KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Could be that Satchel Paige was 42 years old when he made his first American League appearance 75 years ago July 9. Then again, he might have been 52 or some other age altogether after Cleveland owner Bill Veeck purchased his contract from the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues in 1948.
After all, as Paige once said, a goat ate the family Bible with his birth certificate in it. So who’s to say if he actually was born on July 7, 1906?
What we do know is that the “age-old mystery,” as Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick calls it, was part of why few MLB owners were inclined to sign Paige — who is at the epicenter of the latest exhibit at the NLBM:
