1953 May Be His Last Year
"When Branch Rickey, Sr., moved to Pittsburgh in October, 1950, to take over as generalissimo of the disorganized Pittsburgh forces, he uttered for the benefit of the press:
'This is the greatest challenge I have faced in my more than 40 years in baseball.'
A little more than two years later this heretofore highly successful man is still wrestling with his 'greatest challenge,' apparently on his way to the worst setback of his career.
The Pittsburgh problem has turned out to be much tougher than what the Mahatma bargained for. It threw him for a loss in his first year (1951) when the Pirates managed to finish seventh. It pinned him for a second straight fall in 1952 when the most woeful looking conglomeration of so-called big league ball players staggered home last, 22 1/2 games behind the seventh place Braves. The third and last fall is coming up soon.
Through it all, the 71-year-old Rickey remains optimistic, the same double-talking champion of the major leagues. Failure and the 'emotions of defeat' which he abhor still embrace him, yet he continues to promise Pittsburgh fans a first division ball club 'within the very near future.'
It was also his promise when he first moved to Pittsburgh in 1950 that within three years 'the Pirates would be in a position to challenge for the pennant.' In 1953, his 'third year,' the only challenge sober-minded Pittsburghers can look forward to is a challenge to get out of the cellar, a long shot possibility at best.
Despite warnings by baseball men not to underrate the wise, old Branch, we string along with the growing mob that sincerely believes Rickey is doomed to failure in Pittsburgh; that time will run out on him before he tastes the fruit of success he enjoyed so much in his younger days at St. Louis and Brooklyn.
'The Old Man has lost his touch,' was the succinct comment of a man who has been close to the baseball scene for as many years as Rickey.
'This Pirate thing is too much for him,' said another.
'He hasn't made one good move since he took over,' whiplashed a third. 'Show one good move he has made,' he challenged.
'I feel sorry for Rickey,' said a more charitable client. 'This club was hopeless when he took it over.'
'If it was hopeless, he helped make it that way,' countered a nearby listener.
And so it goes on. The gentle breeze of protest which greeted Rickey's faltering efforts in 1951 grew into a raging gale in 1952. It threatens to develop into a typhoon of all-sweeping proportions if some miracle doesn't happen this year.
It could very well sweep the Rickey regime out of office even he has two more years to go on a five-year contract that calls for a handsome $100,000 per annum, plus $25,000 for his son, Branch, Jr., for each of the five seasons.
The mounting resentment over Rickey's failure to make good on his promises can't help but sizzle the ears of the embarrassed owners, millionaires John Galbreath, Tom Johnson and Bing Crosby.
How long they can continue to stand an insufferable situation is a matter of conjecture. My opinion is that this is a make or break year for Branch Rickey, with either he or the owners throwing in the towel and admitting defeat.
Before pardoning or indicting the man, let us see what Rickey has done since he took over the swivel chair in the plush office at Forbes Field.
He was brought to Pittsburgh in 1950 as a vice president and a general manager as a desperation measure by the owners, a silent admission that the previous four years of their guidance were a miserable mess, something they would like to forget.
Rickey was the Moses they turned to in their moment of darkness. He would lead them out of the wilderness. Rickey, given the bounce by his once-beloved Brooklyn Bums, was available. His good luck was still holding out for him. He bounced right into the lush Pittsburgh post. Men of three score and ten don't often find jobs paying a hundred G's. And the job seeking them to boot.
Naturally, Rickey was delighted to accept. He frowned upon the Pittsburgh situation as he first surveyed it, his bushy eyebrows forming quizzical chevrons. 'There's a lot of work to be done here,' was the first understatement he hurled at a corps of newsmen.
And Rickey has worked. I do not agree with anyone who charges that Rickey has laid down on the job. True, his many excursions into the after-dinner-speaking league have brought censure down on his shaggy pate, but the fact remains, there isn't a harder worker in the Pirate organization or probably any baseball organization.
At 71, he still puts in 14 to 16 hours a day traveling or working on Pirate problems. He can wear out men 30 years his junior who try to keep up with him. But all his work has yet to produce results.
Prior to Rickey's arrival on the scene, the gold-plated owners had tried to buy their way into the favor of Pittsburgh fans. They succeeded turnstile-wise but outside of one year, 1948, they could not brag about the kind of club they put on the field.
There was a Barnum touch to many of the moves McKinney, Galbreath, Johnson, Crosby, et al, made during the first four years. Roy Hamey, now with the New York Yankees, was the general manager for that period. McKinney was Frank McKinney, the Indianapolis banker and big-name politico. He was the president of the club until mid-1950 when a tiff with the other owners over a proposed change from Bill Meyer to Al Lopez as manager found McKinney departing the scene.
The four new owners had taken over in a blaze of publicity and glory at the end of the 1946 season. This marked the end of the highly successful Dreyfuss dynasty, then headed by the late Mrs. Dreyfuss and her son-in-law, Bill Benswanger.
Billy Herman was brought in as manager in a deal that should have warned Pittsburgh fans more bad ones were to come. Bob Elliott, a competent third sacker and an excellent hitter, was sent to the Boston Braves in exchange for Herman's services.
Had the new owners been smart, they could have obtained Herman for no more than the waiver price. Billy, a good one in his day, was on his last legs as a player. He was worth very little to the Pirates this way and because of his failure to last more than one year as a manager, the deal was a lopsided one in favor of Boston.
What a lot of people in Pittsburgh like to refer to as the Barnum era began with the signing of Hank Greenberg, whose salad days had withered in the American League after a long career.
It was a one-year shot designed to oil the rusty Forbes Field turnstiles. Big Hank was paid something like $110,000 in salary and stock in the ball club, but he was worth every penny. Announcement of his becoming a Pirate sent the season ticket sale to record heights.
A strip of ugly chicken wire was placed in left field and dubbed Greenberg Gardens. It housed the pitching bullpens and brought the fences in some thirty feet for Greenberg and a young Mr. Ralph Kiner, who was going into his second year as a home run slugger.
The Garden also paid off. Kiner racked up 51 homers and Greenberg 25 that year, but despite the long ball pyrotechnics the Pirates finished deadlocked for seventh and eighth with the Phils. This cost Herman his job as a manager.
From the start, Rickey played a hand in the Pirate deal. It was to him McKinney, Galbreath and Hamey went for help in the way of players. 'Why not?' answered the big 'humanitarian' from Brooklyn, who when it comes to making a deal will trade you a snowball any day for a Frigidaire.
He talked the Pirates into giving him Preacher Roe and Billy Cox for Dixie Walker, Vic Lombardi and Hal Gregg. Roe and Cox helped the Bums to two pennants and are still big men there, while Walker, Lombardi and Gregg have long departed the major league scene.
He also sold the Pirates an assorted lot what the more outspoken fans call 'garbage' in the way of big league material. In all, Rickey and Brooklyn took more than a million dollars from the Pirates in a succession of deals.
That is why, ironically, a large segment of Pittsburghers blames Rickey for most of the headaches he had to take over when he came here.
The one good year in six the new owners enjoyed came in 1948 when Billy Meyer, a highly successful minor league manager, was pried loose from the Yankee chain. He succeeded Herman and did a tremendous job of getting a lot of mileage out of some worn-out playing material.
Three aged Methuselahs of the mound- Rip Sewell, Fritz Ostermueller and Elmer Riddle- kept the club in the flag race until mid-September when it came apart at the seams and finished fourth. This was better than expected and Meyer was hailed as Manager of the Year.
Pittsburgh's cup of baseball joy wasn't to last. The million and a half customers who turned out set a new attendance record. The money was poured right back into the club. But 1949 was different. The club slumped to sixth place, then to eighth the following year.
With this came Rickey. He said he would feel his way around in the first season, build up in the second and by the third he would give Pittsburgh a team able to contend in the first division.
Luckily for him and the club, the Pirates defeated the Cubs in the final game of the 1951 season to gain seventh place, a one-notch improvement over the previous year.
The 'feeling around' stage over, Rickey went to work in earnest. He spent over $800,000 signing every worth-while young prospect recommended to him. Some 400 players, 90 per cent of them in their teens, became Pirate property.
'Out of quantity we get quality,' the Mahatma intoned. The plan worked for him in St. Louis and Brooklyn. Why not Pittsburgh?
Rickey faced 1952 with optimism not shared by others. These rookies will come through for him, by gosh, like the Pepper Martins, Dizzy Deans, Pete Reisers, Gil Hodges and others had done for him before.
The Old Man let his enthusiasm run away with him. His 'Rickey-dinks,' as the Pirates were laughingly referred to, and his 'Operation Peach Fuzz' proved utter failures. He insisted on using seven Class C and D rookies in the lineup at the same time with the result the club threw away one ball game after another.
The situation became so disgusting that the fans kept away from the parks in large numbers. The attendance dropped to $600,000, still a remarkable figure in view of the sandlot type of play.
The rookies were 'skeered' and the old-timers on the club like Kiner, Dickson, Pollet, Metkovich, McCullough and one or two others were secretly disgruntled, a few others openly so.
This apathetic congregation managed to win 42 games while losing 112, the worst blotch in the once proud Pirate history. How it managed to win 42 is a mystery that demands a recount.
Rickey was prodded for the first time by the Pittsburgh newspapers. The Mahatma answered by changing managers. The easy-going Meyer, who stood the brunt of the abuse Rickey and the others should have taken, was permitted to resign because of ill health. To no one's surprise, Fred Haney was brought in from Hollywood to inherit Bill's headaches.
The Pirates have only one way to go. They're bound to improve. How much, is what the fans would like to know. This promises to be a very interesting year for the Pirates."
-Al Abrams, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Baseball Digest, May 1953)
DOG-GONE CONTRACT
"'Mr. Rickey is very clever about money,' said Ralph Kiner this spring. 'I remember one time Preacher Roe was holding out from the Dodgers when Rickey was there. After a couple of conferences, Rickey told Preach to stay home and think the offer over.
''And by the way,' Rickey told him, 'you can have my two hunting dogs if you want them.'
'So Preacher took the dogs out, and they were the finest hunting dogs he had ever seen. He got to thinking that Mr. Rickey was a pretty nice guy, and, well, maybe he should sign after all. So he signed the contract and sent it back.
'And you know the day Preach put that contract in the mail, those dogs took out across the field and he hasn't seen'em since!'"
-Emmett Watson in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Baseball Digest, May 1953)
NOT A GEM RICKEY
"Branch Rickey, the Pirates general manager, has a cagey reputation as a trader. But usually in dealing off a star at the age of 31, he picks up opposite talent that is young and hungry. Some of the players Rickey got this time are neither young nor hungry."
-Pat Harmon in the Cincinnati Post (Baseball Digest, August 1953)
RICKEY CAUGHT ON THIS ONE
"Branch Rickey doesn't claim to be right all the time. Last winter he insisted the strongest feature of the Pirates was catching. Even this spring he enthused, 'We have catching good enough for the World Series.' So Ed FitzGerald was peddled to Washington and Joe Gariagola was traded to the Cubs."
-Les Biederman in the Pittsburgh Press (Baseball Digest, August 1953)
NOW THAT RICKEY OWNS STOCK-
Did 'His Money' Influence Kiner Deal?
"Perhaps a lot of questions were answered recently when the Post-Gazette found out that General Manager Branch Rickey now owns stock in the Pittsburgh Pirates (between 5 and 10 per cent purchased about a year ago).
This could be the main reason why Rickey is trading off his highly paid stars, whenever the opportunity arises, and is worried so greatly about the money in the treasury.
His Ralph Kiner deal- being criticized boisterously in Pittsburgh- roughly lopped $122,000 off the Pirate payroll. Along with Kiner's $75,000 salary, the Chicago Cubs accepted responsibility of paying George Metkovich on his $14,000 contract; Howie Pollet is signed for $18,000 and Joe Garagiola for about $15,000.
The Bucs have made no secret in the past year that the exchequer is causing them big headaches. It even has been rumored around the league that the name of the ball club is no longer acceptable to float a loan. Only the signatures of Co-owners Tom Johnson and John Galbreath will bring the Pirates a bank loan, if necessary.
It has been estimated that the Kiner deal, which shifted five Cubs to Pittsburgh, added about $38,000 in salaries.
So, with a little mathematics, Rickey added $183,500 to the treasury. Since he received 100 G's in cash from the Cubs, and the difference in the players' salaries amounts to $83,000, Rickey helped things pretty well financially.
Rickey has slacked off noticeably in the past year or 18 months in signing bonus players. Whether it has anything to do with his now owning stock is open for argument.
But the Mahatama is known for not appreciating high priced ball players on his club.
During the first two years of Rickey's regime in Pittsburgh he let the dough flow as easily as you could turn on a water faucet.
He went through better than a half-million dollars during his first summer in Pittsburgh, giving out bonuses to young players.
The only youngsters who showed anything worthwhile were Dick Groat, the shortstop from Swissvale, Pa., and Jimmy Waugh, the pitcher from Lancaster, Ohio.
Both reportedly received about $25,000 to sign with the Pirates.
There were many others and, although the draft stepped in to hinder their advancement, none showed enough ability, to sideline observers, to justify any large bonuses.
A prominent example has been Dick Hall, the Swarthmore College athlete. Hall nicked the Bucs for $30,000. In two seasons they haven't been able to find a place where this six-foot-six giant can play. Even his minor league tenure has been very disappointing.
Hall's kind of money isn't being spent at Forbes Field any more. And the fact that the Mahatma now owns stock in the Pirates could very well be an enlightening reason."
-Jack Hernon, condensed from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Baseball Digest, August 1953)
Branch Rickey, anent the 1953 home run barrage: "It isn't the rabbit in the ball, but the quail in the pitchers that's responsible."
-Baseball Digest, October 1953
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