Branch Rickey was a baseball genius
Genius doesn’t require being right all the time about all things. It does require a run of brilliance on a fairly consistent basis as well as one or two big achievements.
To take a random example, Winston Churchill was a genius. He was flat-out wrong about the future of the British empire in the post-war world, but he was a brilliant writer, historian, and essayist from first to last; and he got Hitler exactly right. His leadership of Great Britain during the war years was indispensable to the victorious Allies, including the United States.
Genius is hardly confined to statecraft or the sciences or literature. Genius may also be found in … baseball.
Today the Pirates swing for the fences in earnest. Baseball is back, spring, summer and fall stretch ahead, and no one can predict with accuracy how things will turn out for the Bucs: each day of the season is liable to bring new and at times heartbreaking surprises.
As for a genius in baseball (as opposed to a baseball genius), we have Branch Rickey, general manager of the Buccos in the early 1950s.
Rickey is known for one large thing: the integration of baseball in 1947 as general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. He’s the guy who engineered Jackie Robinson’s “breaking of the colored line,” a seminal event in American history and in the history of race relations in this country.
Perhaps the most ignoble thing Rickey is known for is dealing Pirates slugger Ralph Kiner to the Cubs in the midst of the 1953 season.
“(Rickey) was impossible,” the Hall of Famer told an interviewer years late. “He was a hypocrite. He would use any means to sign a ballplayer for as little as he could get him. He was a mastermind, a brilliant man, but certainly no friend to the ballplayer.”
Chuck Connors, the actor and before that first baseman for the Hollywood Stars, a Pirate affiliate, had a slightly different take. “There are two things Mr. Rickey loves,” he said. “One is players. The other is money. But for some reason he never lets the two get together.”
Kiner, who led the National League in homers seven consecutive seasons, made $90,000 a year playing for the Pirates, a kingly piece of change for the early 1950s. Some players got by on four or five thousand a year.
Roger Kahn writes that Rickey “had a Puritan distaste for money in someone else’s hands.”
In those days the Pirates were dreadful, among the worst teams ever to take a major league field. The 1952 Bucs lost 112 games, finishing 54 1/2 games out of first place. They lost more away games than the league-leading Dodgers lost home or away the entire season.
Quizzed as to the Pirates dismal performance, Rickey said, “We are last on merit.”
When he took over the Pirates in 1950, Rickey predicted a turn-around by 1955. The Pirates were still bad by 1956, though they occupied first place for a while in June of that year, on the strength of an 8-game home run streak by journeyman Dale Long.
By then Rickey was nearing the end of his active run with the Pirates. Joe L. Brown took over as general manager.
Rickey deserves a lot of credit for the 1960 World Series-winning team. He signed or otherwise acquired Vernon Law, Dick Groat, Bill Mazeroski, Bob Friend, Bob Skinner, and Roy Face, all key players. And he picked up Roberto Clemente from the Dodgers, in what is probably the greatest steal in Pirates history.
Rickey advised Groat, an All-American basketball player at Duke, to forego a career in the NBA: concentrate on baseball and make some real money, he said.
Face had immense respect for the man he and all the other players called “Mr. Rickey.” After getting married, practically the first thing the bride and groom did was to visit the general manager in his Forbes Field office. Rickey urged all his players to marry and settle down.
Bob Friend admired the guy. “He was such a great public speaker. I thought we could learn something from him.”
As general manager of the Cardinals in the 1930s, Rickey created baseball’s farm system. With the Pirates, he pioneered air travel, a fall league for younger players and the batting helmet. He insisted Pirate players wear one not only at bat but in the field. It didn’t hurt that he had an ownership share in the helmet-maker.
In Brooklyn, he hired statistician Allan Roth to gauge his team’s and other team’s performances. It only took 70 years for the rest of baseball to catch up.
He had a real genius for the pithy quote. “A great ballplayer is a player who will take a chance.” “Never surrender opportunity for security.”
“Cobb lived off the field as though he wished to live forever. He lived on the field as though it was his last day.”
“Man may penetrate the outer reaches of the universe, he may solve the very secret of eternity, but for me, the ultimate human experience is to witness the flawless execution of a hit-and-run.”
“Work is the zest of life; there is joy in its pursuit.”
“Luck is the residue of design.”
His legacy is always with Robinson’s. Rickey died at age 83 in 1965. Earlier, he apologized that because of illness he was unable to join Robinson on a civil rights march.
Jackie wrote back that his old benefactor should take care of himself. “We feel so close to you and I’m sure you know our love and admiration are sincere. Please take care of yourself. We know where your heart is. We will take care of the Selma, Alabamas and do the job.”
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books -“Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.