sydrogerdavid's Blog
In regards to the chapter on baseball humor; I am surprised that the editor did not mention Buck O’Neil and his stories of Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell. Every baseball fan knows these stories about how fast Cool Papa Bell was, but they are still funny and worth repeating.
Back when the Negro Leagues were still around, Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell were roommates when the team was traveling. (The team was traveling all the time, but that’s not a part of the story.) Anyway, Cool Papa Bell was, and is still, considered to be by many fans as the fastest man ever to play baseball. One night when the players were staying at a hotel, Cool Papa claimed in front of Satchel Paige that he was so fast, that he could flick the light switch and climb into bed before the room got dark. Needless to say, Satchel didn’t believe him, so he took up the bet. What happened next was extraordinary. Cool Papa had, in fact, flicked the light switch off and climbed into bed before the room got dark. It’s true. All you had to do was ask Satchel Paige and he would tell you that it was true. It wasn’t reveled until later that Satchel had led out a major part of the story. There was a short in the light switch. So there was a delay from the time the switch was flicked to the time the room went black.
There are a couple of other, humorous stories telling how fast Cool Papa Bell was. He was once said to have scored from second on a sacrifice fly, some claim he scored from first on a sacrifice fly. It’s also stated that once Cool Papa hit a shot up the middle, only to be called out by the umpire because his hit struck in on the back when he was sliding into second.
Another funny Negro League story comes from when Josh Gibson (the black Babe Ruth. Or was Babe Ruth the white Josh Gibson?) was playing a home game in Pittsburgh. He hit the ball so hard and so high that it disappeared into the sky. The next day, Gibson and his team were playing in Washington. A fielder for the Washington team saw something falling from the sky. When he caught it, everybody realized it was a baseball. The umpire quickly threw up his fist in the air and shouted at Gibson, “YOU’RE OUT, YESTERDAY, IN PITTSBURGH.”
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