Uncommon commons: In more than 30 years in
sportscards publishing I have thrown hundreds of notes into files about the
players – usually non-star players – who made up the majority of the baseball
and football cards I collected as a kid. Today, I keep adding to those files as
I peruse microfilms of The Sporting News from the 1880s through the
1960s. I found these tidbits brought some life to the player pictures on those
cards. I figure that if I enjoyed them, you might too.
Followers
of this blog may have discerned that I am a Satchel Paige admirer. After all, I
have already created three custom/fantasy cards of Paige and have three or four
more on my to-do list.
I was,
therefore, particularly interested in what The Sporting News had to say
about Paige’s signing with the Cleveland Indians in July, 1948.
In the headline of a July 14 editorial, TSN
publisher J.G. Taylor Spink, called Paige’s signing an “Ill-Advised Move.”
Spink led off with, “Many
well-wishers of baseball emphatically fail to see eye to eye with the officials
responsible for . . . the signing of Satchel Paige, the superannuated Negro
pitcher, by Bill Veeck, publicity minded head of the Cleveland Indians, to
‘save the pennant’ for the Tribe.”
Spink continued, “No man should set
himself up against the achievement of another man’s chances in life, be that
other man Negro or white, Chinese or Indian.
“Any criticism by this publication
of the addition of Paige to the pennant-seeking forces of the Cleveland club obviously is not based on
Paige’s color.
“Certainly, no man at all familiar
with the editorial policy of THE SPORTING
NEWS and its
reaction to the strivings of the Negro to gain a place in the major leagues,
will question the motives of this paper.”
The publisher went on to lay out
his bona fides on the subject of baseball integration, “It was THE SPORTING NEWS which last fall
named Jackie Robinson the major league Rookie of the Year. THE SPORTING NEWS, and its
publishers, too, went on record as favoring the entry of more Negro players
when Robinson was signed by Branch Rickey for his Montreal
subsidiary, and again when Jackie was moved up the Brooklyn
club.
“In criticizing the acquisition of
Satchel Paige by Cleveland, THE SPORTING NEWS
believes that Veeck has gone too far in his quest of publicity, and that he has
done his league’s position absolutely no good insofar as public reaction is
concerned.
“Paige said he was 39 years of ago
(sic). There are reports that he is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50.
“It would have done Cleveland and
the American League no good in the court of public opinion if, at 50, Paige
were as Caucasian as, let us say, Bob Feller.
“To bring in a pitching ‘rookie’ of
Paige’s age casts a reflection on the entire scheme of operation in the major
leagues.
“To sign a hurler at Paige’s age is
to demean the standards of baseball in the big circuits. Further complicating
the situation is that suspicion that if Satchel were white, he would not have
drawn a second thought from Veeck.”
Spink concluded, “William Harridge,
president of the American League, would have been well within his rights if he
had refused to approve the Paige contract.”
Veeck’s perspicacity in signing
Paige was borne out as Satch threw to a 6-1 record with a save on a 2.48 ERA and the Indians won the 1948 World
Championship.
Paige also proved to have been a
shrewd financial investment for Veeck, whose outlay in bringing Paige to the
Indians was said to have totaled $55,000.
Paige was reported to have received
a $10,000 signing bonus, and a three-month contract calling for $5,000 per
month. In addition, Veeck paid $15,000 to the Kansas City Monarchs for Paige’s
contract and another $15,000 to Chicago
promoter Abe Saperstein, who handled Paige’s bookings as a barnstormer.
While the Indians’ turnstiles would
certainly have kept spinning as the team worked its way to the A.L. pennant,
the boost in attendance every time Paige was announced as the starter proved to
be an instant return on investment.
In his Aug. 3 start against the
Senators, Paige helped set a new Municipal Stadium night-game record by drawing
72,434. He notched his second major league victory that night, beating Washington 5-3.
His next scheduled start was Aug.
13 in Chicago,
when he beat the White Sox 5-0. Attendance set a record for a Chicago night
game with 51,013 paid, and an unknown number of literal gate crashers who
flooded the park when the crush of the crowd knocked down part of a fence.
A week later the Indians broke the
previous Cleveland
night-game record when Paige beat the White sox with a three-hit shutout before
a paid attendance of 78,382.
After each of Paige’s successful
outings, Veeck is said to have sent telegrams to Spink urging him to name Paige
TSN’s Rookie of the Year.
In the Sept. 1 issue, TSN followed
up with another Spink-bylined editorial.
By that time, Paige had run up a
5-1 record, albeit largely against second-division clubs.
In the later editorial, Spink
wrote:
THE SPORTING
NEWS would make no change in its original
editorial, except to express its admiration for any pitcher—white or
colored—who at Paige’s age can gain credit for five victories over a period of
six weeks in any league, major or minor. But it cannot express any admiration
for the present-day standard of major league ball that makes such a showing
possible. Why not build up those standards, instead of demeaning them further?
All
this raises the question of whether Satchel’s early successes are due to his
sterling pitching abilities or to the fact that some major clubs still have a
considerable distance to go before they attain prewar standards.
Whatever
may be the opinion as to the motives of publicity-expert Bill Veeck in signing
Paige, there is no question that Ol’ Satch has brought a lot of color into the
majors—and we don’t mean black. It’s the red on the faces of American League
officials and partisan who have seen this veteran of the barnstorming trails
giving lessons to the batters and other pitchers in the junior major.
And, as much as Spink proclaimed himself
Jackie Robinson’s champion, the ensuing 10 years would find TSN becoming more
and more critical of Robinson the player and Robinson the man. Whether that was
due solely to Robinson’s increasingly evident failings on both scores or
whether Spink became unable to completely sublimate his Southern heritage
cannot be definitively discerned 70 years later.
Following the wreck, he continued in the Cardinals' organization through the 1952 season, rising as high as the AAA level. He then played five years with Shreveport, an independent team in the Texas League; he was a playing manager from 1954-57. 
