The Shy Showman

For decades, Satchel Paige pitched thousands of times around the world, bewildering opponents and flummoxing anyone who sought to learn his story. A new biography sets out to sort fact from legend.

Max Lakin

When Leroy "Satchel" Paige died in Kansas City in 1982, he had already been enshrined in Cooperstown and had taken his place in a baseball gospel thick with outsize personalities. At Paige's funeral, Buck O'Neil reminisced about his contemporary in the Negro Leagues, and spoke directly to white America's guilt about segregation. "Don't feel sorry for us," he said. "I feel sorry for your fathers and your mothers, because they didn't get to see us play."