The Mobile Tigers was a semi-professional baseball team composed entirely [1] of African-American players based in Mobile, Alabama. It was one of several Black baseball teams based in Mobile during the same period and was a training ground for at least three players who later joined the Negro leagues. [2]
Shortly after leaving a reform school in Mount Meigs, Alabama, Satchel Paige started his career with Mobile at age 18. [3] [4] [5] [6] The employed Paige had been job hunting but in his spare time enjoyed watching his older brother Wilson playing for this team. Presenting himself in a try out to Candy Jim Taylor, the Mobile Tigers's manager at that time, Paige fired ten fastballs past Taylor. After ten pitches and ten strikes, Paige got a job with the Tigers in 1924. [1] [7] According to Paige, Mobile paid him "$1 when the gate was good and a keg of lemonade when it wasn't." [8]
According to a sports writer for the Birmingham-Pittsburg Traveller, Paige's position pitching for the semi-pro Mobile Tigers was the launching pad for "one of the most successful careers in baseball history." [9] After playing for the Mobile Tigers for one year, Paige began his professional baseball career with the Chattanooga White Sox of the Negro Southern League. [1] [10]
Future Negro league stars Ted Radcliffe (as well as his brother Forney) and Bobby Robinson also played on the Mobile Tigers at the same time as Paige. [2] [11]