The Ball Player's Son

BIG MOE

       

                                   “FACING SATCHEL PAIGE”

     I took a football scholarship to the University of Illinois in Champaign so I could play baseball. They didn’t give baseball scholarships in those days. Wally Roettger was my baseball coach. He’d just finished a big league career and knew the game—refined me. Believe it or not he had Lou Boudreau, a future hall of fame shortstop, at third and me at second. Even as a kid Boudreau knew where to play the hitters and where everybody should be playing. He understood the subtleties of the game. He was a gifted schmoozer and a good psychologist and a natural politician. But he was also a guy who knew when to be tough and demanding. Lou and I worked as a doubleplay combination when we barnstormed against negro league teams for side money, and the one weekend I came down sick as a dog and couldn’t make it, Lou got caught taking money and had to leave college. He was already prepared for the big leagues. Nobody could bunt or control a bat like Lou. He became a playing manager at Cleveland at 24 and devised the Williams shift.

     I played football for coach, Bob Zupke—a legend. Hard and cruel as they come, he didn’t like me because he knew I wasn’t a football player at heart and got the scholarship on my speed. I was not the type of athlete to give his life for the coach and love the hitting and pounding. I liked boxing because the opponent was always right in front of you, where in football you could get blindsided and get your knees taken out by a dirty player. Zupke didn’t give a damn about his players. We had a big Swede on the team, Knudson or Swenson?....a gung-ho Boy Scout type who’d gladly give up his body for his coach and the team. He wasn’t much of an athlete but he gave it everything he had and was the kind of guy to lay his life down for you in combat. And one afternoon he got his knee torn up and lay writhing on the field, his knee twisted back and contorted like a chicken leg. So sickening you couldn’t look at it without getting green around the gills. The poor kid was pounding the turf in agony and Zupke never even came out to see how he was—when they carried the kid off the field on a stretcher, they passed Zupke, and the kid apologizes to him for letting the team down, and Zupke practically spits on him and  says: “Get him outta here.”

     Zupke used me as a practice dummy. I took it pretty well until the day I ran a punt back in practice and half the defense piled on and smothered me and wouldn’t let me up. They were purposely squashing me. One guy was bending my knee back and I panicked and grabbed a leg and bit through the Achilles tendon of a big moose of an all-league tackle named McMillan, one of Zupke’s pets. McMillan screamed bloody murder and was out for the year with surgery and Zupke kicked me off the team. Which was fine with me. because now I could play baseball.

     If you were considered an outstanding prospect, you got to play against the great negro league players of that time and that’s where I got to face Satchel Paige. Probably around 1935. Satchel was in his prime, and to this day, after facing Feller, Grove, and those great Yankees, Satchel was the toughest. He had a high leg kick that hid the ball and pin-point control. Without ever seeing you before, he could size you up right away and knew how and where to pitch you.

     Josh Gibson was behind the plate, a powerful man with shoulders like a damn bull, he could sit on his haunches, and without rising, peg a ball to second on a straight line. An arm like a damn rocket. He swung hard and he swung big, and he could be pitched to. But his bat was alive. By that I mean his swing was quick. You thought the ball was by him, but his bat was so quick he picked the ball up before it passed and rifled it. Gibson had a big arc on his swing and the balls he hit climbed like golf shots, getting incredible distance. Everybody stood still when he hit batting practice, like Ruth in his day, and Mantle now.

     Well, I was a tough out. I knew Satchel liked that. He liked to toy with kids who thought they were great hitters and teach them a lesson, and at the same time, let them know Paige was the best in the business. Un-hittable. He was a man with a lot to prove when negro players were barred from the big leagues and organized ball. I battled him all afternoon, and he started talking to me, and he got me out, but he couldn’t strike me out. He broke my bat once. Got me lunging, made me look bad. But he couldn’t strike me out and he knew I was up there with one thing on my mind: Not strike out. If a blind squirrel could find an acorn, I’d manage to get a hit off him.

     Sure enough, the last inning, he knew when I’d be coming up. There were two outs and three batters ahead of me. Satch walked all three and then waved his team off the field except Gibson. He’s on the mound staring me down with this sneaky sliver of a grin when I come up to the plate. Well, now he’s really coming after me. He tells me he’s been using his “back yard stuff” and now he’s going to use his “good stuff.” He threw one right by me. Up and in. Then he nicked a corner. Strike two. Then I started battling. I fouled off a bunch of pitches, inside high, low and outside. I’m on top of the plate and he  brushes me back. I worked the count two and two. I’m up on the bat a couple inches and the last two foul balls I hit were just off the right field line. I was beginning to time him. His ball ran in, and moved out. I knew he was stubborn and too proud to throw me a hook. He was gonna blow one by me one way or the other—and he came in just a little fat with a waist-high fastball and I got decent wood on it and laced it right past his ear into centerfield and hightailed it down the first base line. I was so excited that, for the first time, I took my cap off as I rounded first. As I started for second, Satchel was running alongside me. He followed me around second and was still with me at third, and the whole time he’s talking to me—“You hit Satchel, kid. Way to hit that ball. Tell your kids some day. You hit the great Satchel Paige.”

    When I crossed home plate he smacked me on the ass and everybody in the dugout went crazy and even the black players were laughing and having a big time of it. I’d just gotten a legitimate hit off the greatest goddam pitcher in the world, a living legend.