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)
No comments:
Post a Comment