The Mobile Tigers was a

semi-professional Semi-professional sports are sports in which athletes are not participating on a full-time basis, but still receive some payment. Semi-professionals are not amateur because they receive regular payment from their team, but generally at a cons ...

baseball team Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play beginning when a player on the fielding team, called ...

composed entirely
Stories of Children, "Snatching A Moment with Satch" of

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

players based in

Mobile, Alabama Mobile ( , ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population was 187,041 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. After a successful vote to annex areas west of the city limits in July 2023, Mobil ...

. It was one of several Black baseball teams based in Mobile during the same period and was a training ground for at least three players who later joined the

Negro leagues The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relativel ...

.
Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe: 36 Years of Pitching & Catching in Baseball's Negro Leagues

Significant players

Shortly after leaving a

reform school A reform school was a Prison, penal institution, generally for teenagers, mainly operating between 1830 and 1900. In the United Kingdom and its colonies, reformatory, reformatories (commonly called reform schools) were set up from 1854 onward f ...

Mount Meigs, Alabama Mount Meigs (also Evansville or Mount Pleasant) is an unincorporated area, unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Alabama, Montgomery County in the U.S. state, state of Alabama. The Mount Meigs Campus, a juvenile correctional facility an ...

Satchel Paige Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige (July 7, 1906 – June 8, 1982) was an American professional baseball pitcher who played in Negro league baseball and Major League Baseball (MLB). His career spanned five decades and culminated with his induction in ...

started his career with Mobile at age 18. The employed Paige had been job hunting but in his spare time enjoyed watching his older brother Wilson playing for this team. Presenting himself in a try out to Candy Jim Taylor, the Mobile Tigers's

manager Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a government bodies through business administration, nonprofit management, or the political science sub-field of public administra ...

at that time, Paige fired ten

fastball The fastball is the most common type of pitch (baseball), pitch thrown by pitchers in baseball and softball. Its distinctive feature is its high speed. "Power pitchers," such as former major leaguers Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens, relied on the ...

s past Taylor. After ten pitches and ten strikes, Paige got a job with the Tigers in 1924. According to Paige, Mobile paid him "$1 when the gate was good and a keg of

lemonade Lemonade is a sweetened lemon-flavored drink. There are many varieties of lemonade found throughout the world. In some parts of the world, lemonade refers to an un-carbonated, traditionally, homemade drink, using lemon juice, water, and a sw ...

when it wasn't." According to a

sports writer Sports journalism is a form of writing that reports on matters pertaining to sporting topics and competitions. Sports journalism has its roots in coverage of horse racing and boxing in the early 1800s, mainly targeted towards elites, and into t ...

for the ''Birmingham-Pittsburg Traveller'', Paige's position pitching for the semi-pro Mobile Tigers was the launching pad for "one of the most successful careers in baseball history." After playing for the Mobile Tigers for one year, Paige began his professional baseball career with the Chattanooga White Sox of the Negro Southern League. Future Negro league stars Ted Radcliffe (as well as his brother Forney) and Bobby Robinson also played on the Mobile Tigers at the same time as Paige.
Bobby Robinson Wood Sign

References

{{reflist African-American history in Mobile, Alabama Negro league baseball teams Sports clubs and teams in Mobile, Alabama Defunct baseball teams in Alabama Baseball teams disestablished in 1935 Baseball teams established in 1924