Sep 18, 2005 - 06:01:31 CDT
Bismarck Tribune
By TONY SPILDEBy TONY SPILDE
The best team Satchel Paige ever pitched for played its home games at the corner of Washington Street and Front Avenue.
In Bismarck.
Paige was the star on the 1935 Bismarck semipro baseball team that captured the nation's attention as much for its roster as it did for its tremendous success. The '35 team, run by Neil Churchill, was one of the first integrated baseball teams in history. With Paige on the mound and other stars such as Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe, Quincy Trouppe and Joe Desiderato in the lineup, the Bismarck team won the first National Semipro Tournament.
The story of that nameless 1935 team, renowned at the time but now largely forgotten, is being chased by two separate film companies. One, in Los Angeles, is gathering information for a documentary. The other, led by Minneapolis resident and Negro Leagues historian Kyle McNary, is pursuing a feature-film angle.
The story is one of baseball, Bismarck and boundaries broken.
In a Depression-era world that was very much black and white, Churchill saw beyond color and filled out a team based solely on talent. Paige - who won the 1948 World Series with the Cleveland Indians - said the 1935 Bismarck team was the best he ever played on. Radcliffe, a pitcher and catcher on the team, said playing in Bismarck was one of the greatest times of his life.
"It took somebody with vision to say, 'Not only is this the right thing to do, but we can also make a lot of money,'" McNary said of Churchill. "It's a great story, and it's a true story."
McNary, who lived in Bismarck as a boy and played college baseball in Minnesota, has been researching the Negro Leagues for 15 years. He's written a script for a movie about the '35 team and has been working for the last decade to get it made.
In the process, Los Angeles-based Animus Films got wind of McNary's research and has begun gathering information on its own to put into a documentary. One of the company's key researchers happens to be Neil Churchill - son of the man who ran the Bismarck team. Churchill, now in his late 70s, remembers going to games as a boy with his father.
He is in Bismarck through Monday, collecting information about the team and his dad. Anyone who can help should call Churchill at the Radisson Hotel.
"My dad was charismatic and warm, and he was a hell of a salesman," Churchill said. His father was the latter half of Corwin-Churchill Motors, and would become mayor of Bismarck. "He did a lot to grow baseball in the state. There's no question about it. He called his contacts and got people here who could play baseball, period - black, white or whatever."
McNary, who befriended Double Duty Radcliffe and wrote the player's biography, said the African-American players were comfortable in Bismarck.
"North Dakota was one of the few places where these players could live where the white people lived," McNary said Saturday. "Most of them were treated fairly equally in North Dakota. Of all the people I've ever met, North Dakota people are the nicest people I've ever run into. My theory is they don't feel like they have to impress anybody."
McNary has interviewed the families of most of the members of the '35 team, which beat teams of Major League all-stars before going on to win the semipro tournament in Wichita, Kan. He is writing a book about the team to go with the movie.
"The history of the team is so deep that until you get into it, you can't even begin to understand,"McNary said. That history should include mention of Hilton Smith, who pitched for Bismarck and went on to great years with the famous Kansas City Monarchs teams of the 1940s. Smith was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in 2001.
The history should also include the story of Desiderato, who was offered a Major League contract with the Indians but turned it down so he could keep his job as athletic director in a school district in Chicago.
And the history should be filled with anecdotes on Paige.
Churchill on Friday recounted a memory of his father asking for bets in the stands.
"He asked the men in the stands what they would give him if he pulled the outfielders off the field while Paige was pitching,"Churchill said. "The men bet their money, and then dad followed through and pulled the fielders."
Sometimes Paige himself would ask the outfielders and even infielders to stay in the dugout while he went out there and struck out the side. It backfired on him a few times, McNary said, but more often than not Paige would handle the opponent himself, to the delight of the crowd.
To anyone's best estimate, Paige finished the '35 campaign with a record of 34-2-2, with eight shutouts.
He appeared in five of the team's seven games in the national tournament, compiling a 4-0 record and 60 strikeouts. The strikeout record still stands at the tournament, which is still played in Wichita every year. It is now called the National Baseball Congress Tournament, and it brings together the nation's best collegiate and other amateur players. The list of pitchers who haven't been able to replace Paige in the record book includes Tom Seaver, Don Sutton and Roger Clemens.
Bismarck was the only integrated team at the inaugural tournament.
"It took Bismarck, N.D., to open people's minds," McNary said. "The town is the main character in this story."
McNary is working with a producer and distributor in Texas, and hopes to begin filming next summer. He wants the movie to be at least partially shot in North Dakota, and would like to use Jamestown's Jack Brown Stadium as one of the locations.
Churchill is still helping to gather information for the Animus documentary. Neither of the films has a projected release date set.
"When we first started with the idea, Ithough I could play Joe (Desiderato) because I played third base and looked kind of like him," McNary said. "But now it's 10 years later and Ihave gray hair, so that's out. It's been a long process, but this movie is going to get made."
(Reach reporter Tony Spilde at 250-8260 or tony.spilde@;bismarcktribune.com.)
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