Word: rickey
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...When Rickey hired Jackie away from the Monarchs there were loud and angry outcries, and not all of them were in a Southern accent. Some of the ugliest comments were spoken in ripe, raucous Brooklynese. Even some owners in the low-paying Negro leagues protested against "raiding" their men. There had been Negroes in big-league ball before, but they had been careful to identify themselves as Indians or "Cubans." The late Minor League President Bill Bramham cried: "Father Divine will have to look to his laurels, for we can expect Rickey Temple to be in the course of construction...
...Montreal had been won over, but that cut no ice in Flatbush. Branch Rickey, who knows his fellow citizens, set out to soften them up. He organized a group of Brooklyn's leading Negro citizens, including one judge, into a formal "how-to-handle-Robinson committee." In every other city in the National League, Rickey set up similar committees. The Brooklyn committee drew up a list of do's and don'ts a yard long; Jackie's deportment in public & private was to be supervised as thoroughly as Princess Elizabeth...
...that Jackie would have company when the Dodgers were on the road, Rickey persuaded a Negro newsman, Wendell Smith, to travel with the club. In two cities, Jackie said, he had hotel trouble; he was not welcome at the Chase, where the Brooklyn club stays in St. Louis, or at Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin. ("They fooled me," said Jackie. "I thought it would be St. Louis and Cincinnati...
...Help at First. Branch Rickey's do's & don'ts strangely enough, did not include any instructions on how to play baseball. Although Jackie had played second base or shortstop all his life, he was handed a first-baseman's mitt and sent out to sink or swim at a new position -first base. Being right-handed was no help: first base is a left-hander's position. It is easier for a left-hander to throw from first to any other base, and easier to pick a man off the bag. Only...
Actually, Jackie at bat is most dangerous when the odds are against him. When the count gets to two strikes, as he explains it: "Then I begin to crowd the plate a little." Says Branch Rickey: "He is the best batter in the game with two strikes on him." Pitchers capitalize on his hasty swing by feeding him slow stuff. "I just can't hit those nuthin' pitches," Jackie complains. Because he is the best bunter in the game, the Dodgers "cut him loose" at the plate (i.e., let him decide for himself whether to take...