Mr. Rickey And The Game

"I said, 'You did half of it, Leo.'

"'What do you mean, half!' he demanded.

"To be a complete success in this undertaking, Leo, you must be invited back. If they ask you back for next season, then you may be sure you have done the job well."

Rickey smiled.

"They did invite him back," he said. "And this time the midshipmen gave him a silver service. He had done the job—the whole job—and I rather think that this experience was a big turning point for Leo. It lifted him into associations he had never known before and he came away with increased confidence and self-assurance and, I am quite sure, a greater measure of self-respect."

(Years later, just before Leo Durocher was suspended from baseball for a year by Commissioner A. B. Chandler, Rickey called his staff together in the Brooklyn Dodgers' offices to say of his manager: "Leo is down. But we are going to stick by Leo. We are going to stick by Leo until hell freezes over!" Today, in a manner of speaking, it is Rickey who is down—in eighth place—and Leo who is up, riding high as manager of the world champions.)

Rickey straightened his tie. He was wearing a four-in-hand. Ordinarily, he wears a bow tie, but once a month he puts on a four-in-hand as a gesture of neckwear independence.

"More than a half-century spent in the game." Rickey mused, "and now it is suggested that I give thought to some of the ideas and innovations with which I have been associated. The question arises, 'Which of these can be said to have contributed most to making baseball truly our national game?'

"First, I should say, there was the mass production of ballplayers. The Cardinals were three years ahead of all the other clubs in establishing try-out camps. We looked at 4,000 boys a year. Then, of course, we had to have teams on which to place boys with varying degrees of ability and experience. That brought into being the farm system.

"There were other ideas not ordinarily remembered. With the St. Louis Browns, under Mr. Hedges, we originated the idea of Ladies Day, a very important step forward. Probably no other innovation did so much to give baseball respectability, as well as thousands of new fans.