and the
House of David. In August, the All-Stars won the
Denver Post tournament. In late September, Paige faced a team of Negro league all-stars at the
Polo Grounds. Despite striking out eight and allowing only two runs, he lost when the opposing pitcher, Johnny "Schoolboy" Taylor, tossed a no-hitter. A week later a rematch was held at
Yankee Stadium, and this time Paige beat Taylor handily.
Mexico: 1938 In 1938, Greenlee, who still held Paige's NNL contract, again made an unsuccessful attempt to sign Paige. Greenlee then sold his contract to the
Newark Eagles for $5,000, but they could not sign him either. Paige instead went to play in the
Mexican League.
Jorge Pasquel, a Mexican baseball executive and businessman, and his four brothers wanted the Mexican League to compete with the major leagues. Their plan to do that was to hire the best Negro league players who were ignored by the big leagues, then raid big league teams and field integrated clubs in the name of international baseball. With this goal, they hired Paige for $2,000 per month to play for the moribund Club Agrario of
Mexico City, to create a rivalry for Club Azules of
Veracruz, a powerhouse bunch led by
Martín Dihigo. Back in the states, Greenlee, out $5,000, declared Paige "banned forever from baseball." Pitching in Venezuela, Paige felt pain in his right shoulder. After he arrived in Mexico, the pain developed into the first major injury of his career. He tried to pitch through the pain, and managed to beat Dihigo in their first match-up in early September, allowing one run in eight innings. Two weeks later they faced off again, and this time Paige could barely lift his arm. He managed to go six-plus innings in a game that Paige's team ultimately lost 10–3. One sportswriter wrote that Paige looked like a "squeezed lemon." Paige returned to his hotel room. He recalled that the next morning, "My stomach got sick with the pain that shot up my right arm. Sweat popped out all over me. The pain wouldn't quit. I tried lifting my arm. I couldn't. I just sat there, sweating, hurting enough to want to cry, getting sicker in the stomach and getting scared—real scared. My arm. I couldn't lift it." He was examined by physicians in Mexico and in the United States; one expert told him that he would never pitch again.
Kansas City Travelers: 1939 With his arm injured, Paige suddenly found himself unemployable. He looked for work as a manager or coach, but was unsuccessful. One ballclub owner was willing to give him a chance to play ball again—J.L. Wilkinson of the Monarchs. Wilkinson offered him the modest opportunity to play, not for the
Negro American League Monarchs, but for a second-string barnstorming team called the Travelers, which was now renamed the Satchel Paige All-Stars. Paige would pitch when he could and play first base when he could not. Managed by
Newt Joseph, the team also included
Byron "Mex" Johnson, but otherwise it mostly functioned as a minor-league team staffed by marginal, aging, or young players. Playing throughout Kansas, Missouri, the Dakotas, Illinois, and even Utah, Paige recalled, "Everybody'd heard I was a fastballer and here I was throwing Alley Oops and bloopers and underhand and sidearm and any way I could to get the ball up to the plate and get it over, maybe even for a strike. But even that made my arm ache like a tooth was busting every time I threw. And the balls I was throwing never would fool anybody in the Negro leagues, not without a fast ball to go with them." Sometime that summer Paige's fast ball returned. Paige's catcher, Frazier "Slow" Robinson, recalled that one afternoon Paige told him, "You better be ready because I'm ready today." Paige then surprised him when, with Robinson expecting a lob, Paige "threw that baseball so hard that he knocked the mitt off my hand." Modern sports medicine specialists suggest that Paige suffered from a partially torn rotator cuff in his shoulder caused by repetitive stress. Paige's recovery was assisted by the Monarch's long-time trainer, Frank "Jewbaby" Floyd, who was sent by Wilkinson to work with Paige. Floyd worked with massage, hot and cold water, ointments, and
chiropractic. He had Paige rest his arm by pitching fewer innings and playing other positions. By late fall his team was playing well against major Negro league teams. On September 22, 1939, in the second game of a double-header against the powerful
American Giants, Paige won a 1–0 game, striking out 10 men in the seven innings before the game was called on account of darkness.
Buck O'Neil, who had batted against Paige in 1935 and 1936 and faced him again in a game against the parent Monarchs, recalled a dropoff in speed but an improvement in deception. "He could still throw hard. Not as hard as he had thrown, but you're talkin' about somebody thrown' ninety-eight, a hundred miles an hour. But now he's throwin' maybe ninety—which is still more than the average guy ... He was the best and, actually, he was so deceptive! You'd look at that big ol' slow arm movin' and—
chooo—that ball's just right by you. And then he'd come up and throw you a change of pace and, oh, man."
Puerto Rico: 1939–40 In just one season, Paige left his mark on
Puerto Rican baseball. He arrived in
Puerto Rico in late October, four weeks after the start of the 1939–40 winter season, and joined the
Brujos de Guayama (the Guayama Witch Doctors). The town of
Guayama is widely known for its
Santería,
Palo, and other spiritualist religious practices. In a legendary game in Guayama, Paige walked off the mound because he saw a ghost standing next to him. In a December game against
Mayagüez, Paige set a league record by striking out 17. He ended the season with a 19–3 record, a 1.93
ERA, and 208 strikeouts in 205 innings. The 19 wins and 208 strikeouts set league single-season records that have never been broken. Paige helped his team win the league championship playoff series, winning two games against the San Juan Senadores. Puerto Rican pitcher Ramón Bayron recalled, "It took special eyes to see his pitches."
Luis Olmo, who later played with the
Brooklyn Dodgers, described Paige that winter as "the best I've ever seen." Late in the 1940 season, Paige was promoted to the Monarchs. On September 12, Paige made his debut with the Monarchs against the American Giants and pitched a five-inning darkness-shortened complete game. The Monarchs won 9–3 and Paige struck out ten. Because of Paige's strong gate appeal, there was considerable demand by outside teams to lease Paige's services to pitch for a single game. With infrequent league games, Wilkinson booked Paige to pitch for small-town teams or other Negro league teams at rates ranging from a third of the total receipts to a fixed fee $250 to $2,000 per game, plus expenses. Wilkinson purchased a
Douglas DC-3 airplane just to ferry Paige around to these outside appearances. Because of the larger gate when Paige pitched, the Monarchs' owners could also insist on a larger share of the receipts from their road games. Wilkinson and Paige each kept a share of the fees. By the early 1940s, Paige's estimated annual earnings were $40,000, which was four times the pay of the average player on the major league New York Yankees and nearly matched the pay of their top star, Joe DiMaggio. Hoping for some publicity for Paige, who had received relatively little coverage while pitching in the hinterlands with the Travelers, Wilkinson arranged for Paige to pitch on opening day of 1941 for the New York Black Yankees. Appearing in front of a crowd of 20,000 fans at Yankee Stadium, Paige pitched a complete game, 5–3 victory, striking out eight. As intended, the contest brought considerable coverage from both the black and white media, including a pictorial by
Life magazine. Paige took over the role of
ace pitcher for the Monarchs, while
Hilton Smith, their former ace, dropped to number two pitcher and sometimes was relegated to relieving Paige. Because of Paige's ability to draw a crowd, he would often be scheduled to start a game and pitch for three innings, with Smith or another teammate assigned to pitch the last six. In addition to Smith, Paige's teammates included first baseman
Buck O'Neil, shortstop and manager
Newt Allen, and center fielder
Willard Brown. In 1941, the Monarchs won their third consecutive Negro American League championship. Though no standings were published, according to historian John Holway, they had a 24–6 team record for a winning percentage of .800, placing them five games ahead of the second-place
New Orleans/St. Louis Stars. On August 1, 1941, Paige made his first appearance in the East–West All Star Game in five years, collecting 305,311 votes, 40,000 more than the next highest player, Buck Leonard. Paige entered the game at the start of the eighth inning with the East leading 8–1 and pitched the last two innings. The only hit he gave up was a slow roller to the NNL's new starting catcher, the
Baltimore Elite Giants'
Roy Campanella. With America's entrance into World War II,
Dizzy Dean came out of retirement, forming an all-star team consisting of recently drafted white major league and minor league players. On May 24, Dean faced Paige and the Monarchs in an exhibition game at
Wrigley Field, the first time a black team ever played at Wrigley. The Monarchs defeated Dean's All-Stars 3–1 in front of a crowd of 29,775. On May 31, Paige teamed up with the
Homestead Grays to face Dean's All-Stars again before 22,000 fans at
Griffith Stadium. The Grays won 8–1, with Paige striking out seven (including
Washington Senators star
Cecil Travis) in five innings of work. In the 1942 East-West All-Star Game, Paige entered in the top of the seventh with the score tied 2–2. Pitching the last three innings, he allowed three runs on five hits and was charged with the loss in the 5–2 game.
1942 Negro World Series The Monarchs won the Negro American League pennant again in 1942. For the first time since 1927, the champions of the two leagues, Kansas City and
Washington/Homestead, met in the
Negro World Series. Paige started game one in Washington and pitched five shutout innings. The Monarchs scored their first run in the top of the sixth. In the bottom of the frame, Jack Matchett relieved Paige and finished the game, with Kansas City adding seven more runs to win 8–0. Game two was played two days later in Pittsburgh, and a highlight was Paige's dramatic showdown with Josh Gibson. In the bottom of the sixth, Paige relieved starter Hilton Smith with the Monarchs ahead 2–0. In the seventh inning, he gave up three singles and faced Gibson with the bases loaded and two outs. Gibson fouled off the first two pitches, then whiffed on the third. When Paige told the story in his autobiography, he mythologized the story. According to Paige, the strikeout came in the ninth inning with a one-run lead, and he walked the three batters ahead of Gibson in order to face him. The mythical version was retold by
Buck Leonard and Buck O'Neil in their memoirs. In the actual game, the Monarchs added three runs in the top of the eighth to take a 5–0 lead, then Paige gave up four in the bottom of the frame to make it 5–4. The Monarchs added another three in the top of the ninth and won 8–4. The next series game was played a week later in Kansas City. When the injury-plagued Grays brought in star players from other teams, including pitcher
Leon Day, second baseman Lenny Pearson, and outfielder Ed Stone of the
Newark Eagles and shortstop
Bus Clarkson of the Philadelphia Stars, the Monarchs played under protest. Day and Paige both pitched complete games, with Paige giving up four runs on eight hits and Day giving up one run on five hits for a Grays victory. The Monarchs' protest was upheld and the game was disallowed. Game four took place in
Shibe Park in Philadelphia, and Paige was scheduled to start, but he did not show up until the fourth inning. According to his autobiography, Paige was delayed in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania by an arrest for speeding. The Grays had taken a 5–4 lead, and Paige immediately entered the game. In the remainder of the game, he did not allow a hit or a run and struck out six, while the Monarchs' hitters scored two runs in the seventh to take the lead and three more in the eighth to win, 9–5, and sweep the series. Paige had pitched in all four official games in the Series (as well as one unofficial one), going 16 innings, striking out 18, and giving up eight hits and six runs.
1943–1946 in the uniform of the
Kansas City Monarchs, 1945 Paige was the West's starting pitcher in the 1943 East-West All-Star Game, played before a record 51,723 fans in
Comiskey Park. He pitched three scoreless innings without giving up a hit, struck out four, walked one, and was credited as the winning pitcher in the West's 2–1 victory. As a batter, he hit a double to lead off the bottom of the third, then was lifted for a pitch runner to "thunderous applause." World War II caused a large number of baseball players to be inducted into military service. Among Paige's Kansas City teammates,
Connie Johnson, Buck O'Neil, and Ted Strong entered military service that year, and Willard Brown followed them the following season. Paige's Selective Service records show that during the war his draft status evolved from 1-A (available to be drafted) to 2-A ("deferred in support of national health, safety, or interest") to the final 4-A (too old for service, even though when he registered he gave a birth date of 1908, two years younger than his actual birth date). Paige continued to play, and the available statistics show a slip in performance in 1943, with a 6–8 record and a 4.59
run average (his highest average since 1929) reported for the Monarchs. In 1944, Paige won six games while striking out 85 batters with a 0.72 ERA. Before the 1944 East-West All-Star Game—black baseball's most lucrative event—Paige grabbed headlines when he demanded that the owners contribute the receipts to the war relief fund, threatening a player strike if they did not accede. The owners were able to turn the other players and fans against Paige, however, when they revealed that Paige had received $800 for participating in the 1943 game (in contrast to the $50 paid to the other players) and had demanded an extra cut for the 1944 game as well. Paige was removed from the roster and the strike was averted when the owners agreed to raise the player payments (the East's team accepted $200 each, while the West's players agreed to $100). In 1946, many of the Monarchs' players, including Willard Brown, Connie Johnson, Buck O'Neil, Ford Smith, and Ted Strong, returned from military service, and the team led the NAL in both the first and second halves, capturing the league pennant. O'Neil led the league in batting average, Brown in home runs, Johnson in wins, and Paige in
total run average.
1946 Negro World Series The Monarchs faced the Newark Eagles in the
1946 Negro World Series. The first game was played at the Polo Grounds and Hilton Smith started for the Monarchs. The Monarchs held a 1–0 lead in the bottom of the sixth, when Smith walked
Larry Doby to lead off the inning, and Paige was called in to relieve. Paige struck out
Monte Irvin and Lenny Pearson, but Doby stole second and Paige gave up a single to Johnny Davis, which tied the game. In the top of the seventh, the Monarchs got the lead back when Paige hit a single, advanced to second on an error, and scored on a hit by Herb Souell. Paige shut down the Eagles for the rest of the game, striking out eight and allowing four hits over four innings, and was credited with the win. Two days later, Paige came into the second game in a similar situation as the first, but the result was quite different. Ford Smith started the game for the Monarchs, and he had a 4–1 lead entering the bottom of the seventh. After allowing two runs and with Irvin on first, Paige was brought in to protect the 4–3 lead. This time, however, Paige gave up four hits before the end of the inning, and four runs crossed the plate. Paige finished the game, but was charged with the loss in the 7–4 game. The next two games were played in Kansas City, and the Monarchs won game three, getting a complete game from
Jim LaMarque. Ted Alexander started game four, but gave way to Paige in the top of the sixth with the Monarchs trailing 4–1. Paige gave up three runs on three hits in the sixth, including a home run to Irvin. He went on to finish the game, giving up one more run in the seventh, and the Monarchs lost 8–1. Kansas City won the fifth game and Newark won the sixth. For the deciding game seven, Paige was missing. Buck O'Neil believed Paige was meeting with Bob Feller about their upcoming barnstorming tour. With Ford Smith pitching, the Monarchs lost 3–2, and the Eagles claimed the championship. For his team, Feller recruited all-stars from both major leagues. As his main opponent, he asked Paige to head a team of Negro league all-stars. Feller's team included 1946 American League batting champion,
Mickey Vernon, at first base,
Johnny Beradino at second,
Phil Rizzuto at shortstop, and
Ken Keltner at third. The outfielders were
Jeff Heath,
Charlie Keller, and
Sam Chapman; after the
World Series was over, National League batting champion
Stan Musial would also join the tour. Catching was shared by
Jim Hegan and
Frankie Hayes. In addition to Feller, the pitching staff included
Bob Lemon,
Dutch Leonard,
Johnny Sain,
Spud Chandler, and
Fred Hutchinson. With help from J.L. Wilkinson and Tom Baird, Paige assembled a team that included first baseman
Buck O'Neil, second baseman
Hank Thompson, shortstops
Chico Renfroe and
Artie Wilson, third basemen Howard Easterling and Herb Souell, outfielders Gene Benson and Johnny Davis, catcher Quincy Trouppe, and pitchers Barney Brown,
Gentry Jessup, Rufus Lewis, Hilton Smith, and
Neck Stanley. Feller scheduled 35 games in 31 cities in 17 states, all to be played in 27 days. The tour would require 13,000 miles of travel. Several same-day multi-city doubleheaders were to be played. Feller leased two
DC-3 airplanes, with "Bob Feller All-Stars" painted on one fuselage and "Satchel Paige All-Stars" on the other. While Feller's team would face several other opponents, the majority of the games were against Paige's team. Feller and Paige would start each game whenever possible and usually pitch one to five innings. The first game was played at
Forbes Field in Pittsburgh on September 30, two days after the end of the major league season and one day after the final game of the Negro World Series. Paige and Feller each pitched three innings and left the game with the score tied 1–1. Feller struck out three and gave up two hits, while Paige struck out four and gave up only one hit. Paige's team broke the tie in the seventh inning when Hank Thompson walked and stole second and Souell drove him home with a single up the middle. Over the next six days, Feller's team won games in Youngstown, Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, and Newark, before Paige's team won a second game in New York. Paige pitched five shutout innings in Yankee Stadium before a crowd of 27,462. After the game they flew to Baltimore, where that same evening Paige's team beat Feller's. The next day, Paige's team won again in Columbus. From there, Feller's team won games in
Dayton, Ohio,
Richmond, Indiana,
Council Bluffs, Iowa, and
Wichita, Kansas. They then played two games in Kansas City, with Paige's team winning the first game on a three-run
walk-off home run by Johnny Davis, and Feller's team winning the second. After that series, Feller's team continued on to Denver and California, while most of Paige's team left the tour. Paige, however, continued on to California where he joined a lesser team, Chet Brewer's Kansas City Royals, which was scheduled to play Feller's All-Stars. Paige faced Feller in Los Angeles and in San Diego and lost both games. Another scheduled match-up was cancelled when Paige filed a lawsuit against Feller, claiming that Feller had not paid some of the money he was owed. Overall, Feller had pitched 54 innings against Paige's team and given up 15 runs, an average of 2.50 per nine innings. Paige had pitched 42 innings and allowed 18 runs, or 3.86 per nine innings. After the 1947 season, Feller organized another all-star team for a barnstorming tour. This time, Paige was not invited to tour with him, with Feller opting to play more games in the South against white opponents. Paige did face Feller twice, however, while playing with Chet Brewer's Kansas City Royals in Los Angeles. In the first game, on October 15, both pitchers went four innings. Feller gave up four hits and one walk and struck out two, while Paige gave up just two hits and one walk and struck out seven. Nevertheless, Paige took the loss when he gave up a run in the fourth when Keltner singled and later scored on a sacrifice fly by Heath. On October 19, they again faced each other in front of a crowd of 12,000-plus. Both pitchers went five innings. Paige allowed three hits and no walks, and struck out eight, including
Ralph Kiner twice. He left the game with a 1–0 lead, but Feller's team came back in the late innings to win 2–1. ==American and National League==