Alan Kim | The Roanoke Times

Leroy Paige Jr. donned a jersey featuring the patches of Negro League teams when he threw out the first pitch for the Pulaski Blue Jays’ home opener on June 24.

How to stay young

Satchel Page pitched his first inning in the major leagues in 1948, when he was 42 years old — the oldest rookie in major league history. He pitched his last major league innings in 1965. He pitched his final innings in professional baseball in the Carolina League in 1966. In his autobiography, Paige shared his rules for staying young.

1. Avoid fried meats, which angry up the blood.

2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.

3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.

4. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain’t restful.

5. Avoid running at all times.

6. Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.

Gene Dalton| The Roanoke Times

Today is Satchel Paige's 100th birthday.

Probably.

It could be his 102nd, or 103rd, or 106th, or not his birthday at all. But most people who've thought about it agree this is probably the great pitcher's centennial. The Negro Leagues Committee of the Society of American Baseball Research is holding a conference to mark the date. It's called "100 Years of Satchel Paige: Reality and Myth." There's a lot of myth mixed among the reality. A lot of "facts" about the legendary pitcher and showman are less than rock-solid. So it's not surprising that public documents don't corroborate the claim of Leroy Paige Jr., the Fairlawn man who says he's Satchel Paige's son.

"God only knows how many women Satchel Paige was married to," Leroy Paige said. "God only knows how many Leroy Paiges there really is."

Officially, Satchel Paige had two wives: Janet Howard Paige and Lahoma Brown Paige. Paige introduced a third woman, Lucy Figueroa, as his wife. So did Life magazine in a photo spread on Paige. But Paige testified in proceedings that led to his divorce from Janet Howard that he and Figueroa were never wed.

Though baseball's version of Jim Crow kept Satchel Paige out of the major leagues until he was past 40, there's little argument that he is among the best pitchers in the history of the game. Dizzy Dean called him the fastest. Bob Feller called him the best. Joe Dimaggio called him the best and fastest pitcher he ever faced.

Paige's barnstorming teams regularly played against major leaguers. Dimaggio was happy when he went 1-for-4 against Paige. One year Paige won four of the six games he pitched against Dean.

People say he sent his outfielders into the dugout, saying he'd do fine without them. Then he struck out the side. People say he could have used a matchbox as home plate when he warmed up. There was nothing that could be done on a baseball mound, it seems, that Paige couldn't and didn't do.

Paige's carousing was nearly as legendary as his pitching. Paige biographer Mark Ribowksy quotes Bill Veeck, the man who brought Paige into the major leagues twice, as saying that on the personal questionnaires players routinely filled out, Paige sometimes said he was married and sometimes said he was not.

"Every day though, he was leaving a ticket at the box office for Mrs. Paige," Veeck said. "And every day, a different woman was picking it up."

Dan Motley is executive director of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. It's in Kansas City, Mo., where Paige was a star with the Monarchs and where he lived for the last 30 years of his life. Leroy Paige Jr. isn't among the Paige family he knows, Motley said.

"There's a lot of people out there saying they're somebody's son," Motley said. "Maybe he's right. I don't know."

Lloyd Johnson, co-chair of the Negro Leagues Conference going on in Kansas City, said there's another Satchel Paige family. He doesn't know them, but he knows they hold reunions in Chicago. Leroy Paige Jr. says those aren't his people. His family is from Richmond and Alabama. Satchel Paige was born in Mobile.

Leroy Paige Jr. said that being Satchel Paige's son "made my life miserable."

The great pitcher was rarely around, he said. But he did have memorabilia -- baseballs, photos, uniforms, a bat, a glove -- until Katrina hit his New Orleans home.

Paige said he waded away from his house to a car he'd parked on a bridge and drove away, first to Baton Rouge, then to Washington, D.C. That's where the leaders are. He met with members of Congress. "I got a chance to see the injustice that was going on."

Politicians and charities used Katrina evacuees to raise money, but did little to help them, he said. But that's where he met Betty, a volunteer working at the shelter where Paige stayed. They married in January. They moved to Fairlawn in February after finding a house on the Internet.

"I'm trying to start my life over," Paige said.

Being the son of a baseball legend didn't make Paige a sports fan.

"I hate sports," he said. Music, too.

He's talking about the industries, not the things themselves. In his view, they've led too many young people -- particularly young black men -- to ruin in pursuit of an unattainable goal.

"Every time we create a Michael Jordan or a Michael Jackson, we destroy thousands," he said. "You take away sports, religion and music and there's nothing left in my race."

Nevertheless, he was at Calfee Park for the Pulaski Blue Jays' home opener.

"It took a little twisting of his arm to get him out there," said Marty Gordon, the man who did the arm twisting for the Jays. "But it was an honor to have him out there."

The man who shares a name with the greatest star of the old Negro Leagues wore a jersey decorated with logos representing teams his father played for and against as he wound up and threw the first pitch of another baseball season.

Satchel’s stats

More than 40 years of barnstorming and organized baseball passed between Paige’s first tryout with the semi-pro Mobile Tigers and his last pitch for the semi-pro Alaska Earthquakers. He pitched in Negro leagues, minor leagues and major leagues across the United States and the Caribbean, with some time in Mexico mixed in. Though statistics are an obsession for baseball fans, some of Paige’s stats are not exactly exacting.

Wins: 2,100

Shutouts: 300

Most games pitched in a month: 29

Most games won in a year: 104 (of 105 pitched)

Honors: American League Rookie of the Year 1948; American League All-Star Team, 1952, 1953; National Baseball Hall of Fame, 1971

Relatively complete list of Negro League, Major League and barnstorming teams Paige played on: Birmingham Black Barons (1927-30), Baltimore Black Sox (1930), Cleveland Cubs (1931), Pittsburgh Crawfords (1931-37), Kansas City Monarchs (1935-36, 1939-48, 1950, 1955), Santo Domingo All-Stars (1937), Newark Eagles (1938), Satchel Paige’s All-Stars (1939), New York Black Yankees (1943), Memphis Red Sox (1943), Philadelphia Stars (1946, 1950), Cleveland Indians (1948-49), St. Louis Browns (1951-53), Chicago American Giants (1951), Kansas City A’s (1965)

Satchel’s sayings

Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common.

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

The only change is that baseball has turned page from a second class citizen to a second class immortal.

They said I was the greatest pitcher they ever saw. I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t give me no justice.

News researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.