Rickey and Robinson (8 page)

“His judgment of players was unique, and the best I have ever seen,” notes his former aide Bill DeWitt. “He would break a hitter down by observing his fundamental weaknesses, something he learned from John McGraw and Connie Mack.” On this particular day at the Shawnee tryouts, Rickey was especially interested in observing pitchers. He had them hurl to a batter or two, or sometimes pitch a complete inning. “Pitchers were judged by the velocity and movement of their fastball,” recalls DeWitt. “Mr. Rickey contended any pitcher could be taught other pitches such as the curve, change of pace, or knuckleball.”

That day in Shawnee, a slope-shouldered right-hander came out to the mound and fired in a few fastballs to close out his warm-up pitches. Rickey edged forward in his seat. The right-hander threw with a fluid, cotton-picker’s motion. He threw just nine pitches to the first three batters he faced and struck them all out. The hitters couldn’t get a bat on the ball for a foul tip. Rickey told an assistant to let the pitcher stay in for the next three batters. Again the pitcher threw nine pitches and again recorded three strikeouts. He left the mound like a satisfied cat who had just caught a delicious bird and flashed a big country-boy smile to Rickey up in the stands.

Relaxing in the lobby of the Aldridge Hotel that evening, puffing away on his cigar, full from his huge supper and pleased with the pitching prospects he had seen that day, Rickey was seated in a comfortable chair, leafing through a newspaper. A voice from above interrupted his reading.

“Hello, Branch. How ya doin’?”

Rickey put down his newspaper and looked up into a grinning face. It was the right-hander who had struck out six batters earlier in the day.

‘’I’m sorry,” Rickey said sternly, “I don’t know you.”

“Sure you do, Branch,” he was told. ‘’I’m the pitcher that did so well today. You let me pitch more to strike out more batters.

“My name is Dean,” the young man continued. “Say, when’s you and. me gain’ to St. Louis? I can win the pennant for you, Branch. I can.”

Rickey arose from his chair, a severe look on his face. He stared up into the eyes of the six-foot, two-inch loud young man who had disturbed him. “Mr. Dean,” he said, “I have no idea where or ‘when you’re going. Those in charge will let you know. If you do not mind, I would like to continue to read my newspaper.”

Dean backed away, a smile still across his big face. “Okay, okay, Mr. Rickey,” he said. “Whatever you say is fine with me.” It is reported that was the first and last time Dizzy Dean ever addressed Rickey as “Branch.”

On September 28, 1930, Dizzy Dean arrived to pitch the final game of the season for the St. Louis Cardinals. “Just tell the boys to get me a couple of runs,” he told manager “Gabby” Street. It was an impressive debut. Dean allowed the Pirates just four hits as the Cardinals won 3-1. “I just fogged it through,” Dean told reporters after the game.

Dean’s route through the minors had been swift and full of headaches for Rickey. After the hotel meeting, Dean was optioned to St. Joseph of the Western League. He won seventeen games and was promoted to Houston, where he won eight games, losing only two. He struck out ninety-five batters in eighty-five innings. When he arrived in St. Louis to pitch the last game of the 1930 season, he had already won twenty-five games that season. He had also accumulated a record of debts, fistfights with opponents and teammates, and an attitude that made him start every sentence with “I.”

That winter Rickey arranged for Dean to live with the family of Oliver French, a Cardinal minor-league executive, in Charleston, Missouri. Dean lacked a home of his own and any way of supporting himself until the next season began. He kept himself busy in the French home by tossing coal into the furnace. It became a “coal-baseball game.” Pieces of coal that were pitched into the furnace became strikes. Diz was setting new strikeout records in the cellar, and there were times that winter when the temperature in the French house made it seem as if they were living in the tropics.

Rickey had told the Frenches to advance Dean only small sums of money and to watch who his friends were. Dean soon wearied of the restrictions. Mter a couple of months he demanded a meeting with Rickey.

They met at Rickey’s Country Life Acres in St. Louis. “What a swell place this is,” Diz exclaimed, entering the huge, beautifully furnished living room. “What a pretty far piece to hit a ball!”

Spread over thirty-three acres in the suburbs of St. Louis, Country LifAcres was Rickey’s retreat. It was a showplace that reflected his growing affluence. He lived there with his wife, six children, and all manner of fowl and livestock. There were ducks and geese that frolicked on a small lake, a peacock, ponies, a dozen dogs of various breeds, pigeons, pheasants, and turkeys. A goat named Goat roamed all over the huge Tudor house and the carefully landscaped property. There was an alfalfa field, and a concrete dam that created a pond where the Rickeys fished. The feel was baronial, bustling, and yet bucolic.

The Cardinal vice-president and the teen-aged pitcher met for three hours. Rickey did most of the talking. On the drive back to Charleston, Oliver French asked Dean how the meeting went. “A fine friend you are,” complained Dizzy. “I was scratchin’ aroun’ for ‘bout a hundred an’ fifty dollars . . . an’ all I wound up with was a sex lecture. When Mr. Rickey began to talk about the facts of life, I thought that meant money. That ain’t what it means to him.”

Around Christmas of 1930, Dean suddenly decided that he was in love. The object of his affection was a high school junior, and he was set on marrying her. When Rickey learned about Dean’s plans, he telephoned him, attempting to talk him out of it. .

“I’m very much in favor of ballplayers marrying,” Rickey began, “but I am always deeply concerned that there should be the right kind of marriage. I will give you five hundred dollars to marry, boy, but I mean the right kind of marriage. I definitely do not believe in placing a premium on any old marriage and especially one that will have no chance of succeeding.”

Whether it was the five hundred dollars or Rickey’s persuasive sermon, Dean did not marry that high school girl.

Dizzy’s eccentric behavior and immaturity convinced Rickey that one more year in the minors would give the young pitcher the best chance of succeeding in the majors. Dean returned to Houston for the 1931 season; where he matured as a pitcher, winning twenty-six games, posting a 1.3 earned-run average, and striking out 303 batters in 304 innings.

As Rickey had reckoned, the 1931 Cardinals had enough pitching that year without Dean. They romped to the National League pennant, finishing thirteen games ahead of the New York Giants. Former Cardinal farmhands Paul Derringer and Bill Hallahan combined with Burleigh Grimes, picked up by Rickey in a trade with the Braves, for fifty-four victories. Left fielder Chick Hafey batted .3489 to win the batting title. Jim Bottomley hit .3482 to finish third. (Bill Terry of the Giants finished second at .3486 in the closest batting race of all time.) Ripper Collins played in eighty-nine games and rapped the ball at a .301 pace. But the flash and fire of that Redbird club was Johnny Leonard Roosevelt Martin.

Born on February 29, 1904, in Temple, Oklahoma, Pepper Martin had come up through the Cardinal farm system, playing in Greenville, Fort Smith, Syracuse, and Houston. In 1930, Martin played for Rochester. In the spring of 1931, the twenty-seven-year-old Martin crashed into Rickey’s office. “My lord,” he screamed, “I am fed up. I wasn’t born to sit on anybody’s bench or spend my life in the minors, Mr. Rickey. You either play me or you trade me!” Regular center fielder Taylor Douthit was traded to the Reds; Martin took over and batted .300 in 1931.

Before the first game of the World Series against the Philadelphia Athletics, champions in 1929 and 1930, Rickey appealed to the Cardinal players in the accents of a former football coach. This was the moment for the achievement of all their boyhood dreams, he told them. He pounded away at the theme that all of them had gone hungry and struggled for the moment ahead of them. “This team has desire,” he roared. “We will defeat the Athletics in this World Series!”

Pepper Martin recalled listening to Rickey’s exhortations : “I personally got down on my knees in front of our dugout and kissed the ground. The theme of Mr. Rickey’s speech was ‘the greatest attribute to a winning ballplayer is a desire to win that dominates.’ And I actually prayed to God to help me have the ‘desire to win that dominates.’”

Martin almost single-handedly destroyed the vaunted Athletics, who were led by Lefty Grove, Mickey Cochrane, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and other stars. “The Wild Horse of the Osage” rapped out a dozen hits in five games and stole five bases. His .500 batting average and the verve with which he played made him a national hero—and a symbol of spirited St. Louis Cardinai baseball. Rickey had more like Martin down on the farm: Rochester and Houston had also won pennants in their minor leagues that year.

At the major-league meetings in 1931, Rickey purchased Hack Wilson from the Chicago Cubs. The powerful slugger had batted just .261 and managed only thirteen home runs that past season. The Rickey purchase was just for speculation. A month later, the Master Trader made a nice profit by selling Wilson to the Dodgers for $45,000 plus a minor league outfielder. The other clubs had such respect for Rickey’s judgment that his interest in a ballplayer instantly upgraded that athlete’s value.

Rickey was too smart a baseball man to let personal animosity interfere with his judgment. During the 1932 season, Rogers Hornsby was released as manager of the Cubs. Morale on the club was low, and Hornsby was spending too much time at the racetrack. Despite their shoving match a few years before, Rickey was prepared that winter to sign Hornsby as a pinch hitter. He was sure that the Rajah could help the Cardinals coming off the bench. Commissioner Landis objected. “The demoralizer Hornsby has been in baseball too long,” said the commissioner. “He’s a bad influence.” The country lawyer in Rickey took over. He told Landis that he would draw up a contract that contained a clause banning Hornsby from gambling. “And when he signs it,” Rickey asked Landis, “will you then be able to deny this man the right to earn a living as a baseball player?” Hornsby batted .325 in forty-six games and then was released to allow him to take over as manager of the St. Louis Browns. It was a rare sentimental gesture for Rickey.

The 1932 Cardinals finished in a tie for sixth place, but that dismal season marked the arrival of Joe Medwick and Dizzy Dean. A twenty-year-old brought up from Houston, the New Jersey-born Medwick batted .349 in thirty-six games. He and the rest of the Cardinals that year were overshadowed by the irrepressible Dean, however, who once bragged, “If I had finished the second grade in school, I would have went a year longer than my old man.” Dizzy won eighteen games while pitching more innings and striking out more batters than any other National League hurler.

Cardinal shortstop Charlie Gelbert, just twenty-six years old, suffered a shotgun wound while hunting near the end of 1932. The unfortunate accident created a weakness at shortstop. There was no adequate replacement in the St. Louis farm system, and Rickey spent much of the spring attempting to deal for a proven major-league shortstop. In May of I 933 he was finally able to pry one Leo Ernest Durocher, a twenty-seven-year-old dandy with slicked-back hair, loose from Sid Weil of the Cincinnati Reds.

While Rickey looked forward to adding Durocher to his colorful cast of characters, the feisty shortstop balked at the trade. “I won’t go to that bushy-browed monster who runs a chain gang,” Durocher protested to Weil. “I like it here in Cincinnati.”

Weil prevailed upon Durocher to speak to Rickey. “Make your feelings known, and we’ll see what happens.”

Bursting into Rickey’s hotel room the next day, Durocher found the Cardinal executive wrapped in a bathrobe, a cigar stuck in his mouth. He was nursing a bad cold. Durocher proceeded to deliver a monologue on his thoughts and feelings, and the rumors and gossip he had heard about Rickey and the Cardinal organization. He lit into Rickey for his push-button trades of ballplayers, for the frugality that he had heard was a way of life in St. Louis, for the low salaries dispensed to big stars. Slouched against a pillow, Rickey listened, chewing on the unlit cigar. Finally Rickey sat up. “I have heard many negative things about you, just as you have heard a lot about me,” he said. “I could talk about your flashy clothes, your long string of debts, and the women in your life. But the trade has been made, and it will not be changed. We have a doubleheader this afternoon. I made this trade because I have a firm belief that with you at shortstop we can win a lot of pennants. You can do it for us. You can spark this team. You can help us win pennants. That’s all I care about.”

The combative Durocher was speechless. He had met his match. Rickey had his shortstop.

In 1934, his seventeenth year with the Cardinals, Branch Rickey was at the height of his power and the pride of the city on the banks of the Big Muddy. He lived on a lordly estate. He was constantly asked to run for political office, and he received daily requests to lend his name to social, religious, and civic causes. In the midst of the Great Depression he earned more money than the president of the United States, and was the highest-paid team executive in all of baseball. With the 10 percent commission he received for the sale of players, his annual income was over $75,000. He had total control of virtually everything in the St. Louis organization. He had signed practically all the players on the Cardinal roster; he hired and fired all personnel.

“Mr. Rickey used to have workouts at Sportsman’s Park, and he would sit upstairs and watch those kids,” remembers Stan Lomax, a former New York sportswriter. “Some of them were the darndest-looking people; some didn’t even have spikes. He could see greatness. He could look inside of people. He looked inside a tall, skinny kid with a faded uniform and a pair of sneakers, and he saw Dizzy Dean. That fellow Medwick looked like a baggy-pants comedian on a stage, not like a ballplayer at all, but Mr. Rickey knew what was inside.