Diamond Nuggets: There was a nice historical touch at Saturday’s game about major baseball events that occurred on the 4th of July. The events were shown on the big board in centerfield during pitching changes: Lou Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man In the World” speech in 1939 and Dave Righetti’s no-hitter against the Red Sox in 1983 were two examples. Another was about Satchel Paige pitching his teams to two wins on July 4, 1934 — in two different cities.  As the story goes he pitched a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Crawfords vs. the Homestead Grays then drove all the way to Chicago and beat the Chicago American-Giants 1 – 0 in 12 innings.

Really?! 

It seemed implausible as soon as I heard the announcer tell the story. So I did a bit of digging.  I couldn’t find any box scores for the Negro Leagues so I couldn’t corroborate the story that way. (If they exist I’d love to have someone send me a link.) And the stories I did find about the feat all seemed to trace back to ‘ol Satchell himself. So then I thought about that drive he took to the second game (he supposedly drove to Chicago and didn’t take the train) after pitching and winning the first game.

According to Google Maps, to make that 461 mile drive from Pittsburgh to Chicago today would take seven-and-a-half hours — with an average speed of 61 mph.  There were no interstate highways at the time and the cars of the day, I don’t think, could handle 61 mph for that distance. There was something called the Lincoln Highway that was state of the art at the time, but I still can’t imagine the drive could be done in less than ten hours. It probably took longer.

But let’s say the drive actually took ten hours. And let’s say the first game took two hours to complete. If the first game started at eight  in the morning (also a bit of a stretch, but stay with me here) Paige wouldn’t have arrived in Chicago until eight that night. Night games were not unheard of in the mid 1930s and the Kansas City Monarchs were said to have carried their lights with them. And (if the one hour time difference is taken into consideration) a 7 p.m. start time is quite possible. But is it likely?

It’s my guess that Paige, who was no stranger to telling a good tale had heard of the numerous times white players had won both ends of a doubleheader and figured he’d go them one better by claiming to have done it in two different cities. But it is a bit surprising that the Nats would be perpetuating the tale. Even so, it’s a great story and, frankly, there’s probably no need to let something like the facts get in the way of ’ol Satch’s legacy.