Satch & Me (3 page)

FLIP'S FAN CLUB IS A LITTLE STORE IN A STRIP MALL OFF
Shelbyville Road on the east side of Louisville. It's only about a mile from my house, so I usually bike over.

When I went to see Flip the next day, I locked my bike to a No Skateboarding sign outside. The little bell jangled when I pulled the door open. There weren't any customers inside. Flip was behind the counter reading an old
Invincible Iron Man
comic book.

Flip doesn't just sell baseball cards. He sells comics, Star Wars action figures, those old-time metal lunch boxes, and all kinds of collectibles from a long time ago. On one wall Flip has a bunch of black-and-white photos of the old Brooklyn Dodgers—Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider. You never know what you're going to find in Flip's Fan Club.

“Stosh!” Flip looked up when I came in. “I been waitin' ferya!”

Flip pulled some big books out from behind the counter. There were yellow Post-it notes sticking out of some of the pages.

“I did a little research,” Flip said as he opened one of the books.

So did I. I have a copy of
The Baseball Encyclopedia
at home, which lists the complete statistics for every player who ever appeared in a major league game. It's more than two thousand pages long, and about four inches thick.

The only problem is that statistics don't always tell the whole story. There were some really great pitchers who won a lot of games even though they weren't known for overpowering speed. Guys like Tom Seaver and Greg Maddux won because of their control, location, and smarts. But all I wanted to know was who threw the fastest pitch in baseball history.

“Walter Johnson,” Flip said, pointing his bony finger at a picture in one of his books. “Now
he
was a pitcher. The Big Train, they used to call 'im. Awesome speed. Tall fella. Big sidearm motion. Murder on righties. He retired in 1927 with 417 wins and 110 shutouts. One year he led the American League in wins, games, strikeouts, starts, complete games, innings pitched, and shutouts. Can you imagine that? And he pitched for the Washington Senators, who were just about the worst team in baseball!”

“How fast was he?” I asked.

The Big Train

“Says here they clocked him at 99.7 miles per hour once,” Flip said. “But that was in 1914, so it don't mean nothin'. They didn't have the technology to track speed accurately back then.”

“It would be cool to go back in time and clock him with a radar gun,” I said.

“We could do it,” Flip said. “Wouldn't be hard to get a Johnson card.”

The door jangled open and a little girl came in with her mother. They started looking at some girly stuff in the corner. Flip asked if they needed help,
and the mom said they were just looking.

“Now, here's Bob Feller,” Flip said, leaning toward me and lowering his voice a little. “Prob'ly the fastest guy in the late 1930s and 1940s. He fanned fifteen guys in his first big-league start, and he was still in high school! He claimed he was clocked at 107.9 miles per hour. That don't mean nothin' either. There's no proof.”

“Do you have any Barbie cards?” the little girl suddenly asked.

“Sure,” Flip replied. “I got a 1968 Velvet Suit Barbie and a 1969 Sailor Suit Barbie and I got three 1989 Dance Club Barbies. That's the one where she's wearin' a white leather jacket. Be-you-tiful. Mint condition too.”

“We're looking for
new
Barbie cards,” the girl's mom said. Flip wrinkled up his nose at the word “new” and rolled his eyes at me.

“But these come in a glitter plastic case,” he added.

“No thanks.” The girl and her mom left.

Flip pulled out one of his other books and opened to the pages he had marked with Post-it notes.

“There are so many old-time guys who threw hard,” he said. “Back in the 1890s, Amos Rusie was so fast, they moved all the pitchers back just so hitters would have a chance against him. And Lefty Grove led the American League in strikeouts seven years running. They said he was so fast, he could throw a pork chop past a wolf.”

“Look, here's Cy Young,” Flip said. “Y'know he got his name because he was supposed to be as fast as a cyclone, right? He won 511 games. That's more than anybody else
ever
. Of course, he
lost
more games than anybody else too. 316 losses. Ouch!”

Cy Young

Flip really got into this baseball history stuff. Most of it was in his head. The books just refreshed his memory.

“Dizzy Dean, boy, he was fast,” Flip continued, thumbing through pages. “Then there was this guy named Steve Dalkowski who was really fast and really wild. He never made it to the majors 'cause he couldn't get the ball over the plate. Then, of course, there was Satchel Paige.”

I knew a little bit about Paige. My dad has a ball that was autographed by him. He told me that Paige pitched in the Negro Leagues back in the days when African American players weren't allowed to play in the majors. That was before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947.

“We can't go visit
all
those guys, Flip,” I said.

“You're right,” he agreed. “We gotta pick one to be our guy.”

Flip closed the books and turned on his computer, which was on the counter next to him. He went to Google and started searching for stuff.

“You know how to use the Internet, Flip?” I asked, a little surprised.

“What, ya think I drive a horse and buggy?” Flip said. “Howdya think I run this joint?”

Flip began to search for “fastest pitcher” and stuff like that. For an old guy, he knew his way around a mouse and keyboard pretty well.

“Listen to this quote,” he said, reading off the screen. ‘I know who's the best pitcher I ever seen
and it's old Satchel Paige. My fastball looks like a change of pace alongside that little pistol bullet old Satchel shoots up to the plate.'”

“Who said that?” I asked.

“Dizzy Dean.”

“Dean said Paige was faster than
he
was?” I asked.

“Yup.”

“But if black players weren't allowed in the majors, how did Dizzy Dean know how fast Satchel Paige was?” I asked.

“In the off-season, they used to play exhibition games against each other,” Flip told me. “In fact, Paige beat Dean in 1934. That's when Dizzy was at his peak. And Paige beat Feller too, in 1946.”

“Twelve years later?” I asked.

“Paige pitched for somethin' like forty years,” Flip said. “He was unbelievable. Hey, Stosh, check this out. Lefty Grove and Bob Feller
both
said Paige was the best pitcher they ever saw.”

“Wow!” I had no idea Satchel Paige was so good. Flip kept finding more quotes about him.

“Ted Williams said Paige was the greatest pitcher in baseball,” Flip said. “And Joe DiMaggio called him the fastest pitcher he ever faced.”

“DiMaggio
and
Williams said Paige was the best pitcher ever?” I asked. “They were two of the best hitters ever!”

“Look, here's a quote from my man Dolf Camilli,” Flip said. “He played first base for Brooklyn when I
was growin' up. Camilli said, ‘Satchel Paige threw me the fastest ball I've ever seen in my life.'”

Flip logged off, put his computer to sleep, and turned to me.

“Stosh, I think we found our guy.”

Leroy “Satchel” Paige

THE FIRST THING I DID WHEN I GOT HOME FROM FLIP'S
Fan Club was to look up Satchel Paige in
The Baseball Encyclopedia
. It said he had a lifetime major league record of 28 wins and 31 losses, plus 32 saves. Not very impressive. Of course, Paige pitched for more than twenty years in the Negro Leagues before they ever let him in the majors.

Flip called that night while I was doing my homework. I figured he was calling to let me know he was changing the time of practice, or something like that. But no.

“I have bad news,” he said. “We can't go back in time to clock Satchel Paige's fastball.”

“What?!” I said. “Why not?”

“I completely forgot,” Flip said. “There are no baseball cards of Negro League players. They never made any. I swear, I forget everything these days. Don't
grow old, Stosh. Memory is the first thing to go.”

Flip told me that the only Negro League baseball cards are those “retro” cards that were printed in recent years, long after the league was gone. They wouldn't do me any good.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I called every card dealer I know,” Flip said. “The only
real
Paige cards are from the 1950s, when he was pitching for St. Louis. But he was over the hill by then. It wouldn't be fair to clock his fastball when he was an old guy.”

I was crushed, and Flip knew it. He kept apologizing for forgetting and he kept trying to come up with other solutions.

“What about Bob Feller?” Flip suggested. “I got a Feller card back at the store from 1946. That was the year he won 26 games and struck out 348 batters. Pitched ten shutouts that season too. Boy, he was fast.”

“What would be the point?” I asked. “Even if we went back in time with the radar gun and clocked Feller, we'll never know how fast Paige was. Feller himself said that Paige was faster.”

Flip apologized one more time, and then we hung up. That was that. I'd never find out who threw the fastest pitch in baseball history.

I pushed Satchel Paige out of my mind and went back to doing my homework. There was a big math test I had to study for, and I also had to look up some stuff on the Internet for social studies.

Well, I
tried
to push Satchel Paige out of my mind, anyway. Maybe Flip was wrong. Maybe there
was
a Paige card out there somewhere. Just for the heck of it, I typed in “www.ebay.com.”

I don't know if you know about eBay or not. It's this online auction site where people who want to buy stuff and people who have stuff to sell can connect with each other. You can find all kinds of weird stuff on eBay. If anybody in the
world
had a Satchel Paige card to sell, I would find it there.

Here's how it works. Somebody who has something to sell lists the item, with a description of the thing and usually a photo. Buyers who want that item can place bids through their computers. There's a deadline for when the auction ends. When the deadline passes, whoever has the highest bid wins. You send the money to the seller and they send you the stuff that you bid on. It's pretty simple.

You have to be eighteen years old to buy or sell on eBay. But my dad said I could use his account. He buys stuff all the time. I bought a few baseball cards and some old magazines. I never sold anything.

The main eBay screen asks, “What are you looking for?” So I typed in “Satchel Paige.”

A few seconds later, ten screens' worth of Satchel Paige items jumped to my computer screen. People were selling Satchel Paige autographs, jerseys, plaques, pencil clips, books, and collector plates with Satchel Paige's face on them. There were even Satchel Paige bobble-head dolls.

I had to narrow my search. I typed in “Satchel Paige card.” If there were no Negro League baseball cards, the search would turn up nothing. That was what I expected.

But that's not what happened. There was one listing. It said:
SATCHEL PAIGE PHOTO POSTCARD
.

A postcard! I scrolled down to the description of the item. It said the postcard was from 1942 and it was in excellent condition.

Maybe I could use a postcard
, I thought. After all, I had used a photograph to go back to 1863 and meet Abner Doubleday. A postcard with a photo on it might do the trick too.

The photo on the card was black and white. Satchel Paige was leaning way back and kicking his leg up high, ready to throw the ball.

Instinctively, I reached out and touched the image of Paige on the screen, as if that alone would send me back to 1942.

Nothing happened. No tingles or anything.

I looked at the information about the auction. There had been just two bids on the postcard in the last seven days. The starting bid was two dollars and the current bid was four dollars. It was cheap! The auction deadline was five hours away.

I checked out the seller, who was located in Spring Valley, California. You've got to be careful what you bid on, because some sellers will send you damaged stuff, or stuff that is nothing like the way they described it. Sometimes they'll just take
your money and send you nothing.

But this seller had been selling stuff on eBay for a long time. He (or she) had a 99.5 percent positive feedback rating. I looked at the feedback reviews and they all said things like, “Great deal on neat item”…“Well wrapped, in good condition as promised”…“Fast shipment, highly recommend.”

Maybe a photo postcard would work.

I decided to bid on the postcard. Even if it wouldn't send me back in time, I'd only have spent a few bucks. Plus, I'd have something cool to add to my card collection.

Now, I'm no dummy. I know how eBay works. If you make a bid, somebody will very often outbid you. So the trick is to wait until the auction is about to end, and
then
place your bid.

The auction was scheduled to end in five hours. I looked at the clock by my bed. It was 10:30
P.M
. Five hours later would be 3:30
A.M
. I set my alarm to wake me up at 3:15
A.M
. I logged off eBay, brushed my teeth, said good night to my mom, and went to bed.

When the alarm started to beep in the middle of the night, I was groggy, but I remembered what I had to do. I went to the computer and quickly logged on to eBay. The Satchel Paige postcard was still at four dollars. Good. Nobody else had made a bid. There were fourteen minutes left in the auction. I typed in a bid for five dollars and sat back to wait for the
YOU HAVE WON THIS AUCTION
message.

A minute later, this message appeared on my screen:

YOU HAVE BEEN OUTBID BY ANOTHER BIDDER. (IF YOU'D LIKE, BID AGAIN
.)

What?!

It said the current bid was now seven dollars. Somebody else out there was bidding on the same
item! There were twelve minutes left in the auction. I typed in a bid for ten dollars. That'll show 'em I'm serious, I thought to myself.

YOU HAVE BEEN OUTBID BY ANOTHER BIDDER
….

Oh, man! This creep was playing hardball! The current bid was up to twelve dollars. I checked my wallet. I had a twenty-dollar bill in there and some change. There were ten minutes left in the auction. I typed in a bid for fourteen dollars. No way the postcard was worth that much to anybody else. But I wanted it badly. A few more minutes ticked by.

YOU HAVE BEEN OUTBID
….

This was really pissing me off! It was just a stupid postcard. No one else needed it as badly as I did. The current bid was up to sixteen dollars. There were only six minutes left in the auction.

No way was I going to let this jerk get the postcard. I decided to treat it like a basketball game. I'd let the clock run down and go for a final shot just before the buzzer. If I made the highest bid just before time ran out, I'd be the winner.

There were five minutes left in the auction. I just sat there and stared at the screen.

Four.

Three.

Two.

With one minute left, I typed in my final bid. Twenty bucks. My allowance wasn't due for another two weeks. This was all the money I had. I waited as long as I could and then I hit the Enter key.

YOU HAVE BEEN OUTBID
….

In the words of the immortal Babe Ruth, “!@#$%&!!!”

What? How could I lose?! I was really bummed.

I turned off the computer and tried to go back to sleep. It wasn't easy. I kept thinking about the stupid auction. The only good thing that came out of it was that I still had my twenty bucks.

 

A few days later, there was a knock at the door. Flip Valentini was standing on the front porch.

“Hey, Stosh,” he said, “guess what I just got?”

He pulled the Satchel Paige postcard out of his jacket pocket. It was in a plastic sleeve.

“Where'd you get
that
?” I asked.

“I bought it on eBay,” he said gleefully. “Twenty-three bucks. Some bum kept tryin' to outbid me, but I beat 'im at the last second.”

“That bum was
me
!” I yelled. “I was bidding for it!”

“You?” Flip said, laughing. “I coulda got it fer four stinkin' bucks if you hadn't been biddin' against me, you bum!”

“I didn't know it was
you
!” I said.

We were both laughing so hard it hurt.

Flip pulled the postcard out of its plastic sleeve and handed it to me. Just touching it made my fingertips tingle.