Meeting Satchel Paige
by Bryce Martin

It was just one of those things in life that lasts a moment, but in afterthought is revered in the mind forever.

The Kansas American Legion State Baseball Tournament, held Aug. 4-8, 1960, at Blue Jay Park in Salina, featured the eight district playoff winners.

Chet Roark managed our Columbus team. I was the team's centerfielder. We stayed at a hotel in downtown Salina. The afternoon of our first full day there the temperature sign on a nearby bank read 103 degrees. At the Topper Jr. on 9th Street, you could get a hamburger for 15 cents and a malt for 19 cents.

Roark caught me walking through the lobby and said, "Do you know who this is?" He was talking to a tall, long armed black man. "Sure, I said. "It's Satchel Paige. 'Hello, Mr. Paige.'" I knew it must be him since I had read the local sports page and it had a box score and story of a recent game. Paige was pitching for a Salina team. I shook his hand and went on my way.

We won our first game, defeating the Wichita Derby Rockets, 8-3. We were undefeated when we eventually played Salina, which had one loss. They beat us to force a final game, a game we lost, thanks mostly to my only error of the season in center field.

I remembered that for a long time, until it became more convenient and a whole lot less painful to recall the image of Satchel Paige looking me in the eye in the cool of a hotel lobby on that hot Kansas day.

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