Rickey and Robinson

by Harvey Frommer

  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.

  Breadon and Rickey were unlikely partners. Breadon, known as “Singing Sam,” was a boisterous, fun-loving man who loved to sing in barbershop quartets. The Bible-quoting, psalm-singing Rickey couldn’t have been more different, yet they functioned very well together. They were both hard workers, both creative, inventive, and energetic enterpreneurs. Breadon introduced the Sunday doubleheader; Rickey introduced “The Knothole Gang,” providing free tickets to Cardinal games for underprivileged youths, recognizing that today’s youngsters were the paying customers of the future.

  To save money, Breadon moved his club into Sportsman’s Park as tenants of the Browns in 1920. The Cardinals finished in sixth place that year. It was a fairly nondescript team except for the glittering star at second base: Rogers Hornsby. The twenty-four-year-old Texan batted .370 and won the first of his seven batting titles. Charles Stoneham of the Giants offered the Cardinals $300,000 for Hornsby. It was a tempting offer, but Jones, Breadon, and Rickey turned it down.

  The 1921 club had nine .300 hitters and finished the season in third place. Hornsby, grooving into his Hall of Fame batting form, finished the season with a .397 average. Stoneham, more anxious than ever to add the “Rajah” to his Giants, offered $250,000 plus four players for him. Breadon listened and then responded, “Hornsby is not for sale.”

  The next year, the first important product of Rickey’s farm system reached the parent club. Sunny Jim Bottomley came to bat 151 times for the 1922 Cardinals and batted .325. The Cardinals, again led by Hornsby, who topped the magic .400 mark with a .401 average, wound up in a thirdplace tie with the Pirates, eight games behind the Giants, who had insured the pennant with the August purchase of pitcher Hugh McQuillan from the Braves for $100,000. McQuillan won six games down the stretch, and symbolized the history of late-season purchases that made the New Yorkers the powerhouse of the National League.

  Rickey felt that the Cardinals’ chances to beat out the Giants would have been better were it not for the lateseason transaction. He complained to Commissioner Landis. The Judge ruled that no player purchases would be permitted after June 15 except for waiver deals. Rickey was pleased with the decision, which would limit some of the purchasing power of the rich teams like the Giants.

  Breadon was delighted with the two straight third-place finishes, the developing farm system, Landis’s ruling, and the Cardinals’ home attendance of 536,343—then the highest in the club’s history. He offered Rickey a ten-year contract. “Farmer Rickey,” as he was then being called, refused and settled for a five-year pact, preferring not to tie himself down for quite so long a period.

  The 1923 Cardinals dropped to fifth place, and the following year they finished sixth. Hornsby’s fabulous batting skills kept improving; in 1924 he set a modern record with a .424 average. His relationship with Rickey, however, deteriorated. Hornsby disliked Rickey’s cerebral approach. “This ain’t football,” the Rajah would moan. “We don’t need the professor’s blackboard in baseball.” Hornsby spoke vulgarly about Rickey behind his back. They were men cut from different cloth. They came to blows in the clubhouse at the Polo Grounds in New York City late in the 1923 season. Burt Shotton stepped between the moody Texan and an angry Rickey. In September of 1923, Rickey fined Hornsby $500 for missing four Cardinal games without permission.

  Rickey’s family grew and prospered in St. Louis, and he became a well-known figure around town, with his neat bow tie and his omnipresent cigar. There were now five daughters and a son: Mary, Jane, Alice, Sue, Elizabeth, and Branch Jr. B. R., as Rickey was now being called, was earning a good salary, and also reaping a share of the team’s profits. Each player sale added to his earnings, for he received 10 percent of every player deal as long as the Cardinal corporation made a profit. Because of his love for his large family, Rickey was a strong believer in life insurance and invested the first $14,000 of his annual income in premiums. Rickey was also active in community and church life, devoting time to YMCA board work and to Grace Methodist Church, where he was a lay preacher.

  Convivial, gregarious, and outgoing, Rickey kept up old friendships from Ohio Wesleyan and Michigan while he was forming new ones in St. Louis. The Rickeys entertained often. Branch enjoyed company and liked nothing more than to spend an evening swapping tales with old or new friends. Herman Shipps, his old friend from Ohio Wesleyan, visited the Rickey home frequently. “I sat at the table with the five girls, the son, Branch, and Mrs. Rickey,” Shipps recalls. “Branch would raise a question, take one side of it, and then say, ‘Now, do you agree?’ Some of the crowd surely wouldn’t. Then he would conduct a debate until everyone had said what he wanted to. He would summarize, and they would go on to another subject. When he played bridge, his partner had a hard time. He would raise the bid that she made beyond what he thought she could accomplish and then seemed to enjoy seeing her struggle with the problem. It was an interested and an interesting family.”

  As more of “Farmer Rickey’s produce” began to reach the majors, stories about the Cardinal general manager began to circulate around the league. It was reported that Rickey was sitting in the stands with his little black notebook watching several farmhands work out. “Who’s that pitcher?” he asked scout Bennie Borgmann.

  “His name is Hafey, Mr. Rickey. He’s quite a pitching prospect.”

  “From now on he’s an outfielder.” Chick Hafey spent eight years in the Cardinals’ outfield before being traded to Cincinnati. His career batting average was .317, and he
was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1971.

  Herman Shipps was in Cincinnati one winter attending an alumni meeting and talking to high school students. “Branch had a large apartment in one of the hotels,” Shipps recalls, “and took me in to stay with him and we had a good time visiting for three or four days. I remember distinctly coming back one afternoon from work. Going into the room I heard somebody speaking very loudly. There was Branch with his shirt off, with one foot up on a chair, and one of the baseball players—it could have been Tommy Thevenow [the Cardinal shortstop]—was sitting there listening. Branch was telling him why he ought to sign his contract. After hearing that conversation for a short time, I realized why it was that baseball players said, ‘Never get into a hotel room with Branch Rickey if you don’t want to sign a contract!’”

  Rickey peppered his conversation with his pet expressions: “It’s the history of this country that men are what they make themselves. Their education never stops.” “Look for the best in everybody, but don’t allow first impressions to sway you.” “Nine times out of ten a man fashions his own destiny. You get out of life what you put into it.” “Discipline should come from within and be self-imposed. It’s more effective that way.” “Evil is transient.” “It is not the honor that you take with you but the heritage you leave behind.” The moralistic expressions were not just words for Rickey; they were the bedrock of his philosophy of life; they were the windows through which he viewed the world.

  In 1925, with the Cardinals in last place and attendance declining, Breadon discharged Rickey as manager over the Memorial Day weekend and replaced him with Hornsby. Rickey was angry over the loss of his job as manager to his bitter adversary, but Breadon told him, ‘What I’m doing for you is the greatest favor any man ever did for another. One day you’ll see that I’m right.”

  The selection of Hornsby as manager may have been influenced by Breadon’s desire to keep up with the times. There were several player-managers in the major leagues. Rickey’s Michigan State protege, George Sisler, played :first base and managed the Browns. Outfielder Ty Cobb was the Tiger pilot. Bucky Harris played second base and managed the Senators. Shortstop Dave Bancroft was the skipper of the Braves. In Cleveland, outfielder Tris Speaker was the manager, and Eddie Collins was the second basemanmanager of the White Sox.