One of the benefits of baseball’s hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic in recent months is that it gave us time to uncover information that had previously gone unnoticed. Important things, dark things, impressive events.
Like when Phil Jackson doubled down on Satchel Paige.
Wait a minute, how? Yes, you read that right. Paige, one of the Negro Leagues’ biggest stars, and Jackson, winner of 11 NBA titles as a coach, shared the same pitch at the same time. This happened in northwestern North Dakota.
“It was a serendipitous meeting that night,” Jackson told MLB.com, “and it’s something you would never expect to happen.”
But it happened, says the 74-year-old former coach and former NBA player, in the summer of 1963 or 1964, when he was playing ball for the American Legion League in Williston, North Dakota, and Paige was on a tour of the country. along with several colleagues from the Negro Leagues.
Many stories involving the legendary Paige are apocryphal. And perhaps this one is too good to be true. But this tale has been around for some time now: It was briefly brought up in various books (including “The Jordan Rules”) and in newspaper articles during Jackson’s coaching career, but in the pre-Internet era this story happened. unnoticed, which is why we decided to examine it thoroughly. And really: What would the Zen Master gain by inventing these kinds of tales?
Jackson’s great friend and former high school classmate Bob Sathe insisted on the following: “If he says it happened, it happened. He is not a person who likes to adorn himself. “
First, one thing you should know is that Jackson once had serious intentions to play professional baseball.
Baseball was a popular sport in the small town of Williston, which had a population of just over 10,000 when Jackson moved there while in sixth grade. From 1954 to 1957, the town had access to the Manitoba-Dakota Independent League (also called the “Mandak” League) – a circuit that provided various Negro Leagues players (including Paige, who pitched for the Minot Mallards in 1950. ) the opportunity to continue their careers, alongside former major leagues, minor leaguers and local talent.
Between the Williston Oilers’ presence in the league, the annual winter baseball banquets and World Series film tours they visited in town, and his own experiences on the field as a lanky left-handed pitcher and first baseman, Jackson was a true baseball fan. He was particularly delighted with Roger Maris’s pursuit of the record for home runs in a season in 1961.
Jackson didn’t have the power of Maris. But because he was too tall a boy when he finished high school (6 feet) and still grew a few inches during college, he exhibited a fairly long stride in his throwing mechanics.
“Every time I threw the ball,” he says, “my cap fell to the ground.”
With his long arms, Jackson launched an almost underwater curveball that, in Sathe’s memory, forced left-handed batters out of the batter’s box.
It was a shame, because Jackson had no command over her.
“He was a pretty wild pitcher,” admits Jackson. “I got a little better over time. I struck out a lot of hitters, but I also walked a lot, let’s just leave it there. But I had a lot of fun. “
Jackson’s stature and basketball profile grew at the University of North Dakota (UND), but he kept pitching, even when the brutal North Dakota winter cold didn’t help his development. In his second year at UND, he led the team in wins (five), ERA (2.30) and strikeouts (51). In his junior year, he pitched six complete games, including two shutouts, while again leading the team in strikeouts (76).
During that junior year of college, Jackson’s baseball team manager Harold “Pinky” Kraft told him that the Dodgers were interested in his services. But Kraft let the Los Angeles scout know that Jackson’s future lay in basketball.
It took Jackson a little longer to come to the same conclusion. He realized it that same summer, when he was a pitcher for the Mobridge Lakes, a semi-professional team in the now-defunct Basin League of South Dakota.
“We were up against a C-Class team from Aberdeen, South Dakota, and these guys were punishing my fastball,” Jackson recalled. “After a few weeks staying in boarding houses and doing common jobs, I had lost 15 pounds. Then I realized that this was not going to work. I was not going to have a body to play basketball ”.
For his last year at the University of North Dakota, in 1967, Jackson decided to play only one sport. Instead of practicing baseball, he spent the spring meeting with various coaches and general managers from the NBA and the American Basketball Association. In the end, he was chosen by the New York Knicks in the second round of the NBA draft.
Interestingly, decades before Jordan flirted with the idea of playing professional ball, Jackson consulted with Danny Wheelan, the Knicks’ physical trainer who had also worked with the Pirates, to see if it was possible for him to return to baseball.
The uneasiness never turned into anything real (Jackson ended up playing 12 seasons in the NBA and was a key member of the team that won the last Knicks title in 1973). But it provided a framework for his coaching career when a certain superstar joined the Triple-A White Sox team in 1994. Jackson understood Jordan’s unconventional and controversial mission.
But the most direct way the ball hit Jackson was through his experience as a pilot in a teen baseball league while he was still in high school and college.
When Jackson was 20 years old, he guided his team to the state final.
“The boys were five or six years younger than me,” explained Jackson. “Without a doubt, he taught me the discipline necessary to be a coach.”
During his days coaching Chicago, Jackson joked with Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf that if he ever needed an emergency manager for the Handpaws, his services were available. However, most can dare to say that Jackson took the right path with his coaching career.
Still, baseball left him some stories to tell – none better than the time he faced Paige while playing in the American Legion League in the summer after his senior year of high school or his freshman year of college (Jackson was not sure when).
Paige, who was about the same height as Jackson, spent 40 years in professional baseball, pitching more than 2,500 games and scoring victory in almost 2,000 of them, based on Paige’s own records. When he was not wearing the uniform for teams in the Negro Leagues, Major Leagues, or Minor Leagues, he was part of semi-professional teams that traveled all over the United States.
This is how Paige and Jackson’s paths crossed in an exhibition match.
“It was almost a college setting, in the middle of western North Dakota, awesome heat in a dusty little town,” Jackson recalled. “There were quite a few spectators for that. I remember Paige and her classmates looked like they were having fun. I was the pitcher against Paige, I was lanky and had to cover my left eye with the cap because the sun was shining through the stands. They were mocking from the cave. “
When Jackson stepped into the box against Paige (there was no designated hitter), he didn’t see the intimidating fastball that had made Paige a figure at the highest levels. Although Paige managed to make one last major league appearance for the Kansas City Athletics in 1965, when she faced Jackson – at age 60 – she was no longer of the caliber she was in 1953, her last truly successful season in MLB.
“He was probably throwing 70 miles per hour,” Jackson said. “I think he gave me an easy pitch to hit and I sent it all the way to the center field wall. It was a fun game. “
And it was a funny story. Phil Jackson vs. Satchel Paige. (GG) (TAKEN MLB.COM)