Matty Zimmerman/AP Photo
Satchel Paige pitches for the Cleveland Indians in the sixth inning against the Yankees at New York’s Yankee Stadium, July 22, 1948.
The Cleveland Indians are searching for a new name. After due consideration, I suggest calling the team the Satchels—after Leroy “Satchel” Paige, who played for Cleveland teams in both the major leagues and the Negro Leagues, and was probably the greatest pitcher in baseball history. (His only real rival for that title is the Washington Senators’ Walter Johnson.)
Born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1906, Paige earned his nickname as a young boy carrying passengers’ bags at railroad stations.
Because the major leagues banned Black players until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, many great athletes played in the Negro Leagues. Most Negro League players toiled in relative obscurity because white newspapers ignored Black baseball. But Paige—who pitched for eight different Negro League teams between 1926 and 1947—was relatively well known because he was a colorful figure and because he often pitched against, and beat, white teams in exhibition games. In 1971, as a tribute to Paige’s place in baseball’s pantheon, he was the first player who spent most of his career in the Negro Leagues to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Cleveland team’s recent decision to change its name came in response to years of protests from Native American activists and many of the team’s fans. It has already phased out images of its longtime mascot, Chief Wahoo, from the walls of its stadium and from its uniforms, temporarily replacing it with the letter C, until they select a new name.
The recent upsurge of outrage over systemic racism has accelerated the urgency to right past wrongs. In December, for example, Major League Baseball officially recognized the Negro Leagues as equal to the American and National Leagues, which will involve incorporating the records of more than 3,400 Negro League players into its official statistics. Sports teams are also feeling the heat to revise names that many consider demeaning racial slurs.
For many years, Dan Snyder, who purchased the Washington Redskins in 1999, opposed changing the team’s name. But last summer, 87 different investors and shareholders sent a public letter to such top Redskins sponsors as Nike, FedEx, and PepsiCo, urging them to pull their sponsorships unless Snyder agreed to change the team’s name. Last July, Snyder announced that he’d had a change of heart.
The Cleveland baseball team is the latest to take such action. Its owners have pledged to gather ideas from local fans, and suggestions are pouring in.
Name changes are nothing new in professional baseball. Cleveland’s first entry in the big leagues was called the Blues, who competed in the original National League from 1879 to 1884, when the team folded. Next came the Cleveland Spiders, who played in the American Association from 1887 to 1888, followed by 11 seasons in the National League. In 1899, the Spiders were so bad that they were dropped from the league.
When the American League began in 1900, the Cleveland franchise was one of eight charter members, resurrecting the name Cleveland Blues. In 1902, they became the Cleveland Bronchos. That year, they recruited star infielder Napoleon Lajoie to join their roster and changed their name to the Naps. Lajoie left the club after the 1914 season, and the following year, they became the Indians. The team has long maintained that the name honored Native American Louis Sockalexis, who played for the Spiders from 1897 to 1899, but historians have cast doubt on that story.
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Some fans have suggested that the team name revert to the Spiders, but many Clevelanders consider that name too creepy. Others favor the Rockers, which links to the city’s best-known tourist attraction, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. (The term “rock and roll” was coined by Cleveland radio disc jockey Alan Freed.) But Denver already has the Rockies, and a Rockies-Rockers World Series could prove confounding.
In 2008, the Cleveland team sold the naming rights of Jacobs Field to the Progressive Insurance Company, which is why the stadium is now called Progressive Field. But the team’s not likely to change its name to the Cleveland Progressives—even though the city has a history of progressive mayors like Tom Johnson (1901–1909), Newton Baker (1912–1915), Carl Stokes (1968–1971), and Dennis Kucinich (1978–1979).
Still other fans hope that the Indians’ owners will rename the team after one of Cleveland’s Negro League franchises, which include the short-lived Cubs (1931), Stars (1932), Giants (1933), Red Sox (1934), and Bears (1939–1940). The most enduring was the Buckeyes, which lasted from 1942 to 1950 and won Negro American League championships in 1945 and 1947 and the Negro League World Series in the latter year. But Ohio State University already has a claim on the name Buckeyes, which could cause some confusion in the Buckeye State.
Paige was an outstanding athlete whose success helped persuade his white counterparts that African Americans could compete in the major leagues if given a chance.
Cleveland may be the only city where two pro teams have been named for individuals—the Naps and the Cleveland Browns football team, which fans voted to name after the team’s founder, coach, and general manager Paul Brown. So the Satchels would be part of that tradition. It would also be an homage to the Negro Leagues, the city’s history, and its current demography: African Americans comprise half of Cleveland’s population and 20 percent in the Cleveland metro area.
Paige played for eight Negro League teams from 1926 to 1947, including a brief fling with the Cleveland Cubs in 1931 before joining the heralded Pittsburgh Crawfords later that season.
A few months after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers in April 1947, Indians owner Bill Veeck signed Negro League star Larry Doby, the American League’s first Black player. Because he played in Cleveland for nine years and was eventually elected to the Hall of Fame, some fans suggest renaming the team the Dobys.
The following year, 1948, Veeck recruited Paige as a 42-year-old “rookie.” Some sportswriters thought that signing the aging Paige was simply a stunt to gain publicity and increase attendance. But Paige surprised the doubters.
Although he didn’t join the team until early July, he started seven games, hurled three complete games, and relieved in 14 others. He won six games, lost only one, compiled a remarkable 2.48 earned run average, and helped the Indians win the pennant and World Series. He was the first Black pitcher to take the mound in a World Series game.
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By the time he reached the majors, of course, Paige was past his prime. After two seasons in Cleveland, the Indians traded him to the lowly St. Louis Browns, where he pitched for three more years, and was named to the American League All-Star team in 1952 and, at age 47, in 1953. He pitched for three more years (1956–1958) for a Triple-A minor league team in Miami. In 1965, at 59, he returned to pitch one more game for the Kansas City Athletes, making him the oldest player in major league history. Against the Boston Red Sox, he hurled three innings, giving up only one hit and no runs.
During his two decades in the Negro Leagues, Paige was considered the best pitcher in baseball (his only contemporary rival being the American League’s Lefty Grove). Paige, a tall, lanky right-hander, had a blazing fastball and pinpoint control. He used a variety of windups, including his “hesitation pitch,” that baffled the best of hitters.
In addition to pitching in official Negro League games, Paige was constantly barnstorming across the country in exhibition games. There was no television, and radio didn’t cover Negro League games, but Paige’s legend grew by word of mouth and reports in the Black newspapers. While barnstorming, his teams played against local amateur and semi-pro clubs as well as teams comprised of white major leaguers. He also played on teams in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.
At his peak, Paige pitched in hundreds of games a year. Because of the incomplete record-keeping, we’ll never know precisely how many games he pitched, won, and lost; how many no-hitters, shutouts, or consecutive scoreless innings he threw; or his lifetime earned run average. His biographer Larry Tye has concluded that Paige “pitched more baseballs, in more ballparks, for more teams, than any player in history. It also is safe to say that no pitcher ever threw at a higher level, for longer, than the ageless right-hander.”
Paige often pitched exhibition games against the best white major leaguers, and typically beat them. In one barnstorming game, Paige struck out Rogers Hornsby—perhaps the best right-handed hitter in major league baseball history, with a lifetime batting average of .358—five times.
In the 1930s and early 1940s, Paige and St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Dizzy Dean (later a Hall of Famer) formed separate barnstorming teams—one white and one Black—that played each other in different cities. In 1934 alone, Paige beat Dean—then at the height of his career, winning 30 games that season—in four of six games. Dean, Joe DiMaggio, and Ted Williams called Paige the best pitcher they ever saw.
Paige was a charismatic character and an entertaining storyteller, always good for a quote from his homespun philosophy, such as “Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter” and “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.”
On the mound, too, Paige was a showman. In barnstorming games, he would occasionally call in his outfielders, ask them to sit down, and then strike out the opposing batters. But his antics couldn’t obscure the fact that he was an outstanding athlete whose success helped persuade his white counterparts that African Americans could compete in the major leagues if given a chance. Paige, who died in 1982, was a pathbreaker in many ways. Renaming Cleveland’s team the Satchels would be a way for baseball to honor this legendary player and participate in the country’s efforts at racial reconciliation.
