Mr. Rickey And The Game

His eyes went around the room and were held for a moment by the blackboard that lists the players on the 15 ball clubs in the Pittsburgh farm system. His lips moved and the words sounded like, "But is the boy ready for New Orleans?" Then, with a quick movement, he leaned across the desk and waggled an accusing finger.

"Hell's fire!" he exploded. "The Sunday school mollycoddle, the bluenose, the prohibitionist has been a liberal! No, no, no—this has nothing to do with Jackie Robinson, I contend that there was no element of liberalism there. I will say something about that perhaps, but now the plain everyday things—the gambling, the drinking, the...other things. I submit that I have been a liberal about them!"

He was silent. He did not mention or even hint at the names of managers who won major league pennants after everyone but Branch Rickey had quit on them; nor the men who gladly acknowledge that they are still in baseball because of the confidence Rickey placed in them.

The telephone with the private number rang. Branch Rickey picked it up and traded Southpaw Paul La Palme to the St. Louis Cardinals for Ben Wade, a relief pitcher. "You announce it," he said into the phone, "and just say La Palme for Wade and an unannounced amount of cash. We'll talk about a Class A ballplayer later. Anybody but a catcher. I don't need a catcher at that level." He put down the phone and his eyes twinkled. "Later in the day I may make a deal with Brooklyn," he said, "if I can get up the nerve." As things turned out, either he did not get up the nerve or he was unable to interest the Flatbush authorities.

He whirled around in his chair and stared out the window. He could see, if he was noticing, the end of a little street that runs down from Hotel Schenley to the ball park. It is called Pennant Place, a reminder of happier days for the Pittsburgh fans, now so ashamed of their eighth-place Pirates that only a few of them show up at the ball park—even for doubleheaders.

Rickey ran both hands furiously through his thick hair.

"A man trained for the law," he said, "devotes his entire life and all his energies to something so cosmically unimportant as a game."

He examined minutely what was left of his cigarette. Carefully, he extracted a single strand of tobacco and looked at it closely before letting it fall to the floor. Usually he chews unlighted cigars, but this day it was a cigarette.

He began to laugh.

"The law," he chuckled, "I might have stayed in the law. I do not laugh at the great profession itself. I am laughing at a case I had one time—the only case I ever had as a full-time practicing attorney. I had gone to Boise, Idaho from Saranac to try to gain back my strength after recovering from tuberculosis. I got an office and hung out a shingle and waited for the clients. None came. Finally, I was in court one day and the judge appointed me attorney for a man who was being held on a charge the newspapers used to describe as white slavery.