Rickey and Robinson (9 page)

“He’d sit there in his paternal way using his cigar like a wand. ‘We’ll send this fellow to Cedar Rapids—we need a shortstop there. That fellow should go to Class D ball and be an outfielder.’ Mr. Rickey had more players under his command than any other man in history.”

The 1934 Cardinals, with Pepper Martin, Leo Durocher, Ripper Collins, Joe Medwick, Bill DeLancey, Ernie Orsatti, and Dizzy Dean and his brother Paul, were called the “Gashouse Gang”—a bunch of rubes who wore dirty uniforms and fought with each other and their opponents. But Rickey called them “a team of desire.” Proud of these prime products of his farm system, he loved his collection of hungry ballplayers, even though some of them presented him with real problems.

Dizzy’s younger brother, Paul, had cost Rickey more money than he was willing to spend. Rickey had a formula for signing young athletes: “Players of like age and like experience receive like compensation.” Rickey had eleven players he wished to sign and was prepared to give each of them $450. But one of them was Paul Dean, and Dizzy insisted that his brother get $600 or there would be no signing. Mter offer and counteroffer, Rickey finally acceded to Dizzy’s request. He signed Paul for $600, but then felt obliged to give each of the other ten players the same amount. Dizzy’s demand cost Rickey $1,650.

The Gashouse Gang was a wild crew. Joe Medwick swung his big bat at pitched balls and sometimes at teammates. He was called the “Hungarian Rhapsody,” a reference to his Hungarian background. Pepper Martin’s play on the field was characterized by head-first slides. Off the field, he loved to ride fire engines. A midget-auto racer, he pushed the car that his partner raced and sometimes showed up for games too tired to perform with his usual drive.

Frankie Frisch played second base and presided over this colorful collection. He had replaced Gabby Street on July 24, 1933, as Cardinal manager. “Gabby just kinda lost control of the team,” recalled Pop Haines.

The Cardinals won the pennant and defeated the Detroit Tigers in the 1934 World Series. Through that tumultuous season, Rickey had to be a psychologist, lawyer, and marriage counselor to his troops. The Deans, who won fortynine games between them that year, staged a two-man strike at one point, refusing to pitch in a midseason exhibition game scheduled by Breadon. Rickey suspended them.. Frisch wanted the suspension lifted. Rickey argued that if the suspension were lifted, he would resign. Dizzy persuaded Commissioner Landis to hold a hearing, where Ric;key prevailed. The Deans returned to action, and agreed they would pitch whenever Rickey told them to.

Durocher was smitten by the attractive dress designer Grace Dozier. Through most of the season, his mind was more on her than on baseball. Rickey telephoned her and suggested that for the good of all three of them she should marry Leo. The couple were wed on the morning of September 26, and Leo played inspired baseball down the stretch run of the I 934 season.

The Dean brothers, Ripper Collins, Pepper Martin, Joe Medwick, Frankie Frisch, Leo . Durocher, and the other rambunctious Redbirds had no fear of the powerful Detroit Tigers in the Series. Diz trimmed the Tigers 8-3 in the first game. Paul Dean won the third game, 4-1. But Detroit proved tougher than the Cardinals had thought, and the Series moved to game six with the Tigers leading three games to two. Durocher’s three hits and Paul Dean’s pitching gave the Cardinals a 4-3 victory.

In the decisive seventh game in Detroit, the Cardinals poured it on. With Dizzy Dean on the mound, they led g-o after six innings. Joe Medwick’s kicking, sliding triple in the sixth—his eleventh hit of the Series—added insult to injury. When he trotted out to left field in the bottom of the sixth, irate fans showered him with pop bottles, hard-boiled eggs, and anything else they could. throw. Judge Landis ordered Medwick removed from the game to protect him from physical harm. The Cardinals won the game, 11-0, and with it the World Championship.

Stan Lomax remembers Rickey’s amazing ability to judge young players and to tell when older ones were slipping. “Mr. Rickey was some character, some judge of human nature. He used to say, ‘Never trust a guy with a bad ankle, knee, or arm. The day you need him, something will go wrong.’ Mr. Rickey could look at a player and know in an instant if that player was a half-step slower, if he couldn’t come in for a fly ball the way he used to, if he couldn’t pull to his power the way he did a year before.”

In May 1935, Rickey’s mother died of a stroke. Rickey felt the loss deeply. He came from a tightly knit family whose members supported and sustained each other, and his mother had been a major influence on him. His own children were growing up, however, and a month after his mother’s death his son, Branch Jr., and his oldest daughter, Mary, graduated from Ohio Wesleyan. The relationsl;tip between Branch and Branch Jr. was especially close. Branch Jr. was his father’s confidant. Dubbed “The Twig,” he was an extension of Branch Sr., attending the prep schools of his father’s choosing, Ohio Wesleyan, and later the University of Michigan Law School.

Unlike the tender relationship between Rickey and his son, the relationship between Rickey and the eccentric Dizzy Dean was often tense. “Judas Priest,” Rickey once declared, “if there were another player like Dizzy Dean in baseball, as God is my judge, I would most certainly get out of this game.”

When Dean first signed with the Cardinals, he was paid by check. The trouble was, Dizzy kept writing checks even when he had no money to cover them. Through club secretary Clarence Lloyd, Dean was put on an allowance. He was given a dollar bill at the start of each day. It was generally spent by 11:00 A.M. “You could never say ol’ Branch was free with a dollar,” remarked Dean, “but he did get me to save some money.”

In 1935, Dean posted a 28-12 record. He received a salary of $17,500 plus a $1,000 bonus. He also received $15,000 from General Foods for his comic-strip endorsement of a breakfast cereal. Rickey had arranged the deal through Clarence Eldridge, advertising director of General Foods and a classmate of Rickey’s at Michigan Law School.

In the spring of 1936, pointing to his league-leading 28 victories and 324 innings pitched, Dean complained to the press that he was underpaid. “That man Rickey can talk longer and say less than any man in the game,” Dean moaned. “But he’s a skinflint when it comes to payin’ up.”

Upset by Dean’s comments, Rickey sent him a long letter:

If you are agreed that my position is a correct one, then you should write me an unqualified letter of assurance that you will be found this coming season with your shoulder to the wheel . . . with the eagerness of a soldier in the ranks . . . and strive for the common cause . . . pitching your head off when called upon. . . .

For my part, I do not wish to discuss the terms of your contract until we have had a much better understanding about your intentions and purpose this coming year on the Cardinals. . . . If we do not come to an understanding . . . then I prefer not to handle the negotiations of your contract at all. Someone else can do it.

If we do come to an understanding, itis my opinion that you and I would not have any great difficulty in arriving at satisfactory terms for your contract.

With all good wishes to you and Mrs. Dean, I am

Very truly yours,

Branch Rickey

Vice-President

It took some time for Dean to get the letter translated, but when he finally understood its contents, he responded, “My shoulder is lopsided on one side. What does Mr. Rickey want me to do, play the outfield and lead the boys’ band?”

Releasing Rickey’s letter to the press, Dean circulated the letter he had written in reply:

If you really feel that way, why wouldn’t it be best for you to sell or trade me? . . . You have been too good a friend to me, at least in the early days of my professional career, for me to want to get into any row with you. . . . As matters now stand, I ought to bring a fairly good price if you would offer me for sale or trade; and I could undoubtedly get hooked up with a club that would at least feel that I was not preventing it from winning the pennant.

A compromise finally settled the dispute. Dean signed a “loyalty pledge” that bound him to obey orders. In return, he received $27,500 for the 1936 season and, with Rickey’s influence, the lucrative cereal-promotion contract was renewed.

Through all those years in St. Louis, Rickey was offered

attractive contracts with other teams who wanted him to work his magic in their organizations. He tempered his refusals by recommending his proteges. Larry MacPhail had the distinction of being recommended twice. Rickey recommended MacPhail to the Cincinnati Reds in 1934. The redhead literally lit up Crosley Field. The first night game in major-league history was played in Cincinnati on May 24, 1935, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressing a remote-control switch to illuminate the field. Farsighted but short-fused, MacPhail had a few shoving matches with Cincinnati owner Powell Crosley, and on January 19, 1938—again on Rickey’s recommendation—moved on to take over as general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Warren Giles, another friend of Rickey’s and president of the Rochester Red Wings, replaced MacPhail in Cincinnati.

Giles, who would go on to become National League president, was let out of a five-year contract to assume the position at Cincinnati. “You must think of your future,” Rickey told him, “not mine.”

On December 21, 1936, the future caught up with the boy they once called Week. Rickey’s daughter Mary was married a day after his fifty-fifth birthday. The proud father took the first of his five trips doWn the aisle with one of his daughters.

In 1938, Enos Slaughter moved up to the Cardinals. In 1937, at twenty-one, Slaughter had won the batting championship while on the Columbus farm team. Johnny Rizzo, twenty-five and a veteran of seven .300-plus minor-league seasons, was a teammate. He batted .358, third in the league. Pirate president William Benswanger was interested in acquiring some Cardinal farmhands. Rickey challenged him. “I’ll name two players, and I’ll bet you pick the wrong one for fifty thousand dollars.” Benswanger selected Rizzo. Rickey knew he would be the pick, because the Pirates were already well staffed with left-handed hitters, and Rizzo batted right-handed. Rizzo spent five years in the majors, with a .270 batting average. Slaughter hit .300 in his nineteen-year career.

The outspoken Slaughter remembers that “Mr. Rickey had more knowledge of baseball than anyone else, but when you talked money to him you could get none of it. I played for a hundred dollars a month in Class B. In 1937, at Columbus, I was the Most Valuable Player and hit three eightytwo and made only one hundred fifty dollars. At the end of the season I asked Mr. Rickey for a little bonus and he snapped my head off, saying the old fellows had been talking to me. I didn’t get any bonus. I came to the Cardinals in 1938 and they only gave me four hundred dollars a month. And in 1939 I hit three twenty and led the National League in doubles and made seven hundred and fifty dollars a month. So Mr. Rickey knew his ballplayers, but when you wanted money he was in a different country.”

Dizzy Dean was twenty-seven years old in I 938. In the All-Star game the season before, a line drive off the bat of Earl Averill had caromed off Dean’s right foot. It was later discovered that Diz’s toe was broken. He came back fast, returning during that 1937 season, but he was not the pitcher he had been. The pain in his foot caused him to adjust his delivery; his fluid cotton-picking pitching motion was gone. He finished the year with a 13-10 record.

Chicago Cubs owner Phil Wrigley was told by his aides that one more solid pitcher would give his team the· I 938 pennant. Wrigley coveted Dean. Rickey told Wrigley that Dean’s arm was “almost dead,” but still he would not take less than $185,000 for him. The deal was made. The Cardinals received the money plus an outfielder and two pitchers. One of the pitchers was Curt Davis, also a sore-armed hurler in 1937. He won twenty-two games for the Cardinals in 1939.

In March 1938, Commissioner Landis issued a ruling that stunned Rickey and the Cardinal organization. Landis ruled that St. Louis had working agreements with one team and secret understandings or “wash sales” with others, in violation of the baseball law limiting each parent club to one team in each minor league. Teams cited by Landis included Springfield, Sacramento, and Cedar Rapids; specifically, Landis contended that Rickey had an unwritten agreement With the owner of the Cedar Rapids team to get first call for that team’s players. Under the terms of Landis’s decision some one hundred Cardinal farmhands were declared free agents.

The Landis decision—“the day they freed the slaves” in Stan Lomax’s words—shocked the baseball world and stripped the Cardinals of many of their prize prospects. It also caused a rift between Breadon and Rickey that never fully healed. The frugal Breadon had been hurt financially and also suffered a loss of confidence in Rickey. In addition, it brought into clear focus the hostility between Rickey and Landis. “Landis had a real hatred of Mr. Rickey,” notes Stan Lomax. “Mr. Rickey was too smart for him. He should have been baseball commissioner.”

One of the players freed by Landis was Harold Pete Reiser. Rickey told intimates that Reiser had the potential to become one of the greatest players in baseball history, and he persuaded his former executive, Larry MacPhail, now the Dodger president, to sign him. The promising youngster was told to sign on whatever terms the Dodgers offered. Rickey wanted the Dodgers to hide Reiser in the low minors until 1940, at which time he would arrange a trade to bring the youth back to St. Louis.

There was no way MacPhail could hide Rei::?er. In spring training in 1939, the phenom slugged out eight straight hits, including four home runs. Durocher, whom Rickey had traded to Brooklyn in 1938 and who now managed the Dodgers, exclaimed, “That kid is the greatest prospect I’ve ever seen.” Thus, the master trader lost Reiser twice: once to Landis and once to the Dodgers. Rickey settled for $132,000 and four no-name ballplayers and yielded Joe Medwick and Curt Davis to the Dodgers. It was poor balm to soothe the Reiser wound.