When the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals square off on June 20, 2024, at Rickwood Field in a National League game, they won’t be playing the first Major League Baseball contest at the Birmingham ballpark.

In 2020, Major League Baseball recognized the game played in 49 selected seasons of seven Negro Leagues as Major League-quality, meaning it was comparable to the baseball being played in its own American and National leagues during the sport’s period of segregated professional circuits.

Nineteen of those retroactive Major League seasons included the residents of Rickwood Field – the Birmingham Black Barons.

So it was with the Black Barons that pitcher Satchel Paige made his Major League debut as a 20-year-old in 1927.

New Market native Sam Streeter and Warrior native Harry Salmon headlined the pitching staff, with Streeter leading the Negro National League in innings pitched and Salmon compiling a 15-6 record, so the young right-hander worked in 20 league games, going 7-2 with a 2.39 earned-run average and an eye-popping (for the era) 93 strikeouts in 98 innings. Paige would lead the Negro National League in strikeouts in each of the next two seasons.

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But during Paige’s lifetime, his Major League debut remained 21 years away, when he first took the mound for the Cleveland Indians after the integration of the big leagues.

Born in Mobile 117 years ago today, Paige made what was then considered his MLB debut on July 9, 1948 – two days after his 42nd birthday, although that age was more like a question mark at the time.

Name any year from 1901 and 1909, and there’s a news source that, at some point, has listed it as Paige’s birth year. As he joined the American League well past the time that most players had come to the end of their careers, Paige told reporters who inquired about his age that a goat had eaten his birth certificate and Methuselah had been his bat boy. Or as he was fond of asking: How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?

Paige’s 1948 autobiography, “Pitchin’ Man,” has a chapter titled “About My Age,” which starts: “Now about my age. That’s usually a subject for women, but I guess we got to go into it because the way everybody is fussing, it seems it’s as important as the secret of the atomic bomb.” Paige then cites a variety of people – his mother, ex-wife, a judge who fined him for a speeding ticket, the guys he played bingo with – who all had different ages for him, without confirming any as correct.

A two-time member of the American League All-Star team in his 40s, Paige naturally was asked by an interviewer for his secret to athletic longevity. His answers came to be called his “Six Rules for Staying Young” or “Six Rules for a Happy Life:”

Rule 1: “Avoid fried meats, which angry up the blood.”

Paige started his pro career with the Chattanooga White Sox in 1926 and ended it with the Peninsula Pilots in 1966 and pitched for dozens of teams from Alaska to South America in between. That included the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro National League from 1927 through 1930. He is most closely identified with the Pittsburgh Crawfords of the 1930s and the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. Paige played for the Monarchs from 1940 until he joined Cleveland in 1948.

Rule 2: “If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.”

Paige became a household name even while excluded from the big leagues because of his race. But players on the white side of baseball knew what Paige could do. “The pre-war Paige was the best pitcher I ever saw,” Bob Feller said. Ted Williams called him “the greatest pitcher,” and Joe DiMaggio labeled Paige “the best I’ve ever faced, and the fastest.”

Rule 3: “Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.”

During the offseason, top baseball players sometimes would supplement their incomes with barnstorming tours to stage exhibition games outside the 10 cities where the American and National leagues played. Paige headlined traveling teams of Negro League all-stars that opposed squads of big-leaguers led first by Dizzy Dean and then by Feller. “My fastball looks like a change of pace alongside that little pistol bullet ol’ Satchel shoots up to the plate,” Dean said.

Rule 4: “Go very light on the vices such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain’t restful.”

Paige was the first African American pitcher in American League history in 1948, when he helped the Indians become World Series champions with a 6-1 record and 2.48 earned-run average in 21 appearances. Paige pitched another season with Cleveland, then three for the St. Louis Browns, representing the team in the MLB All-Star games of 1952 and 1953.

Rule 5: “Avoid running at all times.”

Paige still was pitching regularly at age 52 for the Miami Marlins of the Triple-A International League in 1958, going 10-10 with a 2.95 ERA. Paige’s final MLB outing in 1965 was a publicity stunt by Kansas City Athletics owner Charles O. Finley, who two nights before Paige’s return to the Majors had staged Bert Campaneris Appreciation Night, during which the Kansas City shortstop played one inning at each of the nine positions on the field. But Paige did serious pitching as the starter for the Athletics against the Boston Red Sox. In three innings, he allowed one baserunner – future Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski on a ground-rule double. Paige threw 28 pitches – a number less than half his age. Paige’s final MLB appearance came 38 years after his first with the Black Barons – an unprecedented span.

Rule 6: “Don’t look back; something might be gaining on you.”

This rule landed Paige in “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.” His exploits on the diamond landed him in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971, the first player to be enshrined for his performance in the Negro Leagues. He’s one of the five players in the Baseball Hall of Fame who were born in Mobile, along with Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, Ozzie Smith and Billy Williams.

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.