1950 Yankee of the Past: Branch Rickey

IN THE RICKEY MANNER
The Mahatma, Who Brags He's Never Going To Buy Another Ball Player, Tells How He Manufactures More Stars Than He Can Use
"'Hello, Clyde? ... Clyde Sukeforth? ... Hell, Clyde. ... How are things up there in Maine? ... That's good. ... Clyde, there's something I want you to do for me. Can you get a plane down here this morning?'
Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, leaned back in his swivel chair. His neck was hunched into his collar. Half an unlit cigar was stuck in the left corner of his mouth. Occasionally he waved the butt in vague gesticulations with his left hand, holding the telephone receiver in his right.
'Good, Clyde. ... Now here's what it is. I want you to go to Havana. Mickey McConnell was going, but his wife's father is very ill in Waterbury. George Sisler is sick in bed.
'We'll have a reservation for you on the night plane. A man will bring five ball players to meet you in the Hotel Nacional at ten o'clock tomorrow. One of them is good but never mind which one. Just sweep them all up and bring them over to Vero Beach. We'll negotiate with them there ... All right, Clyde, the office will have your ticket. Sorry I won't see you. I'm flying to Columbus.'
Neither snow, rain, hail, gloom of night, expense, distance or bumpy air ever has thrown Mr. Rickey off the trail of a ball player he thinks can help the Dodgers. He works while others rest. He knows the potential of practically every rising young ball player in the country, in addition to that of five or six hundred of his own farmhands. When one of the boys he has judged adequate is ready to sign a baseball contract he will find at his side Rickey himself, or Branch Jr., or Barney Shotton, or Sisler, McConnell, Sukeforth, or even Harold Parrott, the road secretary.
Rickey doesn't buy big leaguers. He makes them. They advance through the twenty-four-club Brooklyn minor league chain. When he needs a man for the Dodgers, the man is ready. When he has an excess over his needs, he sells it off.
He has turned baseball- insofar as he is concerned with it- into a manufacturing business. The product comes in at the start of the assembly line and advances through stages of development, with frequent inspections en route, until it is discarded, or perhaps returned for reprocessing, or even comes out finished and glistening at the Brooklyn end.
Rickey developed the chain system in St. Louis, where he made baseball pay even under the handicap of miserable home attendance. He kept it going despite the anguished howls of the late Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The latter made impassioned speeches about the 'evil tentacles' of the St. Louis club, but, recognizing Rickey as the most formidable antagonist he could pick for himself, never did much to lop the tentacles off.
When Rickey moved to Brooklyn, a move he made with misgivings, he found a potentially great local attendance and an aging ball club. There were eleven men on the roster who had played a total of 132 big league seasons.
He cleaned house, got rid of what he calls the 'anesthetic ball player.' And, for his pains, was hanged in effigy by the Brooklyn fans. Nonetheless, he started scouting young players and buying farm clubs. There were some bad years, but once the system took hold, Brooklyn was established as the solid club in the National League, its champion in 1947 and 1949.
As things stand now, the Brooklyn club is generally regarded as the one to beat. It is also a solvent, hustling business. Rickey made it that through the exercise of patience, persuasiveness and adherence to rules-of-thumb that experience had taught him, attention to detail, and more intelligence than anyone else has ever applied to baseball.
He is nothing like the Chautauqua character the baseball press has made him. He is neither sonorous nor aggressively pious. He does not make double talk. His English is intricate but clear, generally picturesque and sometimes can be very blistering.
Rickey is now in his seventieth year but energetic beyond the capabilities of younger men. He spends half of his life in the air, flying in the Brooklyn club's private seven-passenger plane among the outposts of his empire. When someone asked him when he was going to slow down he answered, 'I expect my funeral cortege to proceed at a leisurely pace.'
The only obvious concession he makes to medical advice is that he no longer lights the cigars he constantly holds in his mouth. He consumes them rapidly from the oral end, frequently spitting out masticated sections as he marches through them. He doesn't drink now and never did.
He is a graduate and trustee of Ohio Wesleyan University, a graduate of University of Michigan law school, former football and baseball coach, athletics director and instructor in the Philosophy of Law at Ohio Wesleyan, former baseball coach at Michigan, former big-league manager and holder of three honorary degrees.
Rickey's office is the southeast corner of the Brooklyn Trust Building, 215 Montague Street, Brooklyn, fourth floor. It overlooks Borough Hall Plaza. It is sumptuous but restrained.
Over Rickey's desk is a lithograph of Abraham Lincoln. In bookcases are all of Carl Sandburg's volumes on Lincoln, and an extensive law library.
As everyone knows, Rickey opened major league baseball to Negroes in 1947 by bringing up the redoubtable Jackie Robinson from the Montreal farm club. Subsequently he added other Negroes to the Brooklyn roster, notable Roy Campanella, catcher, and Don Newcombe, pitcher.
Then last winter he sold to the Boston Braves another Negro boy, Sam Jethroe, lightning outfielder, who may turn out to be the best of them all. Why did he do it?
'When I considered bringing up Robinson I decided that six factors must be taken into account,' said Rickey. 'First, I had to have the support of the Brooklyn ownership; second, I had to be sure the boy was good enough on the field; third, I had to be sure he was a good enough man off the field; fourth, I had to consider his reception by the press and public; fifth, I had to think about the reaction of the Negroes themselves; sixth, I had to think about the reaction of the team ... Bear in mind, my only motivation is winning the pennant.
'Now comes Jethroe,' he went on. 'I considered the six factors. I could not satisfy myself that bringing him up, good as he is, would make our ball club more likely to win the pennant. I had to think of the first and sixth factors, the effect on our ownership, the effect on the morale of our team.
'And I sold Jethroe!' Rickey banged the desk. 'It was the first time in my life I have sold a man who may be better than what I have. I may have impoverished myself. But it seemed to me the move was necessary.
'There is one more important thing to consider. By selling him to the Braves I have brought another club into the Negro fold. Do you know there are certain areas in this country that are lost to us because we have Negroes on our club? When more clubs have Negro players, it may be that we shall be able to overcome prejudice in those areas and re-establish our scouting fields there.'
If the Jethroe deal proves a boomerang, it will be one of the few that will have skulled Mr. Rickey since his days as manager of the St. Louis Browns. But he must have made a few bad deals. What was his worst?
'That's easy. When I traded Cliff Heathcote to Chicago for Max Flack, I wanted a leadoff man for the Cardinals, and I liked Flack. So I made the deal and they changed uniforms there and then between halves of a double-header and each played for the other team in Chicago. Flack never did anything for us and soon after we got him he came to me and said he was giving up baseball. I just gave away Heathcote.'
What was his best deal?
'That depends on what is meant. The one that helped a club most was when I got Preacher Roe and Billy Cox from Pittsburgh for Brooklyn. The best, from the standpoint of a quick cash turnover, was when I got Hack Wilson from the Cubs for two players whose names I have forgotten and sold to him to Brooklyn for $55,000.'
It has been said of Rickey that he never gets stuck with an aged player or sells one who is going to do anyone any good.
'That isn't true. Bill Terry said to me, 'You gave us two pennants.' He meant that I helped the Giants in an important way when I sold them Burgess Whitehead, the brilliant and scholarly second baseman who became a Giant sparkplug. There are others who have helped other clubs. Johnny Mize, for instance, and Leo Durocher.'
What about Dizzy Dean?
'Oh, that's a long story. He was quite a character.'
'I don't mean that. I'd like to know about the trade you made with Chicago. There are those you thought you stuck Mr. Wrigley.'
'Mr. Wrigley didn't think so. I set a price of $200,000 on Dean. He set a price of $15,000 on Curt Davis, who came to us in the trade. There was some doubt about Dean's arm. I put Clarence Rowland, who was Mr. Wrigley's chief scout, in the Cardinal clubhouse and let him see anything or ask anything he wanted to.
'He advised Mr. Wrigley to make the trade. When it was made we drew up a paper covering conditions. As near as I can remember, the wording was like this: 'Each club understands the ailments of the players involved and assumes all hazards of recovery.'
'I have never had to show the paper to anyone. Dean helped the gate in Chicago and pitched some good games. Mr. Wrigley considered he got his money's worth and always said so.'
Rickey waved the stump of his current cigar and concluded, 'However, it's better to get rid of a good man a year too soon than to keep him a year too long.'
Rickey is in mortal fear what he calls the 'anesthetic' ball player, by which he means a player who is definitely past his peak.
'You play this kind of man,' he says. 'You feel no pain, but you wake up in sixth or seventh place.'
The Brooklyn fans were sore when he sold Dolph Camilli, long hitter and brilliant first baseman, to the Giants. That's the time Branch was hanged in effigy.
'I was most unpopular,' says Rickey. 'When I made a deal in St. Louis, the newspaper writers got used to expecting it would turn out all right. But in Brooklyn? Judas priest! I was a pariah. Still, I knew that Camilli was an anesthetic and would have to go if we were ever going to win the pennant.'
Events proved Rickey right. But how did Rickey know?
'Failure to pull the ball to his own field with customary power is the first sign a player is slipping. It shows his reflexes are beginning to get dull. Camilli wasn't pulling the ball.
'There is, however, one thing to remember: when you let a man go, you have to be ready with someone to put in his place. Otherwise it may take you two or three years to get the position filled and under such circumstances, you cannot win pennants.'
As the Brooklyn dynasty stands now there is scant chance
Brooklyn has twenty-four supporting clubs. Last winter Rickey made more money selling off his surplus minor leaguers than ever in his life.
How does he pick good prospects?
'On the positive side, you consider three things: one, the boy's throwing ability; two, his batting- not the frequency of his hits but the power with which he hits the ball; three, his running speed- and that's the most important of all. The arm is only used on defense; the bat only on offense. Speed has an influence on both.
'To succeed, the player must have two of the three attributes, and you must satisfy yourself that he likes to play. If like Pepper Martin, he has an overpowering desire to play, you can overlook some deficiencies.
'In picking young players, the first thing to guard against is dishonesty. If you have a player who can't be relied on, your investment is no good.
'I've always been prejudiced against slow runners. I've never been able to win with them.'
Is there any characteristic which disqualifies a ball player without regard to any other factor?
'Yes, there is. A batter who overstrides never will be worth anything no matter how well he hits in the minor leagues. If you have one, you might as well tell him his only chance to make the majors is to become a pitcher. He probably won't believe you and so there is no sense in bothering with him.
'Only two overstriders have ever made it in the big leagues. One was Lave Cross, third baseman for the Athletics. The other was Austin McHenry, outfielder for the Cardinals.
'Apparently, overstriding is caused by some kind of brain lesion. When I coached baseball at Michigan I tried to correct it. First I got the wooden shotput gadget and set it up in front of the hitters. I gave it up just in time to prevent broken legs. Then I tried tying the hitter's legs together with allowance for a proper stride. Then I used elastic. Nothing worked.'
Though mechanical aids did not work at Michigan, Rickey still has faith in some of them. He has used a pitching machine and an electric-eye umpire.
Another of his gadgets is the hitting tee, a contrivance which permits the hitter to tee up and swing on a ball in any part of the strike zone.
'We let the boys stand anywhere they want to hit off the tee. Finally they find the spot where they hit with the most power and we have them anchored. We can measure and know. It may surprise you to hear that the best location of the back foot for maximum power, in most cases, is approximately four inches back of the batter's box. It therefore seems that a man who does not go back as far as he can in the box is cheating himself.'
That's the way Rickey goes into detail about ball players. He hasn't bought a major leaguer for three years. The last was Frank Melton, a pitcher, for whom he gave the Phillies $35,000 and whose arm subsequently went bad. We doubt he will ever buy another. He raises his own."

-Stanley Woodward, condensed from Argosy (Baseball Digest, July 1950)


YES, SIR!
"Branch Rickey, the guiding genius of the Brooklyn Dodger destiny, merits 'Mr. Rickey,' and never the too familiar 'Branch.' Rickey, now seventy, is held in respect, if not awe, by most of his associates and employs. Even the old-timers do not call him 'Branch.'
Here's an illustration, as related by Dick Butler, a small, drawling Kentuckian, who serves as an aide to Commissioner Happy Chandler. Rickey, so Dick was telling us recently, had sent out a stack of telegrams to various farm clubs in the Dodger organization while in the South this past spring. The wires contained instructions, orders, questions. The missive addressed to the Fort Worth club of the Texas League demanded a specific answer. To impress this upon the Texas recipient, Rickey added: 'Answer this yes or no.'
The chore accomplished, the Dodgers' deacon was off for Brooklyn- to which point all the replies were to be wired. When Rickey reached the Dodgers' office a day or two later, there was plenty of telegraphic word waiting for him.
The answer from the Fort Worth club was right to the point but monosyllabic- 'Yes.' Rickey clamped his eyes on this affirmative, glanced up, looked around- and pondered. For once the old master was at a loss for a word. For the life of him, he couldn't remember what he had asked the Texans. The more he thought about it, the less he could remember.
Finally, Rickey gave up. He fired another telegram to Forth Worth to clarify the annoying situation. He demanded: 'Yes, what?'
Within a matter of hours he had Fort Worth's apologetic rejoinder- 'Yes, sir!'"

-John Webster in the Philadelphia Inquirer (Baseball Digest, July 1950)

1950 Yankees of the Past: Red Rolfe and Joe Gordon

RED ROLFE

ROLFE IS A CALM ONE
Worry Won't Get You Base Hits
"It was quiet in Red Rolfe's little office just off the visitor's clubhouse. Upstairs the big crowd was filing into Yankee Stadium and out on the field, the Detroit Tigers were taking batting practice. Now Red was sitting there with one of the big games of his managerial career less than an hour away and he was just as calm as if he were back in his native New Hampshire fishing.
'Why not?' he said when a guy asked him about it. 'You get used to these tough money games after you've been through them as a player, coach and manager for almost twenty years. Worrying never gets you anywhere. I found that out long ago when I was a Yankee and I've tried to remember it since I've been a manager.'
The old redhead paused to take a long gulp of milk which he considers his best defense against the stomach troubles that prematurely ended his career back in 1942 and which have cut his weight from his prime of 174 to the 150 he weighs today.
'You know,' he said, 'I wasn't sure I wanted the job when Billy Evans offered it to me. I was very happy in the job I had then as director of the Detroit farm system. I knew that it was pretty much a lifetime job and I wasn't at all sure I wanted to take on the occupational hazards that managing a ball club involves.
'But as a player I'd always dreamed of the day when I'd be a manager and, when I became a coach under Joe McCarthy in 1946, I had a fuzzy idea that some day the chance might come to manage my old team. But by a year ago last winter I'd long since forgotten about that. And when the chance came I wasn't sure that I wanted it. I had to think of my health and the long road trips.
'So, I asked Billy for a chance to think it over and went home. For three days I talked it over with my wife and finally I decided it represented too much of a challenge to turn down. Baseball to me is the most fascinating game in the world. Every day something new comes up for you to tackle and beat. That's why I love it and it's why I took the Tiger job. The manager faces the greatest challenge of all.'
That was two years ago and Red, with an almost complete overhaul job, had the revamped and remodeled Tigers clocking more time in first place this season than any of their competitors. They were the most improved team in the league and the big part of the credit must go to Red.
'A manager,' he said, 'is just as good as his ball players and when you have hustling, hungry guys like I have the job is easy. Of course, it's easy to hustle when you're at the top and the big money is up for grabs. But they hustled just as hard for me in 1949 when we finished fourth and were never really in the race.'
Red actually doesn't find managing as tough as he thought it would be. He's managed to gear himself so he doesn't take too many ball games home with him and he gets his share of sleep. He found that easier to do than he thought.
'I always had a vision of the manager pacing the floor at night after a tough ball game. But I've found now that it isn't hard to put most games out of your mind after they're over. I mean tough ones as well as easy ones. Just as long as you know in your heart that there was nothing you could have done that would have made a difference, you sleep all right.
'But there are some games you can't forget for days. One in 1949 at Cleveland is still as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday. We had the Indians beaten going into the ninth, 7-2. Ted Gray was pitching for us and he'd pitched a heck of a ball game for the first eight innings.
'But then a couple of guys walked and another singled and I had to get Gray out of there and bring Dizzy Trout in. Well, then there's a hit that makes it 7-3, a walk that loads the bases and another that forces in a run and makes it 7-4. Then Trout gets a guy to pop up and then another easy out. Then it happens. Somebody hits a ball down the left-field line. Evers gets his glove on it but can't hold it and it gets away and before you know it the guy's over the plate with an inside-the-park home run and we're in the clubhouse beaten.
'I've thought about that one a thousand times. I keep telling myself there must have been something I could have done to change it. Those are the kind of games that get you. Luckily they don't happen often.'
Rolfe is a Joe McCarthy man and one of the great Yankees of McCarthy's day. He still finds it strange to look up in Yankee Stadium and see like guys like DiMag and Henrich on the other team. 'Then, too,' Red chuckled, 'I find it hard every now and then, when I come out of the dugout, not to start climbing the stairs to the old dressing room. I've done it so many times I have to force myself not do it now.
'Those were great teams, all right,' he added. 'The best? That's hard to say. It's tough to split'em out. But I'd say it was between the 1938 team and the one the next year. That last had Gehrig for only a couple of games but it had everything else as well as a rookie named Charlie Keller. It was rough.'"

-Arch Murray, condensed from the New York Post (Baseball Digest, November 1950)

JOE GORDON

"Joe is one of the game's greatest second basemen. He holds a number of fielding records for regular season and World Series play. 

He broke into the majors with the Yankees in 1938. He was chosen the American League's Most Valuable Player in 1942. He was traded to Cleveland for the 1948 season and hit .251 in 148 games in '48.

Joe has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Oregon."

-1950 Bowman No. 129

1950 Yankee Farm Club of the Past: Newark Bears

DEATH OF A BALL CLUB
Newark, Once Greatest, Killed By Progress
"Some day somebody should write the story of the life and death of the Newark Ball Club. It would be, I think, a fascinating story. Many a ball player on his way to greatness played in Newark. Many a ball player on his retreat from greatness ... or a close approach to it ... played there. It would go back a long way, this story. But, I think, it would hit its peak in 1937, because that year Newark had the most remarkable minor league club ever put together.
There were others that were reasonably close to it, of course. Grant Rice tells of the Augusta club of 1904, which numbered among its pitchers Nap Rucker and Ed Ciccote and, in right field, had a kid by the name of Ty Cobb. Some years later Jackie Atz had a club in Fort Worth that dominated the Texas League for a period of six or seven years. Soon after that, Joe McCarthy's Louisville club ruled the American Association. But I don't believe there ever was a minor league club quite on the level with the Bears of 1937.
Oscar Vitt was the manager that year. The complete roster isn't at hand but the players I recall so very easily. Joe Gordon was at second base, George McQuinn was at first, Babe Dahlgren at third (they couldn't find room for him at first base because McQuinn was already there), [Nolen Richardson at shortstop], Spud Chandler and Atley Donald helped with the pitching [along with Joe Beggs, Steve Sundra and Vito Tamulis], Buddy Rosar was back of the plate [along with Willard Hershberger] and, among the outfielders, was Charlie Keller [along with Bob Seeds and Jim Gleeson]. The Bears won the pennant by, roughly, twenty-five games, and went on to win the Little World Series. It wasn't long before most of them were hearing the roar of the crowds at Yankee Stadium.
One day out of that summer, I'll always remember. It was an off day for the Bears and Vitt had journeyed over to the Stadium to visit McCarthy. Gordon had been tagged for delivery to the Yankees in 1938 and Oscar said:
'He's ready, Joe. You know, I've been around quite a while and I've played with or against some of the greatest second basemen that ever lived. This kid may be the greatest.'
Well, Gordon wasn't quite that. But he wasn't too bad, you may recall. In his first year at the Stadium, he hit only .255. But he made twenty-five home runs, twenty-four doubles and seven triples and he was an acrobat at second base and he played a great part in the winning of five pennants by the Yankees over a span of six years. Chandler ... Donald ... Dahlgen ... McQuinn (although it took George a long time to get there) ... Rosar ... and Keller ... all helped to make history at the Stadium.
It seems to me that no other minor league group ever had such an effect on the fortunes of a major league team in the years that followed.
This phase of the Newark club began in 1932, when the Yankees first sent prominent players to it. And back of that was the story of an amazing deal that was put over in a hurry on the late Col. Jacob Ruppert, in 1931.
Jake was an astute business man and, as a rule, carefully weighed every proposition made to him and gave his answer only after long deliberation. But one day in 1931, after he and Ed Barrow, then the general manager of the Yankees, had decided they wanted no part of the new fangled farm idea developed by Branch Rickey in St. Louis, Ruppert bought the Newark club. The club was owned by Paul Block, newspaper publisher. Ruppert bought it after listening to a fast sales talk from Max Steuer, famous attorney of the time, who had among his many clients, Ruppert and Block. Ruppert, having agreed to buy the club, called Barrow and told him.
Barrow, having got over his amazement, told Ruppert the only thing he could do was to use the club as the basis for a farm system and that he had better hire a fellow named George Weiss, of whom Ruppert had never had heard, to direct the system.
Weiss, an experienced hand around the minor leagues, knew what to do with the players dug up by Barrow's staff of scouts, headed by Paul Krichell. Knew where to put them ... and where to get the seasoned minor leaguers to fit in with them. With Newark as his key point, Weiss built one of the most productive farm systems the game has known up to now. As a by-product of that system, Newark had its greatest ball club.
That was the beginning. The end set in when the Yankees, by that time under the joint ownership of Del Webb, Dan Topping and Larry McPhail, inaugurated night baseball at the Stadium and opened a Yankee ticket office in Newark.
The Newark club, in other words, was caught in the march of progress, which was stepped up when the Yankees began to televise their games. This is no knock on night baseball, a handy ticket office or television. But if you lived in Newark ... and maybe some of you reading this do live in Newark ... why should you go to see the Bears when you are close to Yankee Stadium, and can buy your reserved seat tickets just down the street or, if you do not want to make the journey to New York, can see the Yanks on television?
And so the Newark club died."

-Frank Graham, condensed from the New York Journal-American (Baseball Digest, February 1950)