Harry Salmon pitched from the side like
Ewell Blackwell of the Reds. I
never did see anyone pitch like that.
He was hard to hit. He
tickled me. All the batters would jump out of the way when he went
into his act.
Satchel Paige
By John Holway
When Paige joined the Birmingham Black Barons as a rookie in 1927,
the ace of the staff was the lanky fastballer, Harry "Beans"
Salmon. Satchel was so impressed
that he adopted the style himself.
Nervous hitters described it as "a cross-fire pitch." "Looked like
he was going to step on the third baseman," first baseman George Giles
laughed. "He was pretty tough
on right-handed hitters."
When Salmon and Satchel pitched a double-header, Cool Papa Bell said,
it was Salmon who drew the tougher
opponent. Harry posted a 14-6
record for the year to Satchel's 8-3.
“Salmon and Satchel would give you a headache," moaned outfielder
Jimmie Crutchfield. Left-hander
Sam Streeter, the third man in the triumvirate, was
14-12. The three of them led
the Barons to their first Negro League pennant.
Five years later, when Cum Posey, owner of the Homestead Grays went
to Birmingham to find a pitcher, he passed up Satchel and picked Salmon
instead.
(Salmon could do something else that Paige couldn't – he could
hit, posting averages of .368, 400, even .500.)
I met Salmon back in the 1970s in
Pittsburgh. He was tilted back
in a chair at a gas station, shooting the breeze with the
boys.
The interview, presented for Black History Month, is from
Blackball Tales, due for publication
in 2004:
I first met Satchel in 1926; he was with Chattanooga, and I was with
the Birmingham Black Barons. I
pitched against him down in Chattanooga on a Sunday and beat him
2-1. We opened up again in
Birmingham, and I beat him 2-1 in ten
innings. When I first came here
to Pittsburgh in 1932, the first game I pitched against him I beat him
10-4. In fact, I can't remember
a game that he ever beat me.
Nope.
He was my roommate when he first came up to Birmingham. Well yes,
I taught him some things. When
he started, he was real fast.
Wasn't much of a curve ball man, but he was a good strikeout
man. But the thing of it was,
the balk part. He'd most always
get his foot off the rubber; when he'd go to pitch, his foot would slide
off. That beat
us a whole lot of times.
You know, you writers, the more you write, the better you are.
That's the way Satchel developed his control -- practice,
practice. We used to all get
out and throw and see how many strikes we could
throw.
He was a hard thrower, but he learned how to pitch
afterward. You know, his arm
got sore later and when the years go by, you learn how to pitch with your
head more than you do with your arm.
That’s what he became – a good-headed
pitcher.
Satchel was full of fun -- you know how youngsters
are. He was our showman. He even played a jew’s harp
[harmonica] at times. He'd entertain
us back in the hotel.
Me, I’ve had some good days, and I’ve had some bad
ones. That's the way you go
through life anyway, whether you play ball or you
don't: You have some good days
and you have some bad ones.
I was born in 1895 – May 30 – in a place they called Warrior
about 18 miles outside of Birmingham.
I was eight years old when I started working in the
mines. Mmmm-hmmm, I shoveled
coal at eight years old. Yes, it
was
pretty
young.
I was sort of adopted, see?
I stayed with other people more than with my mother, and they
weren’t going to feed me for nothing.
You
had to do some kind to work for your
living. I'd go down and bring
the men their tobacco and stuff.
And I had a little shovel; I’d shovel a little
coal. You know, they have laws
against that now. There's been a lot
of changes in
the last 70 years.
You couldn’t be a weakling.
You always tried to protect
yourself. But you couldn't be
too overbearing either. If you
were too overbearing, you couldn't
survive. You didn’t have to go look for trouble, because trouble
found you. It's easy to get
into but rather hard to get out.
I worked in
the Edgewater mine
in
Kimberly, just drifting from one place to
another. I started playing ball
when I was in the mines.
In 1920 they selected most of the best players from the mining
camps and formed them into the Birmingham Black Barons in the Southern
League. We'd go to Knoxville,
New Orleans, Atlanta and Memphis.
We all worked in the mine.
I couldn't say what my greatest game
was. I've had a whole lot of them to be proud about, and a
whole lot to be sad about.
But I enjoyed going against Sam Streeter in
1920. I was called in to pinch-hit
against him. He was with Montgomery at the time, and I was lucky enough
to break up the ball game. We were tied, and I hit a single toward second
to drive in the winning run.
Yes, I pinch-hit a lot. You had to be a good hitter, because you played
more than one position. I pitched
and played the outfield.
Pie Traynor, played for the Pirates, came up the same year I did,
'20. He was playing short for
the Birmingham Barons, the white team.
I saw him play a lot of times.
No, I never played against him; they wouldn't allow
that. Sam West was playing outfield for the Barons too, went
up to the Washington Senators. But
that was as far as we could go at that time unless we went out of the
States. In Cuba and Puerto Rico
we were mixed, but here in the States, you know how it
was.
I had my jaw knocked out of place in Asheville North Carolina on Easter
Sunday 1922. My mouth was open
nearly two hours; the wind was just cutting my
throat. I went to about four doctors, and they said they couldn't
do much. The last doctor I went
to, I could hardly talk.
He said, "Can you
stand for me to knock
it
back?”
They say a catcher is the backbone of the
team. I don’t
think so; I differ with them.
There's nothing anybody on the team can do until the pitcher turns
the ball loose, isn't that right?
The catcher has something to protect
him. What does the pitcher have
out there except his glove, huh?
He doesn't have anything but that
glove.
You couldn’t play ball on Sunday in Birmingham then. We had to go to Montgomery or Memphis and come back to Birmingham on Blue Monday. But we always drew good. We out-drew the white club.
I couldn't say what my best
year was. I never did
pin any roses on myself, but I was the leading
pitcher. Right-handed
all the way. I threw anything
and everything: spit balls,
anything that you could
get one out with. I could throw
hard, but I didn't know much about the other part of
pitching.
I was inexperienced,
and I had to
learn.
But I got more experience,
and there’s mighty few of the pitchers that I didn't
beat. And mighty few of the
pitchers that didn't beat
me.
Rube and C.l. Taylor were the two smartest men I ever saw – the
wizards. I called Rube
“Brains,” because he used every trick there was to win a ball
game. A shrewd
man. I've seen him have his
club bunt seven straight innings and then beat the other
club. Yes, it put a lot of pressure
on the pitcher, on all who were playing the American Giants.
But we
made Rube chew up many a pipe the way we
played. And he laughed at us
many a time also.
The only time I saw C.I. was in ’22; he came in with the lndianapolis
ABC's. He had so many brothers
that played that they could near have a team of their own with just Taylors
on it. I think I beat them
6-2. He tried to get me to go
with him, but it got cold and I went back home to
Birmingham.
My catcher,
Larry Brown, and I
came here to Pittsburgh together to the Pittsburgh Keystones, out to
old Central Park, under William Dismukes, who was
manager. Old man Williams
-- Charlie Williams -- and his brother Stanley owned the
club. We had Dolly Gray, Rod
Williams, Larry Brown, myself.
In 1927 the Black Barons moved up to the Negro National
League. That's when we got
Satchel.
Oh man, there were so many tough hitters
then. Dave Malarcher and Steel
Arm Davis of the American Giants… Cristobal Torriente, the Cuban boy….
Turkey Stearnes…. Pete Hill was one of the hardest hitters.…
Kansas City with all their hitters: Dobie Moore was my great friend, plus
George Sweatt, Newt Joseph at third, Hurley McNair.
To tell you the truth, most of the players that are playing now –
I wouldn't say all of them -- couldn't have played with our
club.
Cool Papa Bell. He could
run! But I could always tell
when Cool was going down to second base; he'd rock back and forth on first
base.
We had a catcher, Bill Perkins out of Albany Georgia, had heard a
lot of talk of Cool, but he'd never seen him
run.
I threw an off-ball
[pitchout], and it was perfect.
But Cool was going,
running so fast that Perkins held the ball till Cool stopped at
third. So surprised at the way
he was running.
Mmmmmmm-mmmmm!
Never seen a man run like that before in my
life!
Cool could bunt, and he could hit the ball
hard. Down In Cuba in 1930 he
hit two home runs in a row off Johnny
Allen. We were kidding
John; we said, “Well, I heard you’re going to the
Yankees.”
He said, “Yes, I have an opportunity to
go.”
Cool said, “Well,
I'm going to keep you back a
year.”
Some of those hitters could stand up there and take two strikes and
spit at you and tell you to get the ball in there, they would hit it
somewhere. They just had
the good eye.
Mule Suttles hit one in
Cienfuegos Cuba off Sam Streeter out of the park, over a row of houses on
the other side of the park, about
450
feet. You know, it
wasn’t recorded, just one of those things.
Biggest disappointment was
for Josh Gibson not to make it to the major
leagues.
Josh hit the longest ball I ever saw. The leftfield fence was 500-some feet away in Puerto Rico, and a hard wind blew in from the ocean. Oh God, it went over 500 feet against the wind, over the fence.
