In the Jean and Alexander Heard Library exhibit The Golden Age of Sports Journalism: Grantland Rice and Fred Russell, baseball takes center stage, as it has all summer at Vanderbilt. This photo of Satchel Paige, part of the Fred Russell Collection on display, is accompanied by the typescript of a profile about Paige by Russell that ran in a 1958 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
Talking about his first season as a professional pitcher in 1926 for the Chattanooga White Sox of the Southern Negro League, Paige said, “At Chattanooga, I could throw a baseball so hard you couldn’t see it at noon. I wore out three catchers’ mitts that first season.”
Worn-out catchers’ mitts are not part of the exhibit, but plenty of other memorabilia belonging to Russell and Grantland Rice are. On display in the Central Library through April 20, 2015, the exhibit includes signed baseballs, a rare silent film highlighting the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and Grantland Rice’s last typewriter.