HISTORICAL RESEARCH / An oral history of Satchel Paige’s final game - ESPN Landscape

Satchel Paige, one of the most accomplished, important and intriguing athletes in history. In 1965, a dozen years after he’d last appeared in the major leagues, Paige became the oldest player ever in an MLB game, pitching three scoreless innings at age 59 for the Kansas City Athletics and allowing just one hit by the Boston Red Sox. But the myriad contemporaneous and subsequent reports through the six decades after the untelevised game missed important information and interview opportunities and contained some misleading and erroneous material. Andscape’s comprehensive February 2025 account was the product of more than 40 interviews and it features new details and anecdotes from the families of Paige and team owner Charlie Finley, nearly all of the surviving players from the two teams -- including those who were on the benches and in the bullpens -- and others about the leadup, the game and its aftermath. In addition to the firsthand recollections, a deep research and resources dive yielded key finds that contributed to capturing what occurred 60 years ago and since. Among the discoveries in the expansive report was a previously unknown twist regarding a rocking chair that was famously part of Finley’s promotion of Paige’s brief tenure with Kansas City. The Andscape treatment of the story includes a newly obtained recording of the radio broadcast of Paige’s ’65 performance, presented in its entirety and in user-friendly reader-activated snippets to complement the text.