Satchel Paige - Post-playing Career

Post-playing Career

After the 1957 season, Paige went to the Mexican state of Durango to appear in a United Artists movie, The Wonderful Country, starring Robert Mitchum and Julie London. Paige played Sgt. Tobe Sutton, a hard-bitten Union army cavalry sergeant of a segregated black unit. He was paid $10,000 to be in it, and the movie became the pride of his life. Late in 1960, Paige began collaborating with writer David Lipman on his autobiography, which was published by Doubleday in April 1962, and ran to three printings.

In 1968, Paige assumed the position of deputy sheriff in Kansas City, with the understanding that he need not bother to actually come to work in the sheriff’s office. The purpose of the charade was to set up Paige with political credentials. Soon after, he was running for a Missouri state assembly seat with the support of the local Democratic club against incumbent Representative Leon Jordan. Candidate Paige never gave a speech, and was never taken seriously. Jordan defeated Paige by the margin of 1,870 votes to 382 (83%–17%).

In August 1968, the owner of the Atlanta Braves, William Bartholomay, signed Paige to a contract running through the 1969 season as a pitching coach/pitcher, although it was mainly done so that Paige could gain service time to receive a major league pension. Paige did most of his coaching from his living room in Kansas City, but he did pitch in at least one pre-season exhibition game in April 1969, striking out Don Drysdale.

Bowie Kuhn replaced William Eckert as the Commissioner of Baseball in 1969. In the wake of Ted Williams' 1966 Hall of Fame induction speech urging the induction of Negro leaguers, and on the recommendation of the Baseball Writers Association of America, Kuhn empowered a ten-man committee to sift through hundreds of names and nominate the first group of four Negro league players to go to the Hall of Fame. Because Paige pitched in Greensboro in 1966, he would not have been eligible for enshrinement until 1971, as players have to be out of professional baseball for at least five years before they can be elected. All of the men on the committee agreed that Paige had to be the first Negro league player to get elected, so this gave Kuhn plenty of time to create some sort of Negro league branch in the Hall of Fame. On February 9, 1971, Kuhn announced that Paige would be the first member of the Negro wing of the Hall of Fame. Because many in the press saw the suggestion of a "Negro wing" as separate-but-equal and blasted major league baseball for the idea, by the time that Paige’s induction came around on August 9, Kuhn convinced the owners and the private trust of the Hall of Fame that there should be no separate wing after all. It was decided that all who had been chosen and all who would be chosen would get their plaques in the “regular” section of the Hall of Fame. Paige could not get a job in the major leagues after part of his HOF induction speech was misinterpreted as bitter anger, instead of grateful, by the still largely white baseball elite. Satchel enjoyed a brief run of renewed popularity after his HOF induction appearing on a few TV shows and making the rounds of the Major Leagues Old Timers Games Circuit. After the buzz died down he took a job with the Tulsa Oilers minor league team in the early 1970s as their pitching coach. During the mid-to-late 1970s he finally slowed down his traveling ways making only occasional personal appearances at mostly minor league stadiums and banquets. In 1980 Satchel was named vice-president of the Triple-A Springfield Cardinals, although it was mostly an honorary position. This was the last official stop on his baseball highway, a road he had trod from Mobile, AL in the 1920s throughout hundreds of small towns and big cities in every state and much of Latin America for 55 years.