At least that’s what co-writer Jim Keller will admit.

“Because it’s such a good story,” is the reason the story was written, Keller said.

Keller said that his father, Loren, actually came to Jim with the story idea, and after researching about Paige, Keller knew he was onto something.

But, Keller said, it took a while for him to work on the play because he was working and busy raising a family.

Russell C. Holt as Satchel Paige in “A Pitch From Satchel Paige.”

“He’s old school,” Keller said of his father. “He would type out a chapter and put it in the mail, and send it to me.”

Jim’s wife also chimed in and told her husband to start writing.

“And, and ultimately Satchel Paige wrote his own story,” Jim said. “He was so prolific with interesting quotes and things that he said and things that he did that it made it very easy. All we really had to do was sort of turn it into a stage performance.”

So in 2005, the Kellers began committing the words to the page (no pun intended). About five years later, Keller said, the duo finished the first draft, and while rewriting more drafts, they set out to hold readings where they got actors to perform the play while seeking feedback from an audience.

And Monday at 7:30 p.m., in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, in New York City, the play is scheduled to be performed. It is directed by Verneice Turner and produced by Gene Fisch Jr.

AP Images/Matty Zimmerman The logo for the play “A Pitch From Satchel Paige.”

Keller said as a kickoff to Black History Month, Buffalo native Russell C. Holt, will take the stage as “Satch” and “pitch” his story directly to the audience in this solo performance.

“Most of us are familiar with the incredible story of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in (Major League) Baseball. But many people don’t know the pre-Jackie story of the old Negro Leagues and the amazing players that paved the way.”

Keller added that the play focuses on a unique individual who lives a bittersweet life, living simultaneously in two worlds – one as a superstar entertainer during the Depression era; the other as a black man in a nation where he is unable to perform his craft alongside white athletes.

“He is an outstanding storyteller with a bigger-than-life personality and a legendary sense of humor. It is his humor that helps him hide his sadness at having to live as a second-class citizen and his supreme disappointment at not being able to play in the major leagues,” Keller noted.

The production is a drama and a comedy, written as a performance from Paige, not as a play about him. Paige, Keller added, brings the audience right into the stadium for some of his classic pitching duels, and to Drum Island to relive the arrival of slave ships. The audience feels the exhilaration of these exciting ball games as well as the pain of African Americans during the Jim Crow era. 

Throughout the performance, Paige learns to handle the many ‘curve balls’ that life throws at him – including the fact that he wasn’t chosen as the first black player to cross the color line into Major League Baseball.

The two-act play is performed on a simple set that includes a modified pitcher’s mound at center stage for Paige to pitch his lines and his virtual baseballs.

The play had an eight-show run at the Paul Robeson Theatre in Buffalo in 2024 and won the 2018 New York New Works Festival in Manhattan. Tonight’s scheduled performance, Keller said, is produced in association with the York Theatre Company and the New York New Works Theatre Festival.

Keller is a former Post-Journal Reporter who worked at the newspaper in the early 1980s.