The Mobile Tigers, a semi-professional baseball team composed entirely[1] of African-American players based in Mobile, Alabama. It was one of several Black baseball teams based in Mobile during the same period and was a training ground for at least three players who later joined the Negro leagues.[2]

Significant players

Shortly after leaving a reform school in Mount Meigs, Alabama, Satchel Paige started his career with Mobile at age 18.[3][4][5][6] The employed Paige had been job hunting but in his spare time enjoyed watching his older brother Wilson playing for this team. Presenting himself in a try out to Candy Jim Taylor, the Mobile Tigers's manager at that time, Paige fired ten fastballs past Taylor. After ten pitches and ten strikes, Paige got a job with the Tigers in 1924.[1][7] According to Paige, Mobile paid him "$1 when the gate was good and a keg of lemonade when it wasn't."[8]

According to a sports writer for the Birmingham-Pittsburg Traveller, Paige's position pitching for the semi-pro Mobile Tigers was the launching pad for "one of the most successful careers in baseball history."[9] After playing for the Mobile Tigers for one year, Paige began his professional baseball career with the Chattanooga White Sox of the Negro Southern League.[1][10]

Future Negro league stars Ted Radcliffe (as well as his brother Forney) and Bobby Robinson also played on the Mobile Tigers at the same time as Paige.[2][11]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Stories of Children, "Snatching A Moment with Satch"
  2. 1 2 Archived 2008-10-06 at the Wayback Machine Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe: 36 Years of Pitching & Catching in Baseball's Negro Leagues
  3. ↑ Satchel Paige Stats and Awards
  4. ↑ Major League Baseball: Negro Leagues Legacy
  5. ↑ The African American Registry
  6. ↑ James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994 (Negro Leagues Baseball Museum at Kansas State University College of Education)
  7. ↑ Archived 2008-05-24 at the Wayback Machine New York Times (June 8, 1982) Obituary of Satchel Paige at the Negro League Baseball Players Association
  8. ↑ Satchel Paige as told to David Lipman (1993). Maybe I'll Pitch Forever. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 30–31. ISBN 0-8032-8732-1.
  9. ↑ Birmingham-Pittsburg Traveller(kenyon.edu)
  10. ↑ Larry Tye (2009). Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend. New York: Random House. pp. 24–29, 41–42. ISBN 978-1-4000-6651-3.
  11. ↑ Bobby Robinson Wood Sign
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