Branch Rickey Discusses
THE NEGRO IN BASEBALL TODAY
"Ten years have passed since Branch Rickey, Sr., then president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, watched Jackie Robinson- a 28-year-old tense and nervous rookie- trot on Ebbets Field to become the first Negro to crash major league baseball.
Today, Jackie Robinson has retired, Ebbets Field has been sold and the beloved Bums may move to Los Angeles in the not-too-distant future. The past decade has seen many other changes in major league ball including the bodily transfer of whole teams to new territories, and Rickey's move to semi-retirement as stockholder and chairman of the board of directors of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
More and more, Negro ball players seem to be accepted on their baseball merits as they are sold and traded, promoted from the minors, signed to high-salaried contracts and awarded outstanding honors. On the surface, it seems that the Negro has arrived as an equal member in America's national sport.
To get an authoritative statement on just where the Negro does stand today in major league baseball, Ebony went to the man who (three years before Jackie Robinson was signed) decided that the time was right to bring colored players into organized baseball- Branch Rickey, Sr.
Never one to hold his tongue, the colorful, 75-year-old 'Mahatma' talked freely in an exclusive interview at his rambling Silver Springs estate in Fox Chapel, a suburb of Pittsburgh.
Reminiscing about the time when the Dodgers plucked Jackie Robinson from the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League to play the role of a human guinea pig, Rickey made the startling statement that 'Jackie was not an ideal man for the task.' Rickey says, though, that if he had to do it all over again, Jackie would be the type of man he would choose. 'Not that God made him for it. But Robinson understood the problem and that made him safe for the experiment.'
The late years of Jackie's career with his hassles with umpires, verbal exchanges with other players and the furor kicked up by the way he announced his retirement explains just what Rickey means when he says, 'God did not make Jackie for it.' A man with a volatile and an acid tongue, Jackie probably suffered more during those early years than almost any other of the Negro players would have. But his fierce determination to win at all times gave him the strength to curb his temper and tongue in order to win the fight the way Rickey wanted him to.
Branch Rickey does not believe that the battle for full acceptance of Negro players in baseball has been won even to this day. 'We're not out of the woods yet on this thing,' he says. 'Negroes in baseball should continue to turn the other cheek as Jackie did. Negro players should remain patient and forbearing because the problem has not been solved and I think the colored player should want to help solve it by not upsetting the bucket of milk. He should maintain good conduct at all times, both on and off the field.'
Rickey believes his 'turn the other cheek' policy should still be practiced because there are a few white players whose aversion toward playing with or against Negroes has not been completely erased. 'They are a minority but they are very vociferous and can raise a great of trouble. But despite them, I would say a Negro can today play a good game of baseball without carrying his race on his shoulders the way Robinson had to. Generally, the Negro player does not have Robinson's handicap but he does not enjoy complete restraint of anti-racial attitudes from opposing players and spectators. The treatment he gets from them is not yet what it should be.'
Rumors that some clubs were adopting a 'quota system' last year cropped up after teams like the Dodgers and Chicago Cubs fielded as many as five Negro players in a single game. Some Negro fans said 'Boy, are they going to break that up.'
Asked about this, Rickey said, 'No major league club that I know of has a quota system although there could be one. I believe that it is the same as it was in Brooklyn.'
Rickey then went on to tell of how the Brooklyn club's board of directors sold Sam Jethroe after a discussion of whether or not the Dodgers had too many Negroes. Rickey says, 'I was on the fence on the question. Five of the directors thought we had too many, but I said, 'I don't think we have too many.'
'I wanted the best players to keep on winning the pennant,' he adds, 'and I told them if a man kept me from winning, I wouldn't hire him regardless of his color.'
Nevertheless, the Dodgers sold Jethroe and three other players to Boston for five players and $137,000. The trade turned out to be a profitable one for the Dodgers for Jethroe never lived up to his early promise.
Rickey feels today that there is not a single major league club that would turn down a ball player simply because he was a Negro. 'Boston, Detroit and Washington will all have Negro players soon,' he says. 'Philadelphia has already hired a Negro player. Washington will, too. If they can get hold of a good one they would hire him today. There isn't a club that won't take colored players. Most, if not all, of the major league clubs have Negroes in their organizations.'
An ardent fighter for equal rights in all fields, Rickey can envision the day when Negroes can hold down executive jobs in baseball as managers, coaches and traveling secretaries.
'When integration becomes national in scope,' he says, 'when human rights become civil rights, this will certainly follow because without it, integration would not be complete.' Then smiling broadly, he cautioned, 'But I didn't say Jackie Robinson should be a baseball team manager.' Later Rickey added, 'Jackie would make a fine manager.'
Rickey says he was generally pleased with Robinson's decision to retire from baseball, pointing out, however, that Jackie was placed in an awkward position by the way he announced his retirement. (The announcement was made in an exclusive story in Look magazine after Jackie had been traded to the Giants this past December.)
'I never discussed the point with him,' Rickey told Ebony, 'but he handled it honorably. It's too bad his decision was announced in the form it took. He showed a lack of foresight and irritated three groups- Brooklyn, the Giants and the press. Jackie had a perfect right to retire. He owed nothing to anyone and was morally free to retire. He gave value received for his services and had a very good reason for quitting when he did.'
Rickey was emphatic on one point- he believes that all-Negro professional baseball is dead and there is no room at all for all-Negro owned and operated leagues within the framework of organized ball.
'It would be a sad mistake to even consider such a thing today,' he says. 'The Negro is an American citizen and thus there is no need at all for such a set-up. Just as there would be no room at all for an all-white club in baseball anymore, there wouldn't be any for an all-Negro team. That sort of thing is out. There should be no segregation baseball-wise.'
The Rickey advice to the young Negro who wants to make baseball a career is 'do it. Most certainly, the track is all greased. There is no problem at all if he is a gentleman and can play the game.' "
-condensed from Ebony (Baseball Digest, July 1957)
RICKEY ISN'T EVEN IN THE WINGS!
Mahatma Conspicuous By Absence From Pirate Operations
"No two ways about it. Mr. Branch Rickey is decidedly a man of infinite wit and charm. Not only that but he has an agile mind and a remarkably glib vocabulary and the guile of a carnival grifter.
In view of all this and other considerations, probably two-thirds or more of the Pittsburgh area is fully persuaded that Rickey only pretended to step down last year and leave the Pirates in other hands.
Maybe at that, he meant to. But we have it pretty danged reliably that he isn't- as is generally suspected and believed- at all the man he was during his first five years at Forbes Field.
Significantly he has no office, no secretary, no nothing at Forbes Field.
He doesn't pass judgment on young ball players. He doesn't even run a minor part of the show. Therefore he isn't the guy who stands in the wings and makes the curtain go up and down.
As a matter of fact, he seldom (if ever) is there to visit or watch a ball game.
In midsummer, with the Pirates floundering in the prevailing direction of another last-place finish, he wasn't even in town a good part of the time.
In fact, for the better part of May and most of June, he was far away- up in Canada fishing, where he couldn't be reached by telephone because there isn't any. Therefore it stands to reason he now has less idea than the average fan as to what may be going on in the National League, at Columbus and Hollywood.
That isn't the way it was with Rickey when he ran the joint with a high hand and apparently operated according to a fixed belief that he, Wesley Branch Rickey, could do no wrong. On the contrary, he's been isolated- whether consciously or otherwise we don't pretend to know.
However, don't get us wrong:
He isn't yet an absolute nonentity with the Pirates, even though he almost seems to wilfully avoid the place. That, in itself, seems highly suggestive, especially about a man whose personal vanity is just so deep that he'd much prefer not to admit (publicly or privately) that he is taking pains to keep away from anything or anybody.
RESULT: Barring whatever contact of various principles he may have had during spring training within the limited confines of Fort Myers, Fla., Bobby Bragan has seen Rickey only three times since he came to Pittsburgh more than a year and a half ago.
As for Joe L. Brown you can take it for what you think it may be worth that he's not at all the type to told a title, i.e., General Manager, while letting somebody- anybody, even Rickey- tell him what to do nor for that matter when and where and how to do it, or if he should do it.
Anyhow, we just thought you'd like to know."
-Davis J. Walsh, Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph (Baseball Digest, September 1957)
