I was going on 19 years old the first time I faced Satch, in 1936. Ol’ Satch threw one pretty close to me. I guess you know I waved at the next three. I went back to the dugout. My manager, William Bell, says, “Red, how’s it look?” I said, “That man is throwing that ball so hard I can’t hardly see it!” Satch was about 30 years old then. I just would have liked to have seen him back when he was a teenager.
I stayed up there with Newark about five or six years and saw a lot of Satch. His greatest pitch was the fastball. He threw it high, low, in and out, and you just couldn’t hardly hit it when he was at his peak. He also had a hesitation pitch, where he’d stop the windup, drop one foot like he was going to throw it, and when he’d turn the ball loose, the batter had already made his motion. He couldn’t get the bat back to hit in time. After he went into the majors, they took away that hesitation pitch because he was getting those big hitters out.
