1951 Yankee of the Past: Branch Rickey

CARPETBAGGER
"One day, when Branch Rickey was still doing business in St. Louis, a friend dropped in to the Cardinal offices and found him frantically rolling up the rug in his private suite.
'What's the idea?' the visitor gasped. 'You the janitor around here, too?'
'Judas Priest,' Branch panted, 'give me a hand. I just got word from Mrs. Rickey that she's coming home tonight, and if I don't get this rug of hers home and back on the parlor floor, I'm in trouble.'
Rickey was entertaining a business acquaintance with whom he wanted to do business. To impress him how lush affairs were with the Cards (they weren't at the time) he had borrowed one of Mrs. Rickey's Orientals and laid it in his office."

-Chester L. Smith in the Pittsburgh Press (Baseball Digest, February 1951)

THE WHY OF THE MAHATMA
"How Branch Rickey got the name Mahatma is a good story because it reveals so much about the complex character of an amazing man who has been as contradictory as any to labor in baseball's vineyards.
Tom Meany, the magazine writer, was telling how Branch got the nickname at Rickey's good-bye party for the New York scribes. Meany had been reading John Gunther's Inside Asia and in his first sentence on Mohandas Gandhi, Gunther had written of Gandhi as 'an incredible combination of Jesus Christ, Tammany Hall, and your father.'
The evangelical opportunistic pattern of Rickey's ways was new to Flatbush then, but Branch had already revealed at least three sides of his many-sided self. Meany could not help but note what he had seen of Rickey was part paternal, part political, part pontifical. And so to Meany, and subsequently to all of baseball, Branch became the Mahatma.
No doubt Rickey likes the name because if he could be pressed to put into two words what he prefers to put into two hundred he might describe himself as a practical idealist."

-Milton Gross in the New York Post (Baseball Digest, March 1951)

BING MEETS THE MAHATMA
"Bing Crosby tells this tale of his first meeting with Branch Rickey, the new general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, a club in which Bing owns stock and is vice-president. 'I had a golf date at Oakmont (the famous course just outside Pittsburgh),' he recites, 'but Roy Hamey (former Pirate G.M.) says to me, 'Bing, you've gotta meet this Rickey (then of Brooklyn). He's fabulous.' So I went. The meeting was to start at 11 A.M. My golf date was scheduled for 2 P.M.
'I think they were to talk about trading Johnny Hopp, but in the two hours I was there, we didn't get around to Hopp. Rickey told us how rough the plane trip had been from Brooklyn to Pittsburgh; how he had a boy named Marv Rackley who would be a marvelous catch for somebody; how his farm system had him worried. Then he went into a dissertation on pitcher Rex Barney, who had broken training. 'I loved that boy more than my own,' Rickey lamented, and then he turned to his own son who was seated alongside. Looking over his spectacles, he apologized, 'Excuse me, my boy.'
'So it went on, all of us charmed and delighted by this magnetic man. Then I looked at my watch. I got up to go. It was almost two o'clock. 'Where are you going?' Rickey demanded. I said I was on my way to play golf. He harumphed. 'Golf,' he snorted, and then he harumphed again.
'I said I'd send up a string orchestra on my way out.'
Later, Bing continued, when Rickey joined Pittsburgh, he called the crooner to assure Bing the Pirates would be in the first division within four years and would win the pennant within five.
'Don't worry about a thing,' Rickey consoled. 'I'll take care of the ball club- you just keep on with your singing.'"

-Art Rosenbaum in the San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, April 1951)

"Branch Rickey of the Pirates stirs up tales by the bushelful but suppose we pass on one concerning Irv Noren, the outfielder who is embarking on his critical sophomore year with the Washington Senators.
When The Mahatma ran into a buyer's market fifteen months ago with surplus Brooklyn-owned talent to sell, he tried to peddle Noren to the Chicago White Sox. It was no soap, whereupon Rickey commented:
'If you're not sold you shouldn't take Noren. And incidentally, I'm glad you're not. I intend to sell Noren to the one major league club owner who has never purchased a player from me.'
'And,' the Messrs. Chuck Comiskey and Frank Lane wondered, 'who might that be?'
'I'll tell you if you don't reveal his name until the deal is consummated,' the wise man replied. 'Clark Griffith.'
And up to that moment he hadn't even broached the subject to the Senators' owner."

-Rube Samuelsen in the San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, May 1951)

1951 Yankee of the Past: Johnny Lindell

"Johnny Lindell, the big ex-New York Yankee outfielder, who is being tried as a pitcher this year by Hollywood, says, 'I haven't pitched regularly since 1942, so I guess you can call me a thrower with eight years' rest."

-Emmett Watson in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Baseball Digest, May 1951)

1951 Yankee of the Past: Gabby Street

FOULED OUT OF THE BOX
"In 1936 while managing the St. Paul Saints, the late Gabby Street made one of the oddest 'strategic' moves in organized baseball. Carl Fischer, an eccentric left-hander, was pitching for St. Paul. The Milwaukee Brewers had scored a few runs in the first inning and had runners on first and second. Eddie Hope, the light hitting Brewer infielder, lined a foul ball to left. Street rushed from the dugout, called time and walked to the mound. He asked Fischer for the ball and then called in a relief pitcher.
'I guess this is the first time in history a pitcher was yanked after a batter hit a foul ball,' Street explained later. 'But when a hitter like Hope can hit such a loud foul I was convinced Fischer didn't have a thing. So, I took him out.'"

-Sam Levy in the Milwaukee Journal (Baseball Digest, April 1951)

1951 Yankee of the Past: Billy Werber

PREMIUMS ON A SLIDING SCALE
"They tell a story about how Billy Werber played third base and peddled insurance at the same time.
One day, it's said, Rick Ferrell slid into third and Weber tagged him out. As they untangled in a cloud of dust, Bill starting talking to Rick, telling him he was getting pretty well along in years and that he might break a leg sliding into the bag someday.
He told Rick he needed insurance and made an appointment for after the game. Bill sold Rick- and good."

-Baseball Digest (February 1951)

1951 Yankee of the Past: Lou Gehrig

THE HOME RUN THAT WAS HIT THREE TIMES
"I don't recall the exact date, but I'll never forget the incident. It occurred in New York's Yankee Stadium more than 15 years ago.
The quiet, mild-mannered, immortal Lou Gehrig stepped into the batter's box and promptly larruped the first pitch down the right field foul line into the stands for an apparent home run. He was already nearing second when the plate umpire called him back, ruling the ball had been foul by inches.
Lou accepted the decision and ambled back to the plate for another try. The crowd, however, let the umpire know what it thought with some especially vigorous booing.
Gehrig then smashed another drive on precisely the same line, yet even further up into the right field stands. The crowd leaped to its feet and cheered the Yankees' great first baseman as he again started to circle the bases. But again the plate umpire ruled it a foul- by inches.
The patient Lou finally lost his temper and proceeded to 'beef' vehemently to the arbiter. Unable to get him to change his decision, Gehrig angrily took his stance once more in the batter's box and belted the next pitch for a sizzling line-drive home run which carried well over 400 feet.
The fans in that particular vicinity of the right-center field bleachers ducked out of the way of the murderously driven ball as it landed among them like a shot. It would have been foolhardy for any fan to have tried to spear it. If the ball had had as much lift as it had straight away power, it would have gone out of the Yankee Stadium entirely.
There was no question about this being a home run. It was one the hardest, most vicious homers ever hit anywhere, even though its abrupt collision with the right-center field bleacher seats prevented it from becoming one of the longest home runs in the history of baseball.
Lou Gehrig, still standing in the batter's box, turned to the plate umpire and pointed out toward the distant spot where the ball had scorched out of view and asked the umpire if he thought this last drive was a questionable home run, too.
The umpire smiled and gave Lou a friendly go-ahead slap on the shoulder. This caused the flushed Gehrig to snap back to his usual good-natured self and brought a sheepish grin to his face.
This time there were tumultuous cheers as Lou Gehrig triumphantly completed his circling of the bases- on a home run he had hit three times."

-Jack Nugent (Baseball Digest, May 1951)

GEHRIG'S ANALYSIS OF SLUMPS
"Hitters never accept slumps as a part of their business, not recognizing that if they never had a slump, they would hit .500 at least. Nor do they ever credit the enemy pitchers for getting them down. They blame their slumps on themselves.
'You have to,' Lou Gehrig once explained. 'What are you going to do- admit to yourself that the pitchers have you on the point of surrender? You can't do that. You must make yourself think that the pitchers are just as good as they have always been- or just as bad. So, if you are not hitting, the fault is yours. Having admitted that, what do you do? You ask everybody on the ball club: 'What am I doing up there that I shouldn't do?'
'You'd be surprised at the answers. One fellow tells you this ... another tells you that ... somebody else tells you something else. You've changed your stance. Your feet are too close together ... or too far apart. You're swinging too soon ... or too late. You take all the advice you hear ... and what happens? You're lucky you don't get hit in the head. Then, one day, you start to hit and you know that all the time it was your fault and the pitchers had nothing to do with it.'"

-Frank Graham in the New York Journal-American (Baseball Digest, May 1951)