Satchel Paige Marquee Hall of Fame 1971

Across twenty-two seasons in leagues now counted as major he won 130 games and struck out 1,520, and he led his league in strikeouts six times. Sixteen of those seasons were in the Negro Leagues, where the record has him at 102 wins in 229 recorded games; four more seasons in independent ball, worth another 13 wins, sit outside the count. He was the biggest draw in Black baseball for two decades and pitched most days of the week for whoever was paying.

Cleveland signed him in July 1948, eleven weeks after his 42nd birthday and a year after Robinson. He went 6-1 down the stretch for a club that won the World Series, which made him the oldest rookie the major leagues have had and, on the arithmetic, roughly fifteen years late. He was picked for six East-West All-Star games and two major-league ones.

He pitched three innings for Kansas City in 1965 at 59 to become the oldest man to appear in a major-league game. The Hall of Fame elected him in 1971, the first player chosen for a career made mostly in the Negro Leagues.