Word: rickey
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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What Durocher lacks as a manager is supplied by his 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...
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...
...tactician (once the game has started), Durocher is unsurpassed; as a yearlong strategist, says Rickey, "he ain't." Durocher has an instinct for knowing just what his 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...
Whether Brooklyn wins or loses this week's playoffs, Dodger fans have a really rosy future to contemplate during the long winter months. The twelve-club farm chain collected by President Branch Rickey is busting with young talent. Most likely to succeed: Negro Jackie Robinson...
...power hitter (he has only three home runs), Robinson makes up the difference by beating out bunts, stretching singles into doubles and doubles into triples. Last week, with Montreal 15 games out front and the parent Brooklyn Dodgers puffing to stay one jump ahead of the Cardinals, Boss Rickey asked himself whether he should call Robinson up to the majors but apparently thought better of it. But even if Robinson got no chance at a Brooklyn uniform until 1947, he had already accomplished his mission. Other big-league moguls were already hunting around for Negro rookies of promise...