Satchel Paige And Knowing Your Game

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Virtuality, philosophy, & transhumanist dementia

From Lev Six

“When a batter swings, I can see his knees move, I can tell just what his weaknesses are, then I just put the ball where he can’t hit it.”
— Satchel Paige

Paige’s thoughts can be applied to any system, especially outside of the realm of baseball.

Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige (July 7, 1906 – June 8, 1982) was an American baseball player whose pitching in the Negro leagues and Major League Baseball was beyond powerful. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971, the first player to be inducted based upon his play in the Negro leagues.

In 2010, sportswriter Joe Posnanski, writing for Sports Illustrated, named Paige as the hardest thrower in the history of baseball. He based this, in part, on the fact that: “Joe DiMaggio would say that Paige was the best he ever faced. Bob Feller would say that Paige was the best he ever saw. Hack Wilson would say that the ball looked like a marble when it crossed the plate. Dizzy Dean would say that Paige’s fastball made his own look like a changeup.”

Posnanski further noted that: “for most of his career Satchel Paige threw nothing but fastballs. Nothing. Oh, he named them different names — Bat Dodger, Midnight Rider, Midnight Creeper, Jump Ball, Trouble Ball — but essentially they were all fastballs. And he was still unhittable for the better part of 15 years. One pitch. It’s a lot like Mariano Rivera, except he wasn’t doing it for one inning at a time. He was pitching complete games day after day. That had to be some kind of incredible fastball…. [he was] perhaps the most precise pitcher in baseball history — he threw ludicrously hard. And he also threw hundreds and hundreds of innings.”