Kornacki: Rickey of Michigan (Part I)
2/24/2016 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
Feb. 24, 2016
Branch Rickey was inducted posthumously into the College Baseball Hall of Fame in 2009.
By Steve Kornacki
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- The roots to Branch Rickey's humanity and accomplishments aren't often examined in their deepest soil.
However, when you do some digging in that regard, you find that the University of Michigan is at the root of the man. Rickey came to the Law School here and then became the Wolverines' baseball coach in 1910, while still enrolled as a student, and those two experiences helped shape a history maker.
Rickey signed, cultivated and revealed the talent that was Jackie Robinson, the first African-American baseball player to break the color barrier in the major leagues by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
Roger Kahn wrote in "Rickey & Robinson: The True, Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball," published in 2014: "I used to say, no Jackie Robinson, no Martin Luther King (Jr.).' I expand that statement today. Without the foresight and high moral purpose of Branch Rickey, and without the radiant courage of Jackie Robinson, Barack Obama could not have been elected President of the United States."
Two aspects of the Rickey-Robinson story are often overlooked.
First, the integration of baseball was only the beginning of Rickey's involvement in the U.S. civil rights movement.
Second, their friendship continued and grew long after both men retired from the game.
"I realized how much our relationship had deepened after I left baseball," Robinson is quoted as saying in the Baseball Hall of Fame biography of Rickey. "Branch, especially after I was no longer in the sports spotlight, treated me like a son."
Rickey's Pledge
Rickey's drive to integrate the game was tied to both his Christian values and shrewdness as a businessman looking for an edge. It was connected to his Methodist upbringing and the experience of having a baseball player he coached at Ohio Wesleyan, catcher Charles Thomas, denied a room where the team was staying in South Bend, Indiana.
His grandson, who knows his grandfather's stories by heart, provided an example of just how devout and committed his grandfather, who never said anything stronger than "Judas Priest!" and supported prohibition, was in life.
"It was a pledge he gave in order to win the support of his father and mother," said Branch Barrett Rickey, noting that his grandfather was demoted to a minor league team because he refused to play on Sundays. "And he kept his pledge. His mother died and his father died (by the 1940s) but he never relented and didn't ever enter a ballpark on Sundays. He kept his pledge to two people who were dead. I think, arguably, he had no further commitment. But he had a pledge that he wasn't going to violate.
"So, when you come to the question, 'Who was he?' doesn't that scream out at you?"
The way he reacted to Thomas over the years, eventually leading to the Robinson decision, also spoke loud volumes as to who Branch Rickey was.
"Thomas, in subsequent years, became a dentist in Albuquerque (New Mexico)," Rickey said. "And when he would come through St. Louis, he'd call up my grandfather. But my grandfather couldn't take him into the (ballpark) grandstand or his private box because he was an African-American and was required to sit in the bleachers.
"When Thomas was refused his own room with the college team, my grandfather arranged for him to share a cot in his own room. My grandfather didn't retell many stories, but the Charles Thomas story was one I heard him tell several times. Tears were coming down Charles Thomas' face as he waited to see if they would give him a room, and he told my grandfather, 'If I could only rub this color off, I'd be as good as any other man.' When he told that story, he would look you in the eye to see if he'd made an impression.
"And all these years later, (grandfather) couldn't sit with him in the stadium in St. Louis. So, they sat in his office and talked during the game."
Years later, Jackie Robinson went where Charles Thomas could not, and wasn't left to question his color.
Rickey saw to that, and he was nicknamed "The Great Mahatma" by sports writer Tom Meany in honor of Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, the Indian leader whose spirituality and belief in justice inspired many.
"Rickey was a throwback, even in his time," said Michigan Professor of Law Richard Friedman, who has written and given speeches about Rickey. "He was old-fashioned and yet achieved this great, progressive transformation."
Rickey's influence on the Civil Rights Act, passed in 1964, went beyond baseball because of an offer extended him by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
"He was invited to be on Eisenhower's very first civil rights commission," said Rickey, "and was on a committee with various politicians and others that totally impacted civil rights in the United States."
The Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
"My grandfather couldn't do what he wanted in St. Louis, where he couldn't get Charles Thomas into where he sat for games," said Rickey. "But when he got to New York, he immediately put value on doing something about."
Rickey's Career
Rickey worked for the St. Louis Browns, for whom he was once a catcher during his brief major league career, from 1905 to 1907, that included one season with the New York Yankees. He served the Browns as a scout, club secretary, team manager, player-manager (1914), vice president and general manager.
Following a brief hitch as a major in the Chemical Warfare Service, Rickey returned as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals before becoming their general manager from 1925 to 1942, during which time they won six pennants and the World Series four times. The Cardinals won absolutely nothing in the first 25 years of their existence before Rickey arrived to run them.
Still, Rickey wasn't perfect, his grandson allowed. He went to evaluate a pair of catchers, best friends, from "The Hill," a section of St. Louis widely populated by Italian-Americans. They lived across the street from one another on Elizabeth Avenue.
"He worked them out and offered one a contract and didn't off the other a contract," said Rickey. "He signed Joe Garagiola (in 1942), and the player he didn't sign was Yogi Berra."
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-- Jackie Robinson at the time of Branch Rickey's death in 1965.
Garagiola went on to become a Hall of Fame announcer, but was a run-of-the-mill catcher. Berra, of course, ended up in the Hall of Fame as a player after leading the Yankees to prominence over three different decades by winning the World Series 10 times.
Rickey moved from St. Louis to Brooklyn after the 1942 season and served the Dodgers as president and general manager until 1950, setting them up for a huge run of success and beginning intense scouting of Negro Leagues players. One of the scouts who helped pinpoint Robinson as the man both capable and worthy of integrating baseball was George Sisler, who played for Rickey at Michigan and went onto become a Hall of Fame slugger for the Browns.
Rickey's grandson said: "One of the very first things he did when he got to Brooklyn was go the owner and say, 'I've got an ambition, and the only way we can bring this club up quickly is to find extra talent.' He realized there was another talent pool to tap. After he got clearance from the ownership to do this, he went to Red Barber."
Barber, the legendary radio voice of the Dodgers, was someone Rickey highly respected.
"Red is from the deep South," said Rickey. "(Grandfather) told him, 'I am bringing an American Negro to play for the Dodgers and I don't want to put you in a compromising position. This is going to happen in two or three years and I wanted to give you the opportunity to find other employment.' "
One week later, Barber, who was told of the plan to integrate baseball under strict confidence, said he was fine with it.
Rickey said, "Red Barber could partner with Branch Rickey in promoting a concept of fairness and the treatment of this experiment. To this day, I'm apologetic for my grandfather using the term 'great experiment,' which was acceptable in those days. But it was a total commitment from them to make this successful.
"And Red Barber set a tone. He had a strong following, and for all those hundreds of thousands of people who never even came to a ballpark, he broadcast what was going on to them."
Television was in its infancy, and baseball was king.
"At that time, baseball was the only team sport that really mattered." said Friedman. "It had a much larger hold on the public imagination than baseball does now or than any sport has now.
"So, the integration of baseball was a social development of enormous resonance. And it's important to note that it came a year before the integration of the Armed Forces by President (Harry) Truman. Baseball came first. Would Truman have done that without Robinson? I don't know, but it had to make it a little easier."
Friedman also pointed out that Brown v. Board of Education, which declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional in a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1954, was helped by Robinson's history-making career.
Robinson, in a 1961 "Reader's Digest" article, recalled how Rickey prepared him for success by preparing him for bigots:
"The hand holding mine was hard, gnarled, with the often broken fingers of an ex-baseball catcher. His hair was thick, deep brown. Heavy, bushy eyebrows flapped like twin crows from side to side as he talked.
"He was taking off his coat, rolling up his sleeves. His mobile face had suddenly taken on a droll, cunning look."
And Rickey began: "Let's say I'm a hotel clerk. You come in with the rest of your team. I look up from the register and snarl, 'We don't let n------ sleep here.' What do you do then?"
Robinson continued: "Again, before I could answer, the smudgy cigar shot toward my chin, and he was an umpire waving his huge fist too close under my nose, banishing me from the game. As a race-baiting fan he hurled pop bottles and insults. When the performance was over his shirt was soggy with sweat, his hair matted.
"His curtain line explained everything. It was the most dramatic I have ever heard, before or since:
" 'Jackie, this talk of organizing a Negro team in Brooklyn was only a cover-up for my real plans. I want you to be the first Negro player in the major leagues. I've been trying to give you some kind of idea of the kind of punishment you'll have to absorb. Can you take it?' "
Rickey sent him to Montreal in the Triple-A International League in 1946 before calling up Robinson from the minors, feeling secure that Robinson could ignore the abuse and play through.
Robinson was named the National League Rookie of the Year in 1947, National League MVP in 1949, batted .311 for his career, and made six All-Star teams in his 10 seasons. The Dodgers won six pennants and the 1955 World Series with him at the center of a classic team.
And the "great experiment" ended up in Cooperstown.
"I don't know of many photos that show grandfather with a glowing demeanor more so than when he attended Jackie Robinson's induction (in 1962)," said Rickey. "Jackie was only allowed to invite two couples, and Jackie invited his mother, my grandfather and his wife.
"His face in those photos is just lighted up. He's as proud as a father."
Robinson, at the time of Rickey's death, said, "The passing of Mr. Rickey is like losing a father."
Rickey's Contributions
His grandson has given more than a hundred speeches on his grandfather's relationship with Robinson, who became a Hall of Fame player, and cherishes the one given at Ohio Wesleyan together with Robinson's only daughter, Sharon.
Harrison Ford was chosen to portray Branch Rickey in the 2013 film, "42," about Robinson, which is titled for the number he wore on his uniform that has since been retired by Major League Baseball. Rickey's grandson said Robert Redford, whom he met with at length, was set to play his grandfather in another movie project that never reached production.
So, the greatest leading men in Hollywood were lined up to play Rickey, arguably the greatest leader in baseball history.
The trail to great accomplishment began at Michigan, which now has the Branch Rickey Collegiate Professor of Law. Dean Evan Caminker, who secured its endowment, fills that honorary chair.
"I shared a presentation with Evan Caminker at Cooperstown," said Rickey. "It was about the Negro Leagues and given during an induction time. That was where I learned two things. The first was when my grandfather went to Michigan and he needed money to support his wife. And when he graduated from Ohio Wesleyan, he'd already served as its athletic director. He was a prodigy.
"When he enrolled at Michigan, he'd already played in the majors and coached baseball at Wesleyan. And so he wanted to apply to Michigan to be its baseball coach. The dean of the law school waved him off and said, 'I'm not going to let you do it. You can't keep up your grades and fulfill your obligations. I won't let them hire you.' So, grandfather started a letter-writing campaign. Finally, the dean called him in and relented, saying, 'One thing you have to do is call them off!' And he pulled off the best winning percentage they'd had at the school while graduating from law school. That told me more about the drive that my grandfather had."
Rickey followed in his grandfather's footsteps, getting a degree at Ohio Wesleyan before working for many of the same National League teams his grandfather did.
"I really got my feet wet in scouting in evaluation and player development," said Rickey, now president of the Pacific Coast League comprised of Triple-A minor league teams. "So, having spent many of my earliest professional years around baseball, there is a connection between the generations. And certainly he had a significant effect on my interest in evaluating athletes. He was considered in that era as pre-imminent in that area."
Legendary Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray wrote of Rickey: "He could recognize a great player from the window of a moving train."
There is a wonderful black and white, three-generation photo taken in 1954 at Fort Myers, Florida during spring training with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Wesley Branch Rickey, then general manager of the Pirates, has son Branch Rickey, Jr., to his left and grandson Branch Barrett Rickey in front of him.
Left: Young Branch Barrett Rickey (in baseball jacket) with his grandfather, Branch Rickey, and father, Branch Rickey Jr., at Terry Park (training site of the Pittsburgh Pirates) in Ft. Myers, Florida, in 1954. // Right: Branch Barrett Rickey (right) with Sharon Robinson, the only daughter of Jackie Robinson, during a speech they delivered together at Ohio Wesleyan, alma mater of Branch and his grandfather, Branch Rickey, who brought Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers to break baseball's color barrier.(Photos courtesy of the Rickey family)
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The grandson often is referred to as Branch Rickey III, but that is not technically the case.
"He signed his name, 'W. Branch Rickey,' " said his grandson, noting that his grandfather went by his middle name because there were numerous Wesleys where he grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio. "His mother took it from the Bible: 'I am the vine and ye are my branches.' It wasn't Nebuchadnezzar, Jacob or Ezekiel. It was Branch!' "
Rickey roared with laughter over that thought. He added that his grandfather, like many of his friends, was named for John Wesley, the founder of Methodism.
"To show what a country bumpkin he was," continued Rickey, "he named his son Branch Rickey Jr. My father was more sophisticated than that and knew he couldn't name me the 'third' anything. But I get labeled 'Branch III,' and it's hard to introduce me.
"My middle name is after the first fully-salaried scout in baseball, Charley Barrett, and he was a dear friend of my grandfather. My father named me Branch Barrett Rickey, and I've always signed my name, 'Branch B. Rickey.' How do I want to be referred to? I guess I don't care.
"Growing up, we had two Branches in the family and so I went by Barry. When I was a senior in high school and going away to college, my grandfather said, 'I'd like when you go away to college that you could make a clean break with the name Barry. And I'd like you to take my name, which is your first name and start calling yourself 'Branch.' I immediately said, 'Yes!' He couldn't have shown any greater pride in me."
He learned how to play chess from his grandfather, and how to play the chess game of life, too.
Rickey said, "If you were going to try to out-maneuver him, he had a strategy inside a strategy and a strategy around that and inside of that. He was just tremendously stimulating to be around -- especially when it came to trying to match wits with him or his storytelling. He was a wonderfully endearing storyteller."
The grandson "lived across a pasture" from the grandfather outside of Pittsburgh in Fox Chapel, and noted that his mother believed he spent more time at Grandpa's house than their own home.
He has resisted reading several books about his grandfather because he didn't want to confuse the stories told him with those he read, and "didn't want to distill in any way" his memories "of my loving grandfather."
Grandfather moved back to St. Louis about the time his grandson went to college, and died on Dec. 9, 1965, less than one month after suffering a heart attack the night he was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.
Rickey was inducted posthumously into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York in 1967, and his plaque reads: "Founder of farm system which he developed for St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers. Copied by all other major league teams. Served as executive for Browns, Cardinals, Dodges and Pirates. Brought Jackie Robinson to Brooklyn in 1947."
The grandson wasn't there for his grandfather's induction based on a principle he was taught by him.
"He despised the system that would prevent a person from being honored during his lifetime," said Rickey. "But he knew he was going to have a place in history and he did not need (the Hall of Fame) for that. But he took it personally that he had friends who went to their death before they were allowed to be inducted."
Wesley Branch Rickey did, however, provide a glimpse of what he might have said behind a lectern at Cooperstown in an interview his grandson recalled him giving once his career concluded in Pittsburgh.
"He was asked what he thought he'd best be remembered for," said Rickey. "And I saw a look in his face that has stayed with me. He said, 'I think for the Robinson signing.' And he took on kind of a wistful look. And it no way diminished the role he played with Jackie and the relationship he had with him, but when you look at the slice of his life that was with Jackie it was a narrow piece of his life.
"But his intensity for decades and decades and decades was to try to forge dynasties -- not social reform or any kind of sparking public moment. But he proved he could put together an organization from stem to stern that was so well prepared that it would produce talent and could be self-sustaining. And then there was his passion for education, and having people training and instructing his players, using modern techniques such as the pitching machine and batting cages, the things he stumbled into inventing because he needed them."
He also was instrumental in the introduction of batting helmets in baseball, but it was the players he developed and teams he formed that were his greatest legacy.
Rickey's grandson made note of the connection between the great "Gashouse Gang" Cardinals team featuring brothers Dizzy and Daffy Dean, playing manager Frankie Frisch, Joe "Ducky" Medwick and Pepper Martin. They beat the Detroit Tigers in seven games of an exciting and controversial World Series in 1934, and were the first example of all of Rickey's ingenuity and drive paying off. He also developed future Cardinals Hall of Famers Enos "Country" Slaughter and Stan "The Man" Musial.
"He was always looking for an edge, one more way to step ahead," Rickey said of his grandfather. "In every market he stepped into with a team, he believed he was operating at an economic disadvantage. And that was true in St. Louis, where he had so little in terms of resources to draw from. That was even truer in Pittsburgh. It was even true with the Dodgers. There were still many teams better financed than them.
"But the minor league systems he started, the scouting, the use of stopwatches to time players in the 60-yard dash, which had never been done. He used everything he could think of or dream up to produce an on-going system that could win and win again."
The Cardinals won six National League pennants and four World Series in his 18 seasons with them. They won three more pennants and two more world championships in the four years after Rickey departed for Brooklyn, still reaping the rewards of the system he created. Then, from 1947-63, the Cards didn't win anything.
He came to the Dodgers for 1943, and got them to the World Series in 1947 (Robinson's first season) and 1949, his last season in Brooklyn. The Dodgers went onto win four of the next five pennants, dominating the 1950s, and winning it all in 1955 with the "Boys of Summer" chronicled in Kahn's best-selling book.
The Pittsburgh Pirates never finished higher than seventh place with Rickey in charge from 1950-55. But he stayed on as team chairman until 1959, and the Pirates and won the World Series in 1960 with two future Hall of Famers, right fielder Roberto Clemente and second baseman Bill Mazeroski, and two other stars, shortstop Dick Groat and first baseman Dick Stuart, who were signed or acquired by Rickey.
Clemente, who became the first Latin American star and had great defensive flair in addition to a live bat that produced 3,000 hits, was obtained by Rickey from his former organization in Brooklyn in the Rule 5 draft of players left of the 40-man rosters of their respective teams. Getting Clemente was as big, if not bigger, than signing Robinson in terms of production received.
"So, when he asked what he'd best be remembered for, it almost hurt him," said Rickey. "He realized that all the things he'd worked on for years and years were really secondary. And so I remember that look in his face. Where he made his mark was taking a below-average player, and turning him out to be a better-than-average player. He so thoroughly understood and was ahead in the science and physics of the game.
"I try to imagine where he would be today, if this is where everybody else is. Where would he be?"
Friedman said Rickey helped baseball move into the future even with a failed venture that was one of his last projects.
"Near the end of his life," said Friedman, "he was pushing for the Continental League, which didn't come off. But it spurred expansion throughout the major leagues. It moved the business of baseball ahead into the late 20th Century. Up until then, there were only 16 teams. That made it a more nation-wide game.
Today, there are 30 Major League teams.
"It's said that Rickey transformed baseball three different times," added Friedman. "First, with the development of a farm system in St. Louis, and then with the integration of baseball, and then, finally, his push for what turned into expansion."
His desire to better himself ended up bringing betterment to both the game of baseball and society. The Branch Rickey Award is presented annually by the Rotary Club of Denver to a Major League Baseball player in recognition of exceptional community service and humanitarian actions.
"There was a constant drive that Branch had to improve," said Friedman. "From the beginning to the end, he was never complacent. He was always trying hard. He was never willing to rest on his laurels."
Upon his passing, those laurels rolled through the minds of baseball's leaders as they paid their respects.
Outgoing baseball commissioner Ford Frick said Rickey "was a man of great dedication and one whose contribution to baseball would be difficult to over-estimate."
National League president Warren C. Giles said, "No one in the game made a greater contribution to baseball than Branch Rickey."
Still, his contributions went far beyond the game. Wesley Branch Rickey was as much about the betterment of people and society as he was baseball. He changed everything from the way players were evaluated to the way individuals were: by the content of their character.
Thursday (March 25) on MGoBlue.com: Read "Rickey of Michigan (Part II)," a detailed look at Rickey's years in Ann Arbor as a student and coach, including the insights of New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon, a Michigan graduate and benefactor who knew both Rickey and Robinson.
