| |
As you read, click icons in the left margin
and answer any questions that pop up.
Your answers will be stored for
you to review and print once you have finished the article. |
|
|
|
| |
|
 |
 |
 |
| |
|
|
from War, Peace, and All That Jazz
from Only the Ball Was White
by Joy Hakim
|
|
| |
|
|
Josh Gibson "can do everything. He hits the ball a mile. . . .
Throws like a rifle," said
pitching whiz Walter Johnson.
|
"Don't look back,"
said Satchel Paige.
"Something might be
gaining on you."
|
|
|
| |
|
|
 Some people said that Josh Gibson once hit a ball over the roof at Yankee Stadium—which was farther than the Babe ever did. As for the unbelievable Satchel Paige, his pitching was so accurate they say he could have stayed in the strike zone pitching to Tom Thumb. Did he have a fast ball? Why, Satchel practically invented the fast ball. Someone who batted against him said that you never saw his pitched balls—just heard the thump in the catcher's mitt and knew they'd gone by. And Cool Papa Bell? Well, Paige himself swore that Bell ran so fast he could turn off the light switch and make it to bed before the light went out.
As Fast as  Mercury
That lights-out story got repeated as a tall tale and a joke, although it happened to be true. Bell explained that he bet Paige he could do it one night when he learned a light switch was faulty. He won the bet. But usually he didn't need trickery. Cool Papa Bell was fast as Mercury (maybe faster), and Paige and everyone else knew it.
|
|
| |
|
|
From "Only the Ball Was White" from A History of US: War, Peace, and All That Jazz by Joy Hakim. Copyright © 1995 by Joy Hakim. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.
|
|
| |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
