Hall of Fame Chairman Jane Forbes Clark called it the perfect way to start Induction Weekend.

The museum unveiled a statue of Satchel Paige, possibly the biggest and best known star from the Negro Leagues, with the help of one of Paige's daughters, Linda Paige Shelby on Friday in Cooper Park.

After Clark and Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey made opening remarks, Shelby said her father would have been overwhelmed with the attention he and his fellow Negro Leagues players received this weekend. On Sunday, 17 former Negro Leagues and pre-Negro League players and executives were inducted into the Hall of Fame, the culmination of a five year research project by the museum which was funded by Major League Baseball.

Shelby used the biblical story of Ezekial and the Old Bones, which she said was one of her father's favorite Bible stories, to illustrate what the induction of the Negro Leagues players means to their legacy.

"The Hall of Fame has taken these men and women out of the burial place of their obscurity," she said. "They have breathed air into their old bones."

Chris Stone, Sports Illustrated's baseball editor, said the occasion marked three significant anniversaries: The 100-year anniversary of Satchel Paige's birth; the 40-year anniversary of Ted Williams Induction speech, which he used in part to urge the election of Negro League stars like Paige and Josh Gibson; and the 35-year anniversary of the Hall of Fame Induction of Paige and Gibson in 1971.

The Paige statue stands about 15 feet to the left of a statue commemorating women in baseball, which was dedicated on Mother's Day.