As a baseball fan this was a very enjoyable book for me. I enjoyed learning about Satchel Paige who was a fantastic ball player who pushed the boundaries his entire life.

Living in Kansas City and knowing the President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, I've heard stories over the years about the Monarchs, Satchel Paige and Buck O'Neil. Buck was a supporter of the organization where I work and I missed meeting him by a few months. So, I recognize several names in this book. If you are in Kansas City, love baseball, stop by the Museum, it has a lot of fascinating history.

This book does jump around a lot but it has so much history and information that I want to know more about Satchel and about the Negro Leagues. Glad I found this on the shelf at the library. If you like baseball and the history of baseball, definitely pick this up. ( )

A pretty good biography about Satchel Paige. I would have liked more about Paige's and other Negro League players' struggles with racism and Jim Crow, though. ( )

Finally!... A fully-satisfying bio of the greatest pitcher in baseball history. Accurate info on Mr. Paige is notoriously scarce, but Tye peels away the mythology to give us a flesh-and-blood portrait of a man who was ultimately worthy of his larger-than-life stature. The truth about Satchel's exploits is often better than the glorified re-tellings.

The book is an amazing look at life in Jim Crow America and the fascinating sub-culture of barnstorming and the Negro Leagues. It's also an excellent treatise on talent, race, publicity, loyalty, and sport. I found this book to be funny, exhilarating, heartbreaking, and poignant.

A remarkable achievement. ( )

Admittedly, Larry Tye had a difficult task in writing a biography of Satchel Paige. While on the one hand, the subject himself is so fascinating that instant interest is generated, it's difficult to pin down many facts of the man's life and career. The old "Negro League Baseball" didn't keep the kinds of statistics MLB did; and Satchel Paige did a lot of barnstorming baseball, of which there are even fewer records. And then, the man was a bit of a yarn spinner himself, frequently embelishing some aspects of his life, and creating mystery around others. He was one of those rare persons whose first name (or, rather, nickname) creates immediate recognition in many listeners. But few people really knew him; he was, at heart, a loner. He was a complex character who refused to be "owned" by any team in an era long before baseball had heard of the concept of free agency. He was no saint; he spent big, bigger than he could afford to; at one point, he was apparently a bigamist. He was larger than life and possibly more talented than any baseball pitcher who walked the planet.

I think Tye does a pretty good job with this book, all things considered. There were times when I got confused about the "when" of some things, as he didn't keep to a strict chronological order. There were times when I felt the writing dragged a bit, that he repeated certain information too often.

The main things I walk away with are a sense of how awesome Satchel Paige's talent truly was, and wonderment that he could pitch so well so long, and dismay at how bigotry denied this man the kind of career he should have had, both in his prime days as a player and in later years when his baseball knowledge could have nurtured young players through coaching. ( )

A full-scale biography of pitcher Satchel Paige, in all his glory. For the baseball fanatic, probably would be a fascinating and engaging book. I wasn't enthralled, but it did hold my interest throughout. ( )