This past week I did two talks that spanned the age spectrum. The first was the Society of American Baseball Researchers (SABR) winter event, where I appeared with former Red Sox pitcher Bill Monbouquette and Tampa Bay Rays switch hitter Fernando Perez, the first Major Leaguer whose work has been published in Poetry magazine. Perez shared his take on baseball today. Monbouquette contrasted that to the way the game was played in his era a half century ago, and recounted what it was like facing off against Satchel in his last Major League game back in 1965. Monbo was the last big-league player to strike out against Paige, a historic achievement that still makes him smile.

For a recap and audio clips, see http://tinyurl.com/yhngk2f

My second talk was to a lively high school audience in Concord, MA. The challenge: how to make anything that happened before last week — not to mention as far back as the 1920s and 30s — matter to today’s teens. I can only hope that, couching that history in a story about a brilliant baseball player, these kids will understand a bit more about a Jim Crow era where baseball, like every institution that mattered in America, was divided into black and white worlds.

Here’s one of the best eyewitness accounts of what it meant to blogger Conrad Hake to see Satchel Paige in person in 1960. Work through the first paragraph and then read what Hake has to say here.

Did you see the great Leroy “Satchel” Paige pitch?

Then I did a panel with two of my sports-writing heroes: Jackie MacMullen, a former Boston Globe colleague who just did a great book with Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, and Glenn Stout, who has written more than 50 books on baseball and other sports topics. The moderator was the eloquent Bill Littlefield, moderator of the NPR show Only a Game.

Nice way to spend a Saturday.

What do those audiences have in common? Only this: that Satchel’s story seems to resonate with all of them.

That is more a tribute to him than me. His story has something for everyone — from racial pioneer to poster child for graceful aging. There’s the baseball stuff, the human tragedy of the racially segregated, impoverished world in which he grew up, and his triumphing over all that. We talk a lot these days about needing stories of human inspiration; none is more inspiring than that of Leroy “Satchel” Paige.

Click here for more details.

To all of you baseball fans out there: post away.

As Jerry Izenberg of the Newark Star Ledger writes, “They will come to Atlantic City Friday, 11 of them … barely enough survivors to form a baseball team … but more than enough in spirit to preserve a trust fund of evergreen memories … memories of a time when no amount of bigotry could rob them of who they were and what they did.”

A poetic tribute to a great era in sports.

The event is free. Doors open at 7 p.m.

Hope to see you there.

Next stop: Brooklyn, NY on October 1.  This talk is free and features three baseball authors and a filmmaker.