Word: brooklyn
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...wily and pious boss, Branch Rickey, known as The Brain. It is Rickey who assembles the circus, Ringmaster Durocher who snaps the whip. Boss Rickey has a great gift for spotting young talent, signing them up hastily, and training them wisely. In four years he has made Brooklyn's farm system baseball's biggest, outspreading the famed St. Louis Cardinals' system, which he built. The tree that Rickey is growing in Brooklyn (see chart) has 25 branches. This year 450 of its finest fruits were processed in Rickey's new training school at Pensacola...
According to Rickey's "plan" (regarded with some cynicism in Brooklyn, where every loser chants "Wait till next year, we'll moider 'em"), the postwar Dodgers were not expected to win their first pennant until 1948. The Dodgers were a disorganized team last year, full of old men and greenhorns, but with them Durocher almost upset the plan. The Dodgers were in first place on the Fourth of July, by which time, according to an old but questionable tradition, pennant races are decided. (Durocher Dodgers, better at the start than in the stretch, have been first...
...players can do in any situation. He yanks pitchers quicker than any other manager, and the results usually bear out his judgment. Pete Reiser stole home so often on Durocher's orders (seven times in 1946) that rival pitchers got the jitters every time he reached third base. Brooklyn scored more runs last season on squeeze bunts than any other club. Says Leo: "I play hunches . . . maybe other managers are afraid to take chances...
...with the Yankees, spent much of his time reinflating egos. (Some belittlers, exaggerating Dressen's importance, think the Dodgers won't be the same without him.) But Leo's lip also pays off. Against the Chicago Cubs last season, the day was getting dark and Brooklyn's pitcher was weakening. As his club came to bat, still leading 2-to-0, Durocher snapped to the bench: "Listen, you guys! I'm gonna stir up a rhubarb.* He began heckling the Cubs' catcher, Mickey Livingston: "Yeah, you! Grimm never used you this year until...
...Metro, Goldwyn, and Mayer have one which they keep all for themselves. This one inevitably involves Jimmy Durante and a couple of other characters of varied talent who get into the act, of whom one quite frequently may be a girl named Kathryn Grayson, who sings. "It Happened in Brooklyn" has something to do with a shy ex-soldier with a great and unrequited love for the well-known borough, accompanied by an assortment of others (girl music teacher, boy piano-player, bashful songwriter), all with fervid musical ambitions. At frequent intervals they burst out into song, both separately...