Word: rickey
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...Drink, No Smoke. Branch Rickey, the smartest man in baseball, had looked hard and waited long to find a Negro who would be his race's best foot forward, as well as a stout prop for a winning ball team. Rickey and his men scouted Robinson until they knew everything about him but what he dreamed at night. Jackie scored well on all counts. He did not smoke (his mother had asthma and cigaret fumes bothered her); he drank a quart of milk a day and didn't touch liquor; he rarely swore; he had a service record...
Turnstile Sociology. Jackie's daring on the baselines has been matched by shrewd Branch Rickey's daring on the color line. Rickey gave Robinson his chance. As boss of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Rickey is a mixture of Phineas T. Barnum and Billy Sunday, who is prone to talk piously of the larger and higher implications of what he is doing. There were large implications, of course, in signing Jackie Robinson, but the influence on the box office was a lot easier to figure. Jackie Robinson has pulled about $150,000 in extra admissions this season...
...Robinson buttons, Jackie's fans came early and brought their lunch. In Jim Crowish St. Louis, where Negroes must sit in the right-field pavilion, the Robinson rooting section was more noticeable. Their adulation embarrassed Robbie: it made it harder for him to act like just another ballplayer. Rickey had promised to treat Jackie "just like any other rookie," and he certainly did on the payroll. Though he may have to pay Jackie more next season, so far Rickey has paid the crowd-pulling rookie-of-the-year only $5,000. Under league rules that is the least that...
Jackie has never tried boxing, but Branch Rickey is convinced that Jackie would be sensational at it-or at any other sport he tried. In basketball, Jackie was the leading scorer of the Pacific Coast Conference for two years. He did not play tennis much, but the first time he played in the Negro National Tournament, he got to the semifinals. Baseball was the game he had played longest and liked least...
...enough to play a game. The smart ones got aboard the bus early, rolled up their uniforms for a pillow, and slept in the aisle. "After two months of it, I was for quitting," says Jackie. "No future." He didn't know it, but all the time Branch Rickey was getting reports of Jackie's playing, and of his .340 batting average...