1950 Yankees of the Past: Clark Griffith and Joe McCarthy

CLARK GRIFFITH

GRIFF PULLS OFF A FULLER It's Brushoff Of The Year

"The most determined brushoff in baseball history apparently has paid off and it's just one more example of the fierce, fighting spirit of Clark C. Griffith, the eighty-one-year-old bantam.

Griffith made up his mind last Christmastide that he wasn't going to like John Jachym, who had just bought 40 per cent of the Washington Senators and had completely astounded the old-line organization which thought it was entirely secure.

Griff never forgave Jachym for the latter's method of going about buying the Senators. Actually, it was all above-board and if Griff had any complaint coming it should have been against the Richardson estate which had promised him the 'right of refusal.' That meant that if and when the Richardson stock was sold Griff had the first right to refuse. Conversely, that meant that Griff would have the first option if buying up the block.

So Jachym, in a sense, was the innocent victim of a vendetta. The young ex-Marine was entirely unaware he was stepping into something about as clannish as a mountain family. His attempts to be the nice, young man with eager eyes made about as much impression as a man trying to whittle away mountain with a nail file.

Jachym was rebuffed at the winter stockholders' meeting. He fully expected to be named general manager or perhaps treasurer. He came out of that meeting with no more prestige than any reporter who covers the club. In fact, you could say less.

Jachym's next try was in March when the Philadelphia Athletics played the Senators at West Palm Beach, Fla. Jachym had a place down the road at Del Ray Beach. He came up to see the Senators and was avoided like a poor relation looking for a touch. The rebuff wasn't lost on Jachym.

At dinner one night he said wistfully that he was sorry about the way things had turned out. Then he gave his first intimation that he would sell when he said: 'I might dispose of the stock at the right price.'

Up to that point, Jachym was a bit nettled himself and vowed he'd fight it out in cold war. There were those who said that if the Senators did a nose-dive, Griffith would be on the spot and the fans would be clamoring for a change in ownership.

This school of thought believed that all Jachym had to do was bide his time and popular opinion would force Griffith's hand. But the trouble was the Senators got off to a good start.

When the Senators started to go down, the feeling was that the old regime was going to have a tough time keeping Jachym out. An added factor was that the Senators, thus far, were 57,000 below their home attendance of last year. The total Washington attendance last year was 770,745, a drop of about 15,000 from the previous year. The Senators claimed they lost money on that figure- that is, counting only the baseball admissions and not including concessions and rental for various functions in addition to the Redskin pro football games.

Maybe Jachym just got tired of being pushed around. For a man who had spent over a half-million dollars, Jachym had less standing around Griffith Stadium than one of the batboys. Jachym was never really aware how intensely his intrusion was resented. He wasn't quite aware, either, of Griffith's salesmanship.

Griffith controlled 44 per cent but when the time came for the showdown the old gentleman had his friends who gave him the voting power. You can't fight tradition and friendship- not even with money.

As for the brand new owner of the floating stock, there's a suspicion that H. Gabriel Murphy, the ex-Georgetown University manager of athletics, has plenty of hometown backing- undoubtedly from some fellow-members of the city's leading lights.

But Gabe Murphy is already entirely acceptable to the inner sanctum. He's a great friend of Calvin Griffith, fellow vice president of the Senators, and he isn't likely to make it embarrassing for Uncle Clark.

With Gabe Murphy in there, it is an entirely home-grown operation. The Senators have that 'no trespassing' sign out for strangers. Griffith is still a tough man to beat in a rough and tumble fight."

-Bob Addie, condensed from the Washington Times-Herald (Baseball Digest, September 1950)

JOE MCCARTHY

MCCARTHY COULD MANAGE
"Joe McCarthy is too grim a fighter, too stubborn and too proud ever to quit under fire. Hence one almost has to accept as gospel truth the reasons of bad health that he offers for his sudden and unexpected resignation as the manager of the Boston Red Sox. There is little likelihood that he ever again will return to the game he loved and served with such distinction.
Marse Joe failed at Boston. It's unfortunate that his departure had to come on such a sour note because the small-minded men who don't know any better will derisively remark that he never could manage a ball club anyway and that it's good riddance. They'll even add that the records are false in proclaiming that the square-jawed Irishman from Buffalo won more pennants than John McGraw and Connie Mack.
They won't argue with the statistics but they are certain to revive the flippant crack that the needling Jimmie Dykes once tossed off thoughtlessly, never dreaming that it would gain a dubious sort of immortality. Jimmie only meant to be funny and to penetrate McCarthy's hide when he termed Marse Joe 'a push-button manager.' It sure penetrated and Joe never quite forgave him.
The inference, of course, was that the then Yankee skipper merely had to push a button and the belt-conveyer [sic] system instituted by Ed Barrow and George Weiss instantly would produce a Charlie Keller, a Joe DiMaggio, a Phil Rizzuto or some other great star from the minor league system.
Merely having good ball players isn't the sign of a good manager. He has to know what to do with them. It was there that McCarthy was so supreme that Barrow never hesitated when the time came for him to pick the greatest manager in his memoirs. He selected McCarthy. It should be kept in mind that Barrow is a blunt, outspoken citizen who says only what he thinks, let the chips fall where they may.
'In developing young ball players McCarthy never had an equal,' wrote Barrow. That is praise from Caesar.
It probably should be understood that Marse Joe never had the warm personality of either Bucky Harris or Casey Stengel. McCarthy they never loved. They admired and respected him tremendously but there was no depth of affection for the man. Sports writers who knew the three men intimately felt just about the same way.
Yet even today any Yankee player will tell you- preferably off the record so as not to hurt the feelings of Harris or Stengel- that McCarthy was the greatest of them all. Old ball players who have retired and have no ax to grind, such as Lefty Gomez, say the same thing.
Opinion is so unanimous that it just has to be believed. Perhaps it should be confessed that this reporter had an open mind on McCarthy's proper place in the managerial picture but finally was bowled over by the weight of evidence in his favor from those who know from actual experience far more than he does.
Marse Joe was never an easy man to know. He was a suspicious man with the press and it was only on the rarest occasions that he'd let down his guard and talk expansively. Yet even then he'd sometimes suddenly whip up his guard and begin sparring cautiously.
In Florida one day last spring he was sitting with three newspaper men he liked and trusted. Conversation was flowing easily when Marse Joe started to laugh.
'That reminds me of a story,' he chuckled. 'It's a very funny story. But- no. I guess I better not tell it.'
'Why?' asked Frank Graham.
'Because the fellow involved is still in baseball, 'and it might reflect on him. I know that you and Arthur and Red wouldn't write if I asked you not to. But it's so good that you'd tell it to someone else and he'd use it. Sorry, fellows, I'd better not.'
We never did hear that presumably hilarious tale. Yet is so typical of the man and his super caution. If someone asked him to compare Joe DiMaggio to Tris Speaker, particularly as to their abilities in going back for a fly ball, Marse Joe would clam up. Speaker played so shallow a center field that he was unequaled in going back for a catch. If McCarthy publicly admitted as much some writer might distort his words so that McCarthy would be saying Speaker was better than DiMadge.
Sounds silly, doesn't it? But that's the way he was, the toughest man in the world ever to interview. 'Let me worry about that,' was his now classic rejoinder to most questions.
When McCarthy quit as manager of the Yankees, the reason was obvious. He and Larry MacPhail were as insoluble as oil and water. Just before that, though, McCarthy's health began to fail. He was such a perfectionist that he died a thousand deaths with his wartime ball players and his now famed gallbladder attacks became more frequent. He even stepped out of character that year by giving Joe Page an unmerciful tongue-lashing in front of the other athletes. He'd never done anything like that before and it showed his jagged nerves.
But he was calmer and more like the old McCarthy when he took the Red Sox assignment before the 1948 season. Then he lost in a photo-finish playoff to Cleveland and on the final day of the campaign to the Yankees a year later. Perhaps he has now given up on the Fenway Millionaires just as everyone else has. This is the now-or-never year for the Red Sox, the last gasp for aging players before a complete retooling job is done.
McCarthy is too old at sixty-three to suffer through that. Besides, he has all the money he'll ever need. This isn't the most graceful way out but it almost had to come. Outwardly unemotional, he seethes inside. Another half season would have seen him consumed by his own inner fires, perhaps even killed him.
But don't let anyone tell you that McCarthy could never manage. The fellows who know more about it than anyone else, the impossible-to-fool baseball players, say he was the best. Suppose we let it go at that."

-Arthur Daley, condensed from The New York Times (Baseball Digest, September 1950)

1950 Yankee Catchers of the Past

STEVE O'NEILL

O'NEILL - HARD BUT HUMANE

Unsinged by Many Firings

"During the opening day of the mid-winter minor league baseball meetings, the telephone in Joe Cronin's Baltimore hotel suite rang. Joe picked up the receiver half expecting a report on the long argued broadcasting regulations or a trade for the Scranton club. It was neither. Steve O'Neill was calling from his home in Cleveland. A broken foot had kept him from attending the baseball meeting, but it hadn't prevented him from being fired as a coach of the Cleveland Indians. Now he was looking for a job, any kind of job with the Boston Red Sox. Not a coaching job. He couldn't expect that because he wasn't an old Yankee or an old Cub and had no personal ties with Joe McCarthy.

Even the former Red Sox coaches under Cronin had gone when the new manager came in. Del Baker, who had won a pennant in the major leagues, went back to the minors. Larry Woodall had been named to a created job, super-sleuth in charge of quick looks at ball players. The head of the farm system was replaced by a McCarthy man, Johnny Murphy, the ex-Yankee pitcher. Even the trainer, the likeable Win Green, was shipped to the minors.

O'Neill knew he couldn't break in on a coaching setup such as this, so he didn't ask to be in the uniform-wearing department of the Red Sox. All he wanted was a job so he could stay in baseball.

The Red Sox general manager told Steve to sit tight and there would be a job for him somewhere, even if one had to be created. It was- Steve was named to scout the Midwest territory. Cronin knew, just as everyone around baseball knew, that Joe McCarthy was a well-heeled man of sixty-three years who might decide suddenly that he couldn't take it anymore. Two years earlier the Red Sox management had Del Baker for insurance in case McCarthy folded, but when Del Baker left, McCarthy's assistants were Earle Combs and Kiki Cuyler, neither of whom wanted to be a major league manager, having found that they couldn't take it with them when they departed.

Not every baseball man wants to be a major league manager. There are many coaches who have been offered big-paying jobs as managers but prefer coaching. Clyde Sukeforth, the man from Maine, refused the Dodger job despite the pleas of his players and his boss, Branch Rickey. Red Rolfe could have been a manager long before he decided to gamble on it. Some of the great players have refused to take the responsibility for producing a winning team. Bill Carrigan of Lewiston, Maine quit when he had perhaps twenty years of major league managing left in him. Bill knew that the money was good and the season was short, but he also knew that running a team from the sidelines is no life for a worrier. Take a look around the big time, even going back a few years, and you'll find that the only unscarred managers are Connie Mack, who owned the team he managed and couldn't be fired, Bucky Harris and Leo Durocher.

Most of the others are troubled by physical ailments induced by tension and constant internal turmoil. A few quit in time. Others, like Red Rolfe and Billy Meyer, keep charging on because they love the game more than they dread the pain.

McCarthy stewed and fretted and fumed inside, maintaining a cold, frozen look on the exterior to conceal the inner grumblings and growlings. Billy Southworth, although he looks calm and placid, is what is known among coaches as 'a bleeder,' but he controls his tension by working on the coaching lines.

O'Neill is not a worrier, not a pop-off. He has more animation than Burt Shotton, less nervous energy than Frankie Frisch. Steve found out long ago that today's bum is tomorrow's hero. He doesn't believe the ballyhoo when his team is winning and he doesn't believe the abuse when his team is losing. He has been fired often enough to know that the world doesn't end because of a personal failure. When he was fired, he didn't start blasting the owner or general manager who fired him. He just went out and started looking for another job.

At Detroit, Steve had his problems, among them Dick Wakefield. Steve was supposed to make a major league star out of Wakefield, who had been signed for a large handsome bonus and who was being carried year after year in an attempt to justify the management's original expenditure. Steve finally decided Wakefield was not his problem anymore. We sat with Steve in Lakeland, Fla. three years ago and asked him what he was going to do with Wakefield.

'I'm not going to do anything about Wakefield,' he answered, rubbing his chin. 'Wakefield is going to do something about Wakefield. He's a big boy now. I'm not a psychiatrist. I'll use only ball players who like the game.'

When Cuyler died just before the opening day of spring training this year, McCarthy, at the strong request of Yawkey and Cronin, hired as O'Neill as coach.

The portly one was not a natural choice for McCarthy. In fact, when the Boston Post's Jack Malaney wrote that O'Neill would probably replace the late Kiki Cuyler, the story was politely hooted by the baseball sharps. The Red Sox management hoped that McCarthy would give in on O'Neill, hoped that Joe would stop considering Steve the crown prince. McCarthy, naturally, didn't want to be nervously looking over his shoulder wondering when O'Neill would succeed him, but eventually, on March 1, okayed the proposition.

An hour after the announcement had been made, McCarthy was sitting in his office in the dressing quarters at Sarasota talking about his days at Louisville and his days at Chicago when suddenly he thought of something.

'One thing you can always remember about O'Neill,' he said, 'is when he handled Bob Feller as well as any manager that was ever was in this game. No one could have done better, probably not as well. What Feller is today he owes in a big way to Steve. A lot of managers would have ruined the kid. Steve handled him right. He wasn't tough with the kid and he wasn't soft. Feller was big and strong, and Cleveland needed pitching help. He was a tremendous drawing card, too, and the front office wanted him used to help the box office.

'Steve could have followed orders and injured the kid's arm. But he didn't. He told the front office that he would use him every Sunday. One game in seven days. That would help the box office and save Feller's arm. He wouldn't use him for a midweek game to drag in extra money. For that, you've got to respect Steve. He made a hard decision and he made it the humane way.'

Now O'Neill, as McCarthy's mid-season successor as manager of the Red Sox, is again making the hard decisions- the humane way."

-Gerry Hern, condensed from the Boston Post (Baseball Digest, September 1950)

ROLLIE HEMSLEY

THE BOY FROM SYRACUSE
"The locale was Pomeroy, Ohio. Pomeroy was sadly in need of a catcher. The area in and 'round was combed for a backstop, but none could be found. Finally one of the more adventurous of the townsfolk heard of a youngster living in Syracuse, twelve miles away, who was highly praised.
When the young man appeared, the pitcher- fellow by the name of Grimm- refused to pitch him. 'Only fifteen,' Grimm scoffed. 'I'd break every bone in the kid's hand.'
After a prolonged discussion, the kid got into his pads and cage and caught Grimm amazingly well. Two years later, at seventeen, the kid was with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was Rollie Hemsley, new manager of the Columbus Red Birds."

-Russ Needham in the Columbus (O) Dispatch (Baseball Digest, June 1950)

AARON ROBINSON

"Aaron batted .269 in 110 games in 1949 and drove in 56 runs. He is one of the game's better fielding catchers.

He has been in organized baseball since 1937. He came into the majors with the Yankees in 1943 but finished that season with Newark. He spent 1944 in military service and rejoined the Yankees the following season. Aaron was property of the White Sox at one time."

-1950 Bowman No. 95

BUDDY ROSAR

"Buddy was traded by the A's to the Red Sox at the close of the 1949 season. He caught 32 games for Philadelphia in '49 and hit .200.

After five years in the minors, Buddy came to the Yankees in 1939. In 1942 he joined the Indians and in 1945 was traded to the A's. Buddy went through 1946 [117 games] without an error. In 1948 he caught 90 games, hit .255 and continued his superior fielding, leading American League catchers with a .997 average."

-1950 Bowman No. 136

CLYDE MCCULLOUGH (Yankee Prospect of the Past)

"Clyde hit .237 in 91 games for the 1949 Pirates.

Clyde's first pro experience was in 1935 with Lafayette of the Evangeline League. He hit the majors in 1940 with the Cubs but finished the season with Buffalo. He bounced to the Cubs in 1941 and remained with them until traded to the Pirates.

His highest batting average was .287 in 1942. He was in military service for three years."

-1950 Bowman No. 124

1950 Yankee of the Past: Babe Ruth

"Most everybody remembers Babe Ruth as a moon-faced, barrel-chested hulk of a man with spindly legs. Indeed, Babe's rotund countenance was his trademark. There really were many different Ruths in physical appearance, but the round moon face was prominent in all of them, even to his death when it was lined and ravaged by illness. Babe was always outsize- he was called 'Big George' at St. Mary's when he was only fifteen.
Babe had a big head- physically that is. He customarily affected a cap, preferably a brown-camel-haired one, because hats looked silly on him. Once Ruth realized that his home runs gave him special privileges, that the rules of ordinary ball players weren't for him, the first thing he did was discard hats and take to a cap.
Much has been made of his pipe-stemmed legs which supported Ruth's Gargantuan body. Their thinness was accentuated by the bay window Ruth accumulated in later years. The longer Babe played, the more people went to see him and Ruth played until he was past forty. He was in his thirty-third year when he collected his record-breaking sixty home runs in 1927. As a consequence, there is a tendency to exaggerate his spindle-shanked qualities. Had Ruth bothered to keep his weight down to normal he wouldn't have looked so much like an egg balanced on two straws.
Ruth's batting style was as distinctive as his build. He took a batting style with his feet close together, his body swiveled slightly so that he was looking at the pitcher over his right shoulder. His feet were about four inches apart and his right foot was about an inch closer to home plate than his left. He stood to the rear of the batter's box but not especially deep, being almost on a line with the plate.
As is true with all good hitters, the Babe had exceptional reflexes and muscular co-ordination. He took a big stride forward with his right foot, planted his back leg firmly, swung forward on a level plane, snapping his wrists into the swing at the moment of impact and pulling the club head 'through' the ball. He held the bat long, the nob at the small end gripped in his right hand. The force of his follow-through often sent him sprawling when he missed the ball. There was grace and effortless power in his swing when he hit the ball.
Some say Ruth's swing was patterned after that of Shoeless Joe Jackson. The Babe admitted they swung alike and that, when he noticed that, he began to watch Jackson at every opportunity because of the great distance Joe got from his drives against the dead ball. Although Ruth had an instinct for baseball, it is safe to assume that at least 95 per cent of his talents were God-given, particularly his remarkable vision.
With all of his home runs, Ruth was a scientific batter as well as a swinger. He was a better than average bunter and when the defense overshifted against him, as the Cardinals did in the 1946 World Series against Ted Williams, Babe took advantage of the inviting gaps by shortening up and punching the ball to the opposite field. Most of the time the Babe swung from his heels but he could bunt, punch or drag a ball if the defense played him out of position.
Down in Georgia's Glynn County in the Dover Hill hunting camp of Uncle Robbie, Til Huston, George Stallings and other baseball figures, the prowess of  Ruth as a Nimrod was renowned. He was a phenomenal wing shot, a tireless hunter who could tramp in the pine woods for hours and a prodigious eater and drinker. And this was in a league where a normal eater and drinker would have been looked upon as a dilettante.
Moe Berg, the Princetonian who came into baseball in 1923 as a shortstop and remained on as a catcher and coach until Pearl Harbor when he entered the OSS, was a student of baseball as he is of life. Remarkably observant, Berg made the statement that Ruth was the only hitter he ever saw who didn't shorten his grip with two strikes against him. Taking the precaution of moving the hands up a little on the handle of the bat was the regular procedure for even the best of hitters, except Ruth.
'I never found out whether Babe didn't know he had two strikes on him,' remarked Moe, 'or whether he didn't care.'"

-Tom Meany, Baseball's Greatest Hitters (Baseball Digest, June 1950)


THE INDIANS WALKED KOENIG TO PITCH TO RUTH
And They Got Away With It!
"Tris Speaker, Cleveland Indian manager of the 1920's, asked if the writer ever heard of passing anyone intentionally to get at Babe Ruth.
'Certainly not,' was the answer. 'Speaking of things that never happened.'
'Don't be so sure,' laughed Spoke. 'Maybe it only happened once, but it sure happened. We were in the ninth inning one day, leading the Yankees by one run, but they had the tying run on second base.
'Mark Koenig was the batter and George Uhle the pitcher. Ruth was on deck. Out in center field, I didn't think anything unusual was going on when Uhle's first pitch was a low curve for a ball. But when the second was two feet outside, I decided it was time to have a talk with George.
'Are you nuts?' I asked him. 'Make this fellow hit the ball. Don't you know the gentleman who will be up next if you walk Koenig?'
''Uhle said, 'Tris, I'd rather pitch to Koenig any time. I thought I'd try to get Mark out on a bad pitch, but if I can walk him I'll still be all right. I can take care of the big fellow.'
''Okay,' I told him, 'but if that's the way you feel about it let's tell Ruth.' I walked toward home plate and motioned O'Neill out of the catcher's box. 'We're putting him on, Steve,' I said. 'George would rather pitch to Ruth.'
'The big fellow's neck turned purple and he really was cutting when he stepped to the plate. George gave him two curves on the inside and he fouled them over the stands in right. Then he worked the count to three and two. George broke off a beautiful curve. The Babe started to lunge at it, then tried to hold his swing, but it didn't make any difference. The umpire yelled strike three.
'In the clubhouse, everyone was slapping Uhle on the back and some of the boys even thought I must be a great manager for figuring out strategy like that. But when the room quieted down, I called Uhle over to my locker.
''George,' I said, 'that was terrific. But please do me a favor. Never try it again. I don't want to have a heart attack in center field. And I'll never come closer than I did while you were pitching to that big guy.'"

-Ed McAuley, Cleveland News (Baseball Digest, August 1950)

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)

1950 Yankee of the Past: Lefty Gomez

NOT A FAT CHANCE
"Another Lefty Gomez story: when he first joined the New York Yankees, some friends told him:
'If you could add ten pounds to your skinny frame you'd make them forget Chesbro.'
Lefty went out and ate all the food in sight that winter. He put on ten pounds, but the added weight hampered instead of helped him. He wound up with an eleven and fifteen record.
'Forget Chesbro!' snorted Gomez. 'I almost made them forget Gomez!'"

-Al Abrams in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Baseball Digest, February 1950)