Group still raising funds to restore Satchel Paige KC home
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Major League Baseball hosted a tribute to the Negro Leagues at Rickwood Field, the former home of the Birmingham Black Barons. Among the many athletes who played at the historic field was Satchel Paige.
Satchel Paige pitched for 20 years in the Negro Leagues, getting his start in Birmingham. Known for his flair, a legendary windup and leg kick he’d spend nearly a decade with the Kansas City Monarchs before being one of the first players to break baseball’s color barrier in 1948, a year after Jackie Robinson.
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Sometime after 1950 when the Santa Fe community began allowing minorities Paige purchased a house on E. 28th Street near Prospect Avenue where he and his wife would raise their eight children and live until his death in 1982.
“The family has stories of Count Basie, the Harlem Globetrotters. As you know there were times African-American people couldn’t stay in hotels. This is one of the locations where they would come,” Leroy Satchel Paige Family Home Corporation Secretary Marquita Taylor said.
In 2018, the home was gutted by fire and placed on the city’s dangerous buildings list, making it eligible for possible demolition.
A nonprofit Leroy Satchel Paige Family Home Corporation was formed to begin raising $4.5 million to restore the home as a museum with artifacts.
“The cost to me is small compared to what we are trying to accomplish here, the value add that it’s going to bring not just for Santa Fe, but for our city,” Taylor said.
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Three years since launching the effort, there’s a new roof and work to reinforce the walls. But they are still millions away from their goal for any major improvements inside the home. Not to mention a couple million more for phase two, a clubhouse with a meeting space available for rent and a catering kitchen, which they believe would be needed to sustain operations.
“It’s all ready. All we need now is for supporters to come forward and help us put the dollars together to reach our goal,” Taylor said.
But with the recent inclusion of Negro Leagues stats and Thursday’s MLB Tribute to the Negro Leagues game, Taylor says prospects are looking brighter.
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