Did Satchel Paige throw more no-hitters than Nolan Ryan? As MLB adds Negro League stats, it's unclear (2024)

THE ATHLETIC, IN AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW THIS WEEK WITH ALEXA: “Alexa, how many no-hitters did Satchel Paige claim he pitched?”

ALEXA: “Satchel Paige reported pitching around 2,500 games in his lifetime, including 50 no-hitters.”

THE ATHLETIC: “Alexa, how many no-hitters does Major League Baseball recognize by Satchel Paige?”

ALEXA: “Sorry. I don’t know that.”

The legend of Satchel Paige never gets old, just like Satchel himself. But perhaps you’re wondering, just as I was: Now that his whole career is part of baseball’s official record, how many no-hitters can we confidently say that Paige pitched anyway?

Was it 50? Was it five? Was it two? Was it some other number — possibly even (gasp) zero? Let’s just say it isn’t only Alexa that is having trouble with that fascinating little query. Before this story is over, I’ll explain to you why — because it’s complicated. But first, let’s set the scene.

My friend Dirk Lammers, one of America’s most passionate no-hitter historians, dropped me a note the other day, just to ask a “quick question”:

Now that Major League Baseball has officially recognized the remarkable statistics from the Negro Leagues, he asked, how many no-hitters will be added to the record books?

It seemed like such a simple question — to him, to me and (I’m guessing) to most of you reading this. So I told Dirk I would look into it. Guess what? I’m still looking.

That’s because MLB’s current answer to that question goes something like this:“Sorry. We don’t know that.”

We always hate it when life imitates Alexa. But it turned out that “quick question” from Lammers is one that MLB doesn’t expect to be able to answer for months, maybe even years.

So wait. Why would that be, you ask, if Negro League stats have been formally added to the MLB record book? Excellent question. Let’s sum it up this way.

Whatwasadded:All of the Negro League’s career and season records.

Whatwasn’tadded:Anything that theoretically happened inanyNegro League game, or span of games.

Hmmm, there wasn’t much mention of that second part in MLB’s announcement this week of the addition of those Negro League stats and records. But it’s true — a fact I learned only after posing Lammers’ no-hitter question to the Elias Sports Bureau’s John Labombarda.

“Version 1.0 of this project was: Let’s get the single-season and career numbers in first,” said Labombarda, a member of the Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee that evaluated these numbers for MLB. “So that’s what we did for now, for today. But we don’t have any game-by-game box scores loaded yet. So we can’t do no-hitters, three-homer games, 15-strikeout games, etc.”

That, he said, is coming in Version 2.0, or possibly 3.0. But work on those versions hasn’t even begun, he said. Once it does, though, whew. It will be quite the hefty research project, kind of like baseball’s version of uncovering the Dead Sea Scrolls.

According to MLB’s announcement on Wednesday, its researchers have unearthed data on only about 75 percent of Negro League games from 1920-48. By that, they mean they’re working with limited box scores, almost no complete play-by-play data and even less thorough newspaper accounts of these games. And at this point, they feel grateful just to have that.

But now imagine trying to convert all those disparate pieces into a database that could tell you, say, how many hits Cool Papa Bell got for the Homestead Grays on May 12, 1943 — and you’ll have a greater understanding of the mammoth difficulty of this undertaking.

“This was a very challenging project,” Labombarda said, “one that isn’t even close to being done.”

It’s a project that was well worth embarking upon, obviously. Yet the more we learn about how incomplete the data was that this 17-member committee had at its disposal, the more we can’t help but ask this central question:

How could the league add all of the career and season records to the hallowed official numbers of baseball despite the slight technicality thatit literally can’t total up the numbers of all the games that produced those records?

Well, it wasn’t easy to sign off on that, Labombarda said. But in the end, the committee made a fundamental decision that made that possible:

“Really,” he said, “we’re just trying to concentrate on the information wehavemore than the information that wedon’thave.”

Great idea. But now let’s get back to Satchel Paige, because A) why the heck not and B) he’s the perfect example of the difficult decisions that lie ahead for this committee.

The legend of Satchel’s no-hitters

Have you been thinking about that question I posed at the beginning of this piece? I hope so, because there’s going to be a quiz. How many no-hitters did Satchel Paige really throw? I’m pretty sure that not even Alexa got that question right.

We can start with Satchel himself. He didn’t merely throw a lot of baseball games. He threw out just as many large tales about those games.

According to Joe Posnanski’s fabled “Baseball 100” bio of Paige, this man claimed he pitched 2,600 games in his lifetime, twirled 300 shutouts and (here it comes)threw 55 no-hitters — or possibly 50, according to other accounts. Whatever. Believe it. Don’t believe it. It’s fun no matter what you believe.

But … is there any chance Paige is going to wind up getting credited with throwing nearly eight times as many no-hitters as Nolan Ryan?Yeah, sure. And I’m going to get credited for outhomering Babe Ruth, too.

Like much of Satchel’s life and times, those 55 no-hitters are a richly entertaining slice of his one-of-the-kind folklore. But no record exists of practically all of them. What we do have is a valuable compilation of various forms of Negro League no-hitters on Lammers’ website, nonohitters.com. And Paige shows up on that unofficial list five times.

But … is there any chance MLB is going to give him credit for five no-hitters? You should take the “under” on that — way under.

“He had a seven-inning (no-hitter) for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1940,” Lammers said. “That won’t count. He had another combined one for Kansas City (in 1942). He had another seven-inning one in 1936 for Pittsburgh. But there are really only two that I think should be considered official.”

OK then. How’d you enjoy thatquick ride down the elevator shaft from 55 to two? Some fun, eh? But let’s hone in on those other two games because they’re different from the rest. They are as famous and well-documented as any games Paige pitched in his Negro League career.

They come complete with newspaper accounts — plus enough play-by-play data that you can find actual box scores of both on the fabulous Negro Leagues no-hitters page at Retrosheet. So there is no doubt — zero — that those games are real, and they’re spectacular.

July 8, 1932 — In this game, at Pittsburgh’s Greenlee Field, Paige, pitching for the Pittsburgh Crawfords, no-hit the New York Black Yankees, striking out 11. According to a story back then in the nationally circulated Black newspaper, The Afro-American, “Satchell refused to give the Easterners a solitary hit” that day. And that, my friends, is some eloquent baseball writing.

July 4, 1934 — Now let’s turn the dial up a notch and look at one of the most iconic games of Paige’s career — a 17-strikeout no-hit dazzler against the famed Homestead Grays, also at Greenlee Field. Sevenfuture Hall of Famers played in this game, if we count Paige himself. And when he was through, the Pittsburgh Courier’s William Nunn wrote that Paige had conclusively “stamped himself as the greatest showman in the game.”

So unlike most of those 50 or 55 no-hitters Paige took credit for, there is zero dispute over whether these games happened. But will they wind up in baseball’s official record book once the committee has finished its work? Repeat after Alexa: Sorry. I don’t know that.

Here’s the problem: MLB’s initial inclination, according to Labombarda, is to count only games “against league competition” in its official record. And Paige’s team wasn’t in the same league as either the Black Yankees or the Grays at the time those games took place.

The Grays, in fact, were such a draw unto themselves that they had dropped out of the Negro National League and gone independent for a year. So in theory, none of their games that season could wind up in the official baseball record book.

But is that lack of formal league affiliation enough reason to toss both of those Paige no-hitters out of the MLB’s record book? Not in the view of another member of the committee, Retrosheet president Tom Thress.

“I would definitely include both (of those games),” Thress told The Athletic. “In talking about which teams to consider ‘major-league,’ there seemed to be a general consensus in the committee to, at a minimum, include teams who were in a major league for most of their history but may not have been for a season or two or three, mostly for reasons out of their control.

“Certainly, the 1934 Homestead Grays would qualify under such a standard,” he said, “as, in my opinion, would the 1932 Crawfords and Black Yankees.”

There is a reason, Thress said, that those games were listed on Retrosheet’s Negro League No-Hitters page — and it’s a reason he thinks the committee should adhere to when it comes time to decide how to handle games like this.

“The general approach which Retrosheet … has taken is to define a group of ‘major-league’ teams and then count any game played between two ‘major-league’ teams as a ‘major-league’ game,” Thress wrote in an email. “Reasonable people may certainly disagree on whether a particular team was a ‘major-league’ team for teams outside of formally recognized major Negro Leagues. But there is a general agreement that inter-league games between teams from different leagues should count even if such games did not count in the standings of either league.”

OK then. So obviously, they’re going to count. Unless they don’t. But wouldyoulike to be one of those lucky people trying to decide? How many Advil a day do you think you’d wind up taking if you had to make these calls?

Because it’s not just Satchel Paige, you see. We’re talking about nearly three full decades of Negro League games — involving hundreds of players and seven different leagues, none of which existed for this entire period. So questions about which games and feats should “count” are going to arise over and over, in all shapes and sizes.

Is baseball treading down way too slippery a slope if it starts “counting” games that don’t get recorded in the standings of any league? Should it then “count” stats from the World Baseball Classic — or other tournaments or exhibitions that teams played throughout the years?

This committee has to wrestle with all of those questions. But if its mission is to document the careers of many of the greatest players of all time, how can it look at a17-strikeout no-hitter,thrown by the greatSatchel Paige against the mighty Homestead Grays, and decide that nope, that never happened?

“It’s not like we’re talking about some retired-player softball league they had in west Florida,” Lammers said. “This is people at the prime of their careers, performing.”

Also, consider this: When people look back at the career of players like Paige a century from now, the decisions this committee is about to make will shape how future generations view these players in more ways than merely the numbers on a stats page.

Did Satchel Paige really throw more no-hitters than anyone except Nolan Ryan (who threw seven of them)? Imagine the impact of that claim to fame as the years roll by.

Or how about this: If he gets credit for a 17-strikeout no-hitter, it means we could say that the only three men ever to strike out that many in a no-hitter are Max Scherzer, Ryan and Paige. Let that fun fact swirl around your brain for a moment.

No wonder Labombarda, who has dedicated much of his adult life to his work for the official statisticians of Major League Baseball, describes this project as unique among those he’s undertaken.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” he said. “And I know how imperfect the statistics are in this sport, that we live with. And this world, we will live with, also. You know, this is more about storytelling about the Negro League players (than it is about any sets of numbers).”

So as they begin phase two of this critical yet complicated mission, the members of this committee have come to accept the realities facing them. Perfection is impossible. But telling those stories? That, they understand, is too important not to keep trying.

“I think this is a fantastic thing,” Labombarda said. “We just have to live with the imperfections.”

(Top image: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photos: Mark Rucker / Transcendental Graphics via Getty Images. Screenshot of newspaper clipping: The Pittsburgh Courier, 1934)