While giving a Veterans Day address at Arlington National Cemetery on Thursday, President Joe Biden mistakingly called Satchel Paige “the great negro” while recalling a story about the baseball legend. Biden was honoring former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary Donald Blinken.
“I’ve adopted the attitude of the great negro at the time, pitcher of the Negro leagues, who went on to become a great pitcher in the pros — in Major League Baseball — after Jackie Robinson. His name was Satchel Paige,” Biden told the crowd.
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He continued: “And Satchel Paige on his 47th birthday pitched a win against Chicago. And all the press went in and said, ‘Satch is amazing. Forty-seven years old. No one’s ever, ever pitched a win at age 47. How do you feel about being 47?’ He said, ‘Boys, that’s not how I look at it.’ And they said, ‘How do you look at it, Satch? And he said, ‘I look at it this way: How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?’”
Paige moved to Major League Baseball in the late 1940s, but his career as a whole spanned five decades. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1971.
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