King of the Mound: My Summer With Satchel Paige

by Wes Tooke

  “And you want us to go?” Mr. Churchill asked as he picked up the pamphlet.

  “I want you to win,” Wild Bill said. “I want you to remind America that Bismarck and North Dakota are still on the map.” His voice dropped. “And I also want you to make history. No team with both white boys and colored boys has ever taken home a trophy in a tournament like this. You and Bismarck will be in the history books. Forever.”

  Mr. Churchill gave Wild Bill a long look. “And what do you get out of it?”

  “Just civic pride,” Wild Bill said with an odd smile that Nick recognized—it was the code that adults sometimes used to signal when they weren’t telling the truth. “Although it sure would be nice if your champions decided to march in one of my parades before the election.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Churchill said. He paused. “I’ll think about it.”

  Nick stared at the pamphlet as Mr. Churchill drove him home. It was just a grainy photograph of a man sliding into second base and a few lines of type:

  National Baseball Congress Tournament

  Semipro champion of the world to be crowned at the brand-new Lawrence Stadium. $1,000 cash prize to winning team!

  Nick’s jaw dropped when he saw the prize. You could buy almost two Studebaker trucks for that kind of money—it seemed like an awful lot just for playing baseball.

  “So what do you think?” Mr. Churchill eventually asked. “Do you think we should go?”

  “That’s a big prize,” Nick said. “I mean, if the team wins.”

  “It’s a lot of money even if we don’t win,” Mr. Churchill said. “The guy who’s putting it together contacted me and offered us an appearance fee.”

  Nick looked at Mr. Churchill, surprised. “You already knew about the tournament?”

  Mr. Churchill laughed. “Knew about it? That guy has been calling me every day since the moment I landed Satch. He knows that if we show up, his stadium will be full for every game.”

  “Then why did you act surprised with Wild Bill?”

  “Because now if we go, Wild Bill will think that he owes me a favor. And he’ll also think that I take his advice, which is even more valuable.”

  A minute later they pulled up in front of the house, and as Nick got out of the car and walked toward the backyard, he realized that the adult world was really complicated. How were you supposed to know what was real when people were always telling half-truths or pretending they didn’t know things or sometimes just plain lying? Nick wondered if he would ever figure it out—did you just turn eighteen and suddenly all of this stuff made sense? Or would he spend the rest of his life confused because he believed that there should be some relationship between what a person said and what they meant?

  Nick was still lost in that thought as he walked up the stairs to his cabin, but as his hand touched the doorknob he heard a bright burst of laughter behind him. His head whipped around—Emma was standing next to a giant pile of dirt in the middle of the yard, a shovel in one hand.

  “You walked right past me,” she said. “Like your head was lost in the clouds.”

  “Oh.” Nick stared at the pile of dirt. “What are you doing?”

  “I built you a pitcher’s mound.”

  “What?”

  “Look. . . .” Her foot nudged a block of wood. “You can use this as a rubber.”

  Nick stared at the torn-up grass. “Your mother’s going to kill you.”

  “Probably.” She paused. “You want to give it a try?”

  Nick took a long moment before he answered. He knew what Emma was doing—and it was really, really nice of her. But he was also scared. Ever since he first got sick, Nick had clung to the fantasy that someday he would be able to pitch again, and he knew it would be harder to believe in that dream if he got on a mound and couldn’t even toss the ball to home plate without falling on his face. Yet Nick also knew he couldn’t put off this moment forever. At some point he needed to try.

  “Yeah,” Nick finally said. “Let me get my glove.”

  By the time Nick returned to the yard, Emma had finished sinking the rubber into the mound, and Nick patted down the dirt with his foot. When he finally got into his set and fingered the ball in his mitt, his hands were sweaty. Emma was crouched at the far end of the yard, maybe a few steps too close, but Nick wasn’t going to complain. His mind was racing as he started his motion, but as his hands rose his instincts took over and his head cleared. The only thing in the world that mattered was Emma’s glove. His body drove forward, his hips coming through the way his father had taught him, and the ball spun out of his hand. For a moment everything felt the way he remembered, but then his bad leg couldn’t quite hold his weight and he stumbled a little. He managed to catch himself, and as he straightened back up he glanced at Emma. She was holding up the ball, a huge grin on her face.

  “That was a strike,” she said.

  She tossed the ball back, and Nick tried it again. And again. And again. With each toss his confidence grew a little bit. Yeah, his left leg wasn’t perfect and he couldn’t drive to the plate quite as confidently as he wanted, but he was pitching. His father had been wrong, the doctors were wrong . . . even Nick himself was wrong. It was possible. He could do it.

  Around the fifteenth or twentieth pitch, just as Nick’s confidence reached its peak, he got the feeling that someone was watching him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw his father standing on the steps of the cabin. Nick tried to contain his excitement, but the words slipped out before he could stop them.

  “Look, Dad,” he said. “I’m pitching!”

  His father just stared at him, and Nick suddenly felt his confidence slipping away like air leaking from a punctured balloon.

  “Yeah,” his father said after what felt like an hour.

  “Do I look . . . okay?”

  “You’re wasting your time,” his father said. “Power comes from the legs. No legs, no power.”

  He turned and went into the cabin. Nick waited until the door was closed and then he dropped his glove and walked toward the street. He heard Emma call his name behind him, but Nick couldn’t turn to look at her. Not right now.

  Bismarck lost the next day to a traveling team from Grand Forks. Satch pitched pretty well, giving up only two runs, but the bats were quiet and Barney Morris allowed a three-run triple in the ninth to make the final score 6–1. The players were grumpy after the game, probably because they weren’t used to losing, and most of them left the park almost as quickly as the fans. Nick was cleaning up garbage in the stands when he was surprised to see Satch walk back onto the field, still wearing his uniform. When he noticed Nick, he waved.

  “Get down here,” he said, his voice echoing around the empty park. “I need someone to catch for me.”

  Nick walked down to the edge of the field before responding: “I don’t have my glove.”

  “In the dugout,” Satch said, flicking his head. “Take your pick.”

  There were two gloves on the bench. One was an outfielder’s mitt, so large and floppy that it covered Nick’s hand like a sleeping cat. The other was smaller and stiff in the pocket—it probably belonged to someone who played second base or shortstop. Nick chose that one and then slowly walked out to home plate.

  “I’m not a catcher,” he said as he crouched, his bad leg stuck out to the side.

  “I’m not going to throw you the Rising Tom,” Satch said. “Just plain old fastballs. All you gotta do is hold that glove out and tell me if you have to move it. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Nick said.

  Satch started his easy windup and Nick tried to hold the glove perfectly still. From this angle Satch’s leg kick looked impossibly high—Nick’s eye focused briefly on the sole of his shoe—and then the ball smacked into the webbing of the glove, hard enough that Nick’s entire body shifted with the impact.

  “How was that?” Satch called from the mound.

  “Good,” Nick said. “I don’t think I moved it at all.”

  “Five m
ore,” Satch said.

  The next four were exactly like the first, but the fifth was outside and Nick tried to stab the white blur with the glove. He was a little too aggressive and the ball smacked into his palm rather than the webbing. The sting came a moment later—a sharp, hot pain that felt like when his teacher at school whacked him with a ruler—and Nick instinctively dropped the glove. As he rubbed his hand, Satch wandered in from the mound.

  “Sorry,” Satch said. “That’s exactly what was happening during the game. I kept missing my spot.”

  “Is something wrong with your mechanics?” Nick asked. That was something his father used to say when he was teaching him how to pitch: “Imagine that you’re a car and your arm is the engine. If the mechanics of the motion are sound, everything else will fall into place.”

  Satch shrugged. “Nah, it’s just pitching. Some days it goes okay and some days you start thinking too much and it all falls apart.” He picked up the glove and tossed it to Nick. “You want to throw for a minute?”

  Nick glanced at the pitching rubber. “From the mound?”

  “You’re a pitcher, aren’t you?”

  “Not anymore. My dad saw me pitching yesterday and said that I didn’t have any power in my legs.”

  Satch was silent for a long moment, a dark shadow passing across his face. “What about the deer oil?” he finally asked. “Is that helping?”

  “I put on a little every morning,” Nick said. “And I haven’t been using the brace much anymore.”

  “Well, that’s good. Which leg is it?”

  “Left.”

  “Then when it comes to pitching, you got no excuses,” Satch said. “Power comes from the back leg. . . . All that front leg does is help you balance at the top and make sure you don’t land on your face after you throw.” He turned and pointed at the mound. “So get out there and show me your stuff.”

  Nick slowly walked toward the center of the diamond. The mound was much taller and firmer than the little bump Emma had dug in their backyard, and the divot in the earth where the pitcher’s foot landed after he strode forward seemed impossibly far from the rubber—this was a mound for men, not boys. As Nick got into position and took a deep breath, Satch sank into a deep crouch, his bony knees sticking out on either side of the plate like oars on a rowboat.

  “Fastball,” he shouted. “Right in the glove!”

  For a moment Nick was paralyzed by the idea that he was about to throw a ball to Satchel Paige, but then he forced the air from his lungs and focused on the target. His body moved, controlled by instinct, and suddenly all his weight was on his bad leg, his torso perpendicular to the ground, and a sharp snap came from home plate. Satch stood, shaking his hand.

  “Lord almighty,” he said. “You got a live arm, Hopalong.”

  Nick wanted to respond, but instead he just smiled like an idiot. Satch tossed the ball back to him. “Ten more,” he said. “Just like that.”

  Nick overthrew the third pitch and bounced it in the dirt, but the rest were good. When Satch caught the last ball, he stood and walked toward the mound. Nick met him on the infield grass.

  “You’re accurate, too,” Satch said. “You practice a lot?”

  Nick shrugged. “I drew a target on the wall at the hospital.”

  “Good. When I was your age, I’d throw rocks at signposts or anything else I could find. Probably a couple hundred a day. That’s how you get so you can put the ball wherever you want.” Satch paused for a long moment, his dark eyes locked on Nick. “You know, I give folks advice all the time—anything under the sun. But if you held my hand to the Bible, I’d swear that I only know one true thing on this earth. You want to hear it?”

  “Of course,” Nick said.

  “I’ve got a brother with more talent than me. Arms like a circus strongman and fast as the wind. And, boy, could he throw—he could stand on home plate and toss a ball out of most parks. But when folks told us that we’d never be worth nothing, he listened. And that’s why he’s living in a shack back home and I’m traveling the world. You understand?”

  Nick nodded. He understood exactly what Satch meant and why he was saying it—in fact, his mother used to say a version of the same thing: “There’s nothing you can’t do if you believe in yourself.” When Nick was younger, that had seemed like one of those sweet, bland things that mothers say, but now he wasn’t sure whether it was true. You could want to be a major-league pitcher more than anyone else on earth, but if you had a weak arm . . . well, it was going to be pretty close to impossible. But maybe that wasn’t Satch’s point; maybe he was just saying that you shouldn’t let fear get between you and what you want.

  Nick was still lost in that thought when Mr. Churchill appeared on the field and waved at Satch. “I’m going over to that meeting now,” he called. “You sure you want to come?”

  Satch nodded curtly. “I make a point of always negotiating for myself.”

  “Okay,” Mr. Churchill said. He looked at Nick. “Wild Bill thought you were funny, so you’re coming too.”

  “Back to the hotel?” Nick asked.

  “Nope,” Mr. Churchill said with a flicker of a smile. “Somewhere else.”

  Somewhere else turned out to be the tallest building in North Dakota. The State Capitol, also known as the Skyscraper on the Prairie, towered nineteen floors above Bismarck, and as the elevator whirred upward Nick felt an exhilarating combination of nerves and excitement. The highest he had ever been was either the third floor of the hospital or the time he climbed a giant oak tree near the river.

  “How come we’re meeting Wild Bill in the Capitol if he’s not the governor anymore?” Nick asked as the elevator doors opened onto a hallway on the sixteenth floor.

  “Because he still runs this state,” Mr. Churchill said, his tone unusually short. “And because he’s likely to be governor again as soon as they hold an election.”

  They pushed their way through a glass door stenciled TOM MILLS, MAJORITY LEADER. A secretary glanced up at them from behind a big desk, and when Mr. Churchill identified himself, she waved them to a small sitting area. Satch put his big feet up on a table and picked his nails as he waited, as calm as if he were sitting on the bench between innings. Mr. Churchill, on the other hand, looked like a slug in the sun. At last the secretary led them into a large room with giant windows. Wild Bill and two other men were sitting in modern-looking chairs, but Nick was mesmerized by the view—beyond the window stretched the tops of roofs and the curl of the Missouri River and the vast expanse of brown fields that eventually faded into the horizon. He was staring down at the nearest street, where the cars looked like toys, when Wild Bill spoke.

  “Is that boy Satchel Paige?” he asked. He was ignoring Satch and looking at Mr. Churchill, who just nodded. “What’s he doing here?”

  “You’ll have to ask him,” Mr. Churchill said.

  Wild Bill turned to Satch, who looked back at him as if he were staring down a batter. “I’m not pitching in that tournament down in Kansas,” Satch said after a long moment. “Not unless they put up more than chicken feed for prize money.”

  Wild Bill wagged a finger at Satch. “Don’t get uppity with me,” he said. “I promised my friend who runs that tournament that you were going to show up, so you and your team are going to go down there and win one for the state of North Dakota. Like it or not.”

  “My contract didn’t call for no tournaments,” Satch said. “If they want me to pitch, I need an appearance fee.”

  “There is an appearance fee. One thousand dollars. To be split by the team.”

  Satch shook his head. “We’re going to get a thousand dollars for every game we win. To split. Plus an extra thousand dollars to me personally just for showing up.”

  Wild Bill sputtered for a moment, his face red. “That’s highway robbery!”

  Satch shrugged. He still looked perfectly calm. “Your friend will still make plenty of money. We’ll sell out every game in that brand-new stadium, and he’ll get
all kinds of free publicity because every newspaper in the country will write a story about how an integrated team from North Dakota somehow managed to win a national tournament.”

  The room was silent again for almost thirty seconds. Mr. Churchill was shifting uncomfortably on his feet as Satch and Wild Bill stared at each other, the only sound the monotonous ticking from a grandfather clock on the far side of the room.

  “I know you’re not from around here,” Wild Bill finally said. “But ask anyone about me. I run this state and I don’t like to be crossed. So I suggest that you and your team get down to that tournament. You understand?”

  Another long moment passed and then Satch smiled. “It’s real easy,” he said. “Your man wants Satch because Satch can fill that new ballpark of his. And if his ballpark is full, he’ll make his money. So tell the man to pay me, and I’ll put on a show at that tournament that folks will remember for a long time—and fill his pockets while I’m doing it. And if he don’t want to pay me . . . well, that’s fine. But I don’t pitch for favors. Just money.”

  Satch turned and walked to the door, and as he opened it he glanced over his shoulder. The smile was still on his face.

  “I know you’re a big man in North Dakota,” he said. “But I’m the king of barnstorming baseball. And there ain’t nobody who can make the king play if he don’t want to play.”

  Bismarck won nine of the ten games it played over the next two weeks. Satch continued to pitch brilliantly, and according to Nick’s unofficial statistics he now had a 26–2 record with 299 strikeouts and only 14 walks. Sometimes Nick would stare at the numbers and shake his head—it seemed impossible that any pitcher, even one as supernaturally gifted as Satch, could be so consistently dominant. People always talked about his trick pitches or the speed of his fastball, but Nick thought that the secret of his success was his control. When he wanted to hit the inside corner, he hit the inside corner. When he wanted to throw a high fastball, it was perfectly at the numbers. And he did it game after game after game without complaining and without losing his good stuff.