Beaver Baseball Pitcher Recalls Facing the Great Satchel Paige

January 4, 2023

Dick Isenberger competed for conference championship teams in his career as a pitcher for the Beavers.

And while that makes him quite accomplished among BV hurlers, one win renders him truly unique: Isenberger’s victory over the legendary Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige, perhaps the only BV baseball player who can make that claim.

“I suppose that might be the case,” says Isenberger with a laugh from his home in Fort Mill, S.C.

On Saturday, June 13, 1959, Paige and his All-Star team from Havana, Cuba, rolled into Mason City during a barnstorming tour. Isenberger, a 1956 BV graduate who was teaching in Elgin, Ill., at the time, pitched five innings in a 3-1 victory for the Mason City Braves over Paige and his team. The game played out before an estimated 1,600 fans at Roosevelt Field.

“I had very good control as a pitcher, but never had the 90-mile-per-hour fastball. I had a very good drop-ball and curveball.”

Dick Isenberger, 1956 BVU graduate

Isenberger was picked up by the Mason City Braves after tossing a perfect game for a team near Elgin. He drove to Mason City and was warming up the following day when a Cadillac and a bus came rolling into the ballpark. The Cadillac contained Paige; the bus contained everyone else on Paige’s team.

“One of the grocery stores in town had a promotion with the game, so there was quite a bit of electricity going on,” Isenberger recalls. “And, of course, it was more than a typical game because we were facing Satchel and his All-Stars!”

Paige, who was reportedly 52 years old at the time, pitched two innings and yielded a home run that gave Isenberger the lead his team wouldn’t relinquish. Six years later, at the age of 58, Paige threw three innings for the Kansas City Royals, yielding just one hit, thus enabling him to have the honor of being the oldest pitcher to ever play major league baseball. He was enshrined into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum at Cooperstown, N.Y. in 1971.

Mick McGibbon, of St. Paul, Minn., reached out to connect with Isenberger recently as McGibbon is doing a research project on Paige and the Cuban All-Stars’ 1959 barnstorming tour of the Midwest.

“I hadn’t thought about that game in a while,” Isenberger says.

Isenberger, a native of Freeport, Ill., moved to Storm Lake during elementary school. He graduated from Storm Lake High School in 1952 and matriculated a few blocks west to Buena Vista. He resided with his mother in a home she rented on Lake Avenue during his collegiate years, as he worked for Kingan & Company throughout his collegiate stay.

Following his graduation, Isenberger volunteered for the draft and went into the U.S. Army. Following his two years of duty with Special Services in the 4th Army, Isenberger started a teaching career that focused on math and science. He would teach while coaching baseball at the community college level for four years before becoming a salesman for World Book Encyclopedia and Childcraft in 1962.

He eventually earned top sales awards in Illinois and managed a staff of 25 employees before joining the Scott Foresman Publishing Co. as a sales representative for nearly 400 high schools in the Chicago and Milwaukee region. He would remain with the company for 28 years, working out of Crystal Lake, Ill.

He and his wife, Lori, retired to Colorado in 1996. Two years ago, the couple moved to South Carolina, where they reside near one of their four children.

At age 88, Isenberger serves as President of the Residents’ Council at the assisted living facility where he and Lori reside. In his spare time, he works out on his bicycle and continues to read on a variety of topics.
When the occasion merits, he shares a few memories about pitching.

“I had very good control as a pitcher, but never had the 90-mile-per-hour fastball,” he says. “I had a very good drop-ball and curveball.”

And, on one day at least, enough stuff to beat one of the game’s very best.