Rickey and Robinson (6 page)

But it was not entirely a lost summer. Rickey had an opportunity to prevail, if not in baseball, then in another form of competition. In midtown Manhattan, there was a storefront where customers could play checkers against a large mechanical hand manipulated by someone behind a curtain. The hand played four or :five games at once, and never lost.

Rickey was an old hand at checkers, having played many games while sitting astride a cracker barrel in the country store back home, and he couldn’t resist the challenge. He played the hand and beat it. The man behind the curtain emerged to congratulate the victor. To the astonishment of both men, it turned out that the “book” system Rickey employed was invented by his hidden opponent. Rickey had mastered the technique, and the master had met his match.

Back in Ohio, Rickey took over the class of his onetime mentor, Professor Grove, who had died. At the same time he studied law at Ohio State University and coached football and baseball at his alma mater. He was known to be especially sympathetic to homesick young players. Recalling his own homesickness when he :first attended Wesleyan, he told them how he would go home for a day or two and return to school feeling much better.

Herman M. Shipps, a member of the class of ‘13 and later vice-president of Ohio Wesleyan, was a freshman when Rickey was the college’s football coach. He recalls another aspect of Rickey’s life:

“In those days there was a great deal of feeling in Ohio about Prohibition. In fact, you were either ‘wet’ or ‘dry.’ One evening Branch was walking up Sandusky Street after football practice with half the team gathered around him. At the corner of William Street and Sandusky a man standing on a baggage truck was making a speech to a considerable crowd. Branch said, ‘What’s that fellow doing?’ Someone said, ‘He’s making a “wet” speech.’ Branch said, ‘If you get a box over on this other corner, I’ll make a “dry” speech.’

“He got on a box and started to talk, and pretty soon he had the whole crowd come across the street to listen to him. It must have been a pretty good speech, because the AntiSaloon League heard about it and told him they would love him to make some ‘dry’ speeches in the small towns in Ohio, and they would pay him ten dollars and his expenses.

“The first place he went to was Chillicothe,” recalls Shipps. Rickey was told by three hotel managers that there were no vacancies. The hotels were dependent on their bars for much of their income. “Branch wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he started to walk down the street and met an old friend from Duck Run named Hunter. They stopped, shook hands, and Branch said, ‘What are you doing here?’

“‘I’m tending bar. What are you doing?’

“‘I came to make a “dry” speech,’ Branch said, ‘and I can’t find anyplace to stay. The hotels won’t let me in.’ “Hunter said, ‘That’s all right, come on down and stay with me.’

“So Branch stayed with the bartender and made a good ‘dry’ speech. After that experience he made quite a few such speeches in Ohio and became widely known as a public speaker.”

In the 1920s, Rickey was hired by the Reapath Lyceum Bureau in Columbus, Ohio, to speak in churches throughout the state. “Branch didn’t like to drive a car, so he and I made a deal,” Shipps recalled. “I would take him around to various small towns in Ohio where he was making speeches in the evening, and at dinnertime we would assemble the Ohio Wesleyan alumni who would come to have dinner together and to hear him talk about the university. Then we would all go to church and hear him talk about government. He was an ardent Republican, and at one time seriously considered running for senator in Missouri. I recall once we sat in front of my fire and talked for a couple of hours about whether he should stay in baseball or run. He finally decided, as it seemed he always did, in favor of baseball.”

But even baseball had to wait back in the spring of gog. Acute weight loss and a persistent cough were diagnosed as symptoms of tuberculosis. Rickey had to submit to a rest cure for six months at Saranac Lake, New York. The respite in the Adirondack Mountains worked. That fall, he enrolled in the University of Michigan Law School and served as baseball coach there. He completed the three-year course in two years, but the strain caused his health to break down again. Doctors suggested he go west, where the climate would be more beneficial. So the Rickeys headed out to Boise, Idaho, with two fraternity brothers and set up a law practice. It seemed as if he would spend his life as a western lawyer.

He had left with the understanding that if he wanted to return, he would be welcomed back. He wired the athletic director at the University of Michigan: “Am starving, will be back without delay.” He told his partners he was making a leave and headed back to Ann Arbor to coach Michigan’s baseball team. He doubled as baseball coach and part-time scout for the St. Louis Browns, sending in reports on players to the Browns owner, Col. Bob Hedges, who was so impressed with Rickey’s reports that he hired him as an assistant presidential secretary. He was also allowed to continue coaching at the University of Michigan.

Nearing the end of the third decade of his life, Wesley Branch Rickey had been a country schoolteacher, earned three college degrees, played and coached collegiate baseball and football, played professional baseball and football, lectured extensively on behalf of Prohibition, and been a college instructor, an athletic director, and a lawyer. He had come through two bouts with tuberculosis. An abstemious, Sabbath-observing Methodist whose vilest expletive was “Judas Priest,” he was primed to enter the rough-and-tumble world of major-league baseball. The sport would never be the same.

Chapter Four

St. Louis

In 1913, Ty Cobb of Detroit paced the American League in batting. Frank “Home Run” Baker of Philadelphia hit twelve homers to lead the league. Walter Johnson of Washington won thirty-six games and had an earned-run average of 1.09. The St. Louis Browns finished in last place, thirtynine games behind Connie Mack’s Athletics. Their three managers that season were George Stovall, Jimmy Austin, and Branch Rickey.

Col. Bob Hedges, the former Cincinnati carriage maker, prevailed upon his aide, Rickey, to take over the team for the final eleven games of the season. True to his old vow, Rickey would not enter the ballpark on Sunday; Burt Shotton, three years Rickey’s junior, from Bronhelm, Ohio, became the designated Sunday manager.

Rickey piloted the 1914 Browns to a fifth-place finish. On August 25 of that year, the thirty-three-year-old manager was coaxed into a final major-league at-bat. His Browns were losing, 7-0, in the first game of a doubleheader against Connie Mack’s Athletics in Shibe Park in Philadelphia. A nineteen-year-old southpaw named Ray Bressler was the Philadelphia pitcher. Veteran Ira Thomas, who had once been a teammate of Rickey’s on the New York Highlanders, was catching.

“Get up and hit, Rick. Get up and hit,” Thomas yelled. The other Athletics picked it up. Even the venerable Connie Mack joined in the chant. Rickey agreed to come to the plate if Bressler promised not to throw any curveballs.

“I was sure they’d curve me to death,” Rickey recalled. “So I wasn’t set for the first pitch, strike one, a fastball. Well, I thought, that was done to make me complacent. I just know they’d bend the next one over. The next pitch was a fastball and a strike. I was now ready for the curve and was utterly astonished to see a third fastball go by—strike three. My last turn at bat in the major leagues taught me that nothing is gained by distrusting your fellowman.”

One of Rickey’s early front-office coups was in signing George Sisler. He had starred as a member of Rickey’s University of Michigan baseball team before signing a contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates. As an attorney, Rickey realized that the signing was illegal, since Sisler was underage and therefore not able to sign a legal contract. Rickey journeyed to Sisler’s parents in Manchester, Ohio. After swapping some hunting and fishing stories, Sisler’s father signed with his fellow Ohioan, binding the future Hall of Farner to the St. Louis Browns, where he starred for a dozen seasons. The signing caused an uproar, but Rickey was upheld by the National Baseball Commission.

Even with Sisler, the 1915 Browns were a hapless collection of athletes. They won only sixty-three games and finished in sixth place. Yankee third baseman Fritzie Maisel, who stole fifty-one bases that year—many against the Browns—recalled trying to ride Rickey, who was coaching at third base. “I told him to get behind the plate and try to stop me from stealing since I was having such a good time against his catcher.

“‘Judas Priest, Fritzie,’ he shouted at me, ‘will you kindly shut your mouth. I am suffering enough.’” One contemporary claimed it was the players Rickey managed who suffered most. He droned on tirelessly about baseball theory, but his sermons on the game’s intricacies befuddled and bewildered some of the semiliterate types, who could only scratch their heads when the man they called the “Ohio Weezeleyant,” the exasperated professor of multiple college degrees, would declare: “I wonder why a man trained for the law devotes his life to something so cosmically unimportant as a game.”

During the winter of 1915-16, the Federal League, which was formed to compete with the American and National leagues in 1914, folded. Hedges sold the Browns to Phil Ball, former owner of the St. Louis Federal League team. Ball, a fifty-six-year-old rough, growling Iowan, was the owner of an ice business. He encouraged the sale of liquor, which increased the sale of his ice. “So you’re the goddamned Prohibitionist,” was how the tough-talking Ball greeted the former Ohio schoolteacher. The two men never got along. Ball installed Fielder Jones, his former Federal League pilot, as manager of the Browns. Rickey was restricted solely to front-office duties.

Burdened with excess players as a result of the merger of Ball’s two clubs, Rickey began to place surplus personnel with friendly owners of minor-league clubs. In return, he obtained the option to purchase players from their rosters for nominal sums, amounts much lower than the market value of these players. The seeds of the farm system, what would be Rickey’s greatest baseball innovation, were thus planted.

Late in the summer of 1916, Helene Hathaway Robeson Britton, owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, hosted a meeting in her lavish home on Lindell Boulevard. “Lady Bee,” plagued by domestic troubles and poor attendance at Cardinal games, ushered in manager Miller Huggins and her legal adviser James C. Jones. “Gentlemen,” the striking brunette announced to the surprise of the two men, “I want to get out of baseball. I guess I’ve had enough. I wanted you two to be the first to know in case you’re thinking of buying the club yourself.”

Huggins, in his fourth year as Cardinal manager, was intrigued by the offer. “I’ll take the club on verbal option,” he told her. ‘’I’ll get a buyer.” Jones remained silent.

The diminutive Huggins scrambled through St. Louis and his native Cincinnati lining up financial backers. The “Mighty Mite,” as he was known, was prepared to present Lady Bee with an offer when he read in the newspaper one morning that the Cardinals had been sold. James C. Jones had organized a stock company comprised of St. Louis fans and supporters. The club, along with old League Park, was acquired for $375,000. The money was raised by the sale of stock ranging in price from $Io to $so by the firm of Jones and Hocker, which collected $25,000 for overseeing the transaction.

The following year, further sales of stock kept the franchise going even though the club was $185,000 in the red. Jones was feeling secure in his role as owner. He called seven St. Louis writers and editors to his office. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “our campaign has progressed nicely. We have the club. We have a good manager. [Miller Huggins was in his last year on the job, still piqued at the fact that Jones and not he had wound up as club owner.] But Ineed a man to run all of this as club president. You boys have been around; you know baseball, and you know the St. Louis conditions. I need, I want, your suggestions for this job. Would you be so kind as to write the name of this person on a slip of paper and drop it into my hat as I pass it around the room?”

The same name appeared on all the slips of paperBranch Rickey, business manager of the St. Louis Browns.

Across town, Rickey’s efficiency had made him a valuable asset to ice tycoon Phil Ball despite their personal differences. But Rickey had not been happy working for the Browns since Ball had taken over, and he was delighted with the Cardinals’ offer. Ball matched it, but Rickey chose to take the Cardinal job. Rickey claimed that his contract allowed him to switch jobs if a better position became available. Ball brought a suit against Rickey, and Rickey answered with a countersuit. When the shouting stopped, Rickey won and moved over to the presidency of the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Cards tied for last place in 1916. The 1917 club, led by a youngster named Rogers Hornsby who batted .327, second in the league, finished third. Most agreed that the climb in the standings was due to some key trades engineered by new club president Branch Rickey and the skillful managerial touch of Miller Huggins. Still miffed at losing his chance to own the Cardinals, Huggins went over to the New York Yankees in tgt8. Rickey replaced him with Jack Hendricks. Rickey introduced several innovations, including sliding pits where players could practice their base running, and blackboard chalk-talks aimed at explaining baseball theory. Nonetheless, the 1918 Cardinals finished in last place under Hendricks in a season that ended on Labor Day. The War Department had introduced a “work or fight” order mandating the early end to the season.

Many baseball men became involved in the war effort. Those with good educational backgrounds and experience in strategic planning were placed in a special program supervised by the former president of Harvard University, Percy Houghton. Rickey was recruited by Houghton, and became part of the Chemical Warfare Service.

The Rickey home in St. Louis was closed for the duration of the war. Thirty-six-year-old Branch was sent east for training and then overseas. His wife, Jane, and their four little children returned to Ohio. Ambitious as ever, Rickey had attained the rank of major by the war’s end.

When he returned to St. Louis, he found a team deep in debt. “We didn’t even have the money to send the team south for spring training, so we trained at home,” Rickey recalled. “We even wore the same uniforms at home and on the road. They were really ragged.” Firemen patrolled the dilapidated Cardinal ballpark watching out for stray matches, fearful that the ramshackle wooden stands would burn down. Rickey had to pass up his own salary to meet the payroll. He borrowed a rug from his own home and placed it on the floor of his office to impress visitors. His ubiquitous bow tie, however, was not worn to make an impression. “It’s cheaper than a regular tie,” he explained, “and it takes less time to put on. It could also cover up a soiled shirt or a frayed collar,” added the efficiency-minded baseball executive.

Rickey dismissed Hendricks and took over as manager himself. The look of the Redbirds began to change. His old Sunday manager, Burt Shotton, came over from the Browns, along with Charlie Barrett, one of the premier scouts in baseball. Players came and went as Rickey, carrying a black notebook in which he jotted down lengthy notes about each player’s strengths and weaknesses, kept shuffling the Cards looking for the right combination. The 1919 team finished in seventh place.

Nineteen nineteen was also the year of the “Black Sox” scandal—the alleged attempt of several players on the Chicago White Sox to throw the World Series. The baseball world was too concerned with the scandal for anyone to notice Rickey’s purchase of eighteen of the one hundred shares of stock in the Houston team of the Texas League.

The Houston stock purchase was the first primitive step toward the development of a farm system. “It was a case of necessity being the mother of invention,” Rickey later explained. ‘We lived a precarious existence. We would trade one player for four and then sell one of them for some extra cash. We were always at a distinct disadvantage trying to get players from the minor leagues. Other clubs would outbid us; they had the money and the superior scouting machinery.”

The rich New York Giants posed the biggest problem for the impoverished Cardinals. Owner Charles Stoneham and manager John McGraw formed a lavish spending combination. Every year they paid top dollar for players to give the Giants reinforcements for the second half of the season. There were times when Rickey or his top scout Charlie Barrett would spot a good prospect in the minor leagues and make an offer to the team. The team’s owner would then approach the Giants or another wealthy major-league team and offer the player for a higher price. Rickey found himself in the frustrating position of scouting talent for his richer competitors. He concluded that since the Cardinals were too poor to buy players, they would have to develop their own.

The Houston affiliation was quickly followed by a purchase of stock i;n Fort Smith of the Class C Western Association. In 1920, Syracuse was added, a double-A club in the International League. Gradually, full control of the teams came into the hands of the Cardinals. “Experience had taught us,” Rickey explained, “that a partial share of a minorleague team was unsatisfactory; the solution was to own the minor-league club outright.”

More and more clubs were added. At one point, the Cardinals controlled the supply of players in both the Nebraska State League and the Arkansas-Missouri League.

New York Giant manager John McGraw called it “a pipe dream.” But the farm system began to yield a rich harvest. A mythology emerged as fuzzy-cheeked recruits from tiny hamlets and backwoods villages across America poured into the St. Louis organization.

It was said that a Cardinal scout was once driving down a country lane when a rabbit shot out in front of his car, with a strapping youth in hot pursuit. The lad caught the hare just as it was about to enter the forest on the other side of the road. The astonished scout cried out, “What you doin’ boy?”

“Huntin’ rabbits,” the youth replied.

“Is
that
how you hunt rabbits?” “Is there any other way?”

The scout quickly whipped out a contract and said, “Boy, how’d you like to play for the Cardinals?”

Competing executives were outraged by Rickey’s efforts to corner the market on young talent. Players in the farm system were called “Rickey’s chain gang.” Baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was a staunch supporter of independently owned minor-league teams and opposed Rickey’s revolutionary farm system. He ruled that a major-league team could control only one team in each minor league.

In 1920 Rickey was joined by two men who would be key figures on the St. Louis scene for many years. One was a right-handed pitcher from Clayton, Ohio; the other was an Irishman from New York City’s Greenwich Village.

Jesse Joseph Haines had kicked around in the minor leagues since 1914. Rickey saw Haines pitch just two innings for Kansas City in 1919, but his keen eye for talent told hirp that the twenty-six-year-old Ohioan could star for the Cardinals. Prevailing on a dozen stockholders to sign a bank note for $1o,000, Rickey bought Haines’s contract from Kansas City. Haines was the last player purchased outright during Rickey’s years in St. Louis. He pitched for the Cardinals until 1937, winning a total of 210 games. In 1970, Haines, just one of the many players originally spotted and signed by Rickey, was admitted to the Hall of Fame.

The Irishman was Sam Breadon, a New Yorker who headed west in 1902 seeking riches. A year and a half younger than Rickey, he had made thousands selling automobiles in St. Louis during its World’s Fair year of 1904. As Breadon bought more and more stock in the Cardinals, he became a major force in the organization. In 1920, with Jones’s backing, Breadon was elected president of the Cardinals; Rickey became vice-president.